Hideki Kamiya has confirmed that he was “not joking” when he begged Capcom to make a less-scary version of Resident Evil Requiem for the faint of heart, even arguing that the company has become “numb” to how frightening the newer games have gotten.
In March 2026, Clovers Inc. — Kamiya’s newest game development studio — uploaded a video showing the team playing Resident Evil Requiem. Kamiya stood off to the side as one of his employees got to a cutscene near the beginning of the game, where he complained that, “I’ve been saying for forever, they should make a ‘non-scary’ mode.”
He said as much in a tweet around that same time, suggesting an alternate mode where “the zombies get all cute, the blood splatters turn into cherry blossom petals, the music becomes this upbeat, feel-good kind of tune, and you can just purely enjoy the puzzles and battles in a fun mood.”
We’re all playing Resident Evil Requiem!
Kamiya—who hates horror games—is doing his usual grumbling 🤭🍀 pic.twitter.com/ocbW8tsnDR— CLOVERS Inc. (@CLOVERS_en) March 10, 2026
Kamiya doubled down on this request in an August interview with Video Games Chronicle, saying he was “100% serious” about it and even claimed that Capcom is going too far with how scary its Resident Evil games have gotten lately.
“Nowadays, with how photorealistic and high-fidelity video games have gotten, the amount of crazy, horrifying things that people are able to put on the screen is absolutely insane, and I think anybody who’s on the Resident Evil teams at Capcom, at this point, they must all be completely numb to how scary the thing they’re making is,” he told the outlet.
“This is not a joke; I’m being one hundred percent serious when I say that I wish they would make it so that their games can also be enjoyed by people like me, who can’t handle scary games at all.”
Kamiya said he wanted to revisit the Raccoon City Police Department in Requiem to see how Capcom handled the iconic area that he first created in the original Resident Evil 2 — but it was just too scary for him.
“I mean, just recently this year we had Resident Evil Requiem and the big return of Leon Kennedy, and he went back to Raccoon City, and he’s reliving all of those memories and all of those experiences. As somebody who directed that original game, Resident Evil 2, I was curious to know how that panned out for him. I wanted to experience that myself as a player, but the game was way too scary, and I couldn’t,” he said.
He went on to state that he’s requested changes to how scary the RE games are directly to the series’ developers and producers — usually to stunned reactions.
“And so, it’s not a joke. I legitimately wished it would include some kind of non-horror mode for people like me, because I talk to folks who are on the Resident Evil teams at Capcom just privately, and I tell them that their games are way too scary, and they’re like, ‘What? Come on, they’re not that scary.’ They seriously seem to have no awareness of how scary the things they make actually are, so I really hope they address that at some point.
“I mean, it doesn’t even have to be anything super elaborate. You could just make it so that the zombies’ faces aren’t so scary. Why not have a mode that just puts, like, brown paper bags on all of their heads, or instead of having these dark, dingy rooms everywhere, they could have really pleasant mood lighting. I think even just making a few tweaks like those, it would make it so that somebody like me could make it all the way through the games. Oh, and no blood!
“Which is precisely why I don’t think the teams at Capcom fully understand how scary the games that they’re making actually are! I told [series producer] Takeuchi-san to his face, ‘Your games are too scary!’ And he was like, ‘What? Seriously?!’ I get codes for every new Resident Evil when it comes out and it always comes with an email saying, ‘Hey, we hope you enjoy the game!’ And I’ll send back an email thanking them for the code, and say, ‘Well, I’d love to play the game, but unfortunately it’s too scary for me, so I’m not going to be able to,’ they come back with, ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that scary, you can do it!’”
Kamiya even joked that he’d make a spin-off game where Leon finally gets to enjoy a peaceful retirement, where players would take him “fishing in the countryside, foraging for wild veggies, baking bread, walking the dog,” etc.
Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t look like Capcom is going to take his notes into consideration, as a remake of Code Veronica and all its terrifying zombie combat is set to release next year.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.