Deadly Premonition Creator Is Back With New Development Studio After Becoming a Monk

The creator of Deadly Premonition and D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, Swery65, has returned to game development as CEO of a new studio called White Owls.

The studio, which is based in Osaka, Japan, is currently working "very hard" on its first original project, but the company is not yet ready to unveil the game to the public.

Swery's return comes after over a year away from game development. The revered game director took time out in November 2015 for health reasons, before eventually deciding to retire from his previous company Access Games. During his time off, he became a buddhist monk, and got bitten by his cat (but it didn't hurt).

Before his retirement from Access, Swery was working on a game about "a high school girl detective who uses the imagination (fantasising) energy from masturbating to help her solve murders." It's unclear what his new studio is working on, or if the detective project lives on without him at Access.

Aside from Deadly Premonition, Swery has also worked on games like Tomba 2, Spy Fiction, Lord of Arcana and, most recently, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die.

The latter was an "absurd" Xbox One and PC-exclusive episodic game, while Deadly Premonition was a divisive cult classic that has been compared to TV series Twin Peaks. For more, check out our D4 review, or our Deadly Premonition review.