Bloody terrifying isn't a phrase you'd normally associate with the developers of the Professor Layton games. How different things would've been if Level-5 had ever finished development of Ushiro... Now better known for their series of gentle, point-and-click detective adventures for various iterations of the Nintendo DS, once upon a time they were considering something a little different. Something you'd be less happy for your kids to play. Ushiro was a mooted title for the PSP which was announced way back in 2008, alongside a handful of promising screenshots showing high-quality anime-style illustrations and spooky special effects. The game would see you controlling a Japanese death god (known as a Shinigami) who shirked his responsibilities in favour of possessing people to stop bad things happening to them. Bad things which, more often than not, appeared to involve other supernatural beasties. Considerably less benevolent ones than the titular hero. Proudly announced as part of Level-5's tenth anniversary, the trailer for Ushiro was a incredibly effective, incredibly unnerving spectacle of dark shadows and freaky character designs. And a J-Pop song, but let's just look past that. The trailer gets a bit silly as it goes on, stating that the game "questions the value of life", but we would've loved a spin on the established Layton formula that puts some dark, genuinely disturbing horror content into the mix. The turn-based battle system looked fun, too, although the enemies being faced might've frozen us in Lovecraftian terror. The next year Level-5 removed Ushiro section from their website, and haven't mentioned it since, so we reckon it's as dead as its protagonist.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
