The decision seems to have been made to bring the gameplay of Lollipop Chainsaw up to modern standards. Game design principles have certainly moved on since the title was originally released back in 2012 on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and more modern games are typically expected to feel snappier to play.

“We would like to revamp the battles into something that the console action game players of today will enjoy, such as doing away with any sluggishness in chainsaw battles with speed adjustment, improving the input timing for cheerleading and chainsaw combo attacks, as well as improving camera movement,” said Yasuda in a statement.

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP was originally announced back in June 2022. Since then, the studio has spoken about some of its plans for the upcoming remake. A recent interview also indicated that the studio is hoping to keep changes to the game at a minimum.

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP doesn’t yet have a specific release date aside from a Summer 2024 release window.

RePOPのバトルは、チェーンソーバトルのもっさり感を解消するスピードの変化やチアアタックとチェーンソーアタックの組み合わせコンボの入力受付タイミングの改善など、現行機のアクションゲームユーザーが楽しんでいただけるものに改修します。

Please see attached message in English! pic.twitter.com/qAmHOPuVI0

— 安田善巳 Yoshimi Yasuda (@yasudaD5) October 27, 2023

Dragami Games has also revealed the remake’s full name. Titled Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, it has also received new artwork, which you can view above.

A remake of Lollipop Chainsaw was announced roughly a year ago. The title was originally developed by Grasshopped Manufacture and launched in 2012, though the original developer is not involved in the project, nor are creative director Goichi Suda (ak.a. Suda51), or filmmaker James Gunn, who served as a writer on the original hack-and-slash game.

Shortly after the remake’s announcement, producer Yoshimi Yasuda clarified that it would be a faithful recreation of the original, and would be “as close as possible to a remaster”.

Earlier this year, Dragami Games also shared new artwork to showcase the remake’s updated character model for protagonist Juliet.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human

Techland’s sequel to 2015 sleeper hit Dying Light 2 Stay Human is rightly praised for its freewheeling first-person parkour, but its melee heavy combat is uber-satisfying too. In the spirit of post-apocalyptic societal collapse, surviving face-to-face encounters with bands of ravaging zombies requires utilising whatever object comes to hand – bats and batons to bludgeon, machetes to slice, axes to dice. The brutality of Dying Light 2 Stay Human’s combat is ravishing, with parkour skills in the form of flying kicks upping the fun factor.

Dead Island 2

Deep Silver’s zombie sequel delivers heaps of ridiculous hack and slash action, done so hilariously over the top the blood-soaked brawling on the streets of a zombie-ravaged Los Angeles feels slapstick or cartoonish. And on Dead Island 2’s streets are a mass of improvised weaponry – pipe wrenches and pool cues, meat cleavers and makeshift swords, with an endless supply of craft-able upgrades to boost limb damage, or burn, maim, and shred the undead into gloriously gory bits and pieces.

Dead Rising 2    

To survive the hordes of hungry zombies in Dead Rising 2 – sometimes congregating in gangs thousands strong – player character Chuck Greene can combine everyday objects to create ludicrous improvised weaponry. Duct taping a machete to a toy helicopter creates the Heliblade, the Auger attaches a drill motor to a pitchfork, the brutal bat axe Defiler combines a sledgehammer and a fire axe. Even makeshift vehicles make an appearance such as the battery-fied electric wheelchair, which, to push things even more sadistically can be combined with a merc assault rifle to craft the Blitzkrieg, the perfect killing machine to masochistically roll through crowds of zombies.

State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition

Open world zombie survival sim State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition focuses most on the grim reality of life after a zombie outbreak levels society. Scavenging for food, cobbling resources with other survivors, building a community, and fortifying a home base are the flesh on State of Decay 2’s bones, but with a smattering of zombies stalking the countryside there arises opportunity for hacking and slashing too. Now, ranged weaponry is the usually the safest option, but with a huge list of melee weapons at each survivors’ disposal, it’s much more satisfyingly savage to whack a zombie on the cranium with a nail puller, or get up close and savour every gory detail with a rusty screwdriver.     

Days Gone

There’s a lot to love in Deacon St. John’s odyssey through zombie-ravaged Oregon in Days Gone. Principally, the strategic funnelling of hordes of infected freakers through carefully laid traps to eliminate their numbers en masse in sheer joyous desperation is a seriously well implemented gameplay loop that’s still relatively unique amongst video games some four years after release. This being a post-apocalypse, there are of course plenty of blunt objects dotted around with which to bash freakers over the head with. Crafting recipes unlock even grislier concoctions too: 2×4’s can be stuffed with a box of nails, baseball bats can be made much more durable with a little bit of scrap metal and pipework; even a stool leg can be combined with a saw blade to rip faces off.

The Last of Us Part I

Featuring much more intense hand-to-hand combat brought over from 2020’s The Last of Us Part II, last year’s The Last of Us remake improved character animations, made enemy AI smarter and more tactically astute, and rejuvenated stealth encounters. Of course, encounters can be stealthily skipped, but an aggressive approach to combat is always ultra-satisfying. Whilst it’s a shame Part II’s dodge ability wasn’t included in Part I, the melee weapon-based action remained and with it the brutal satisfaction in decking runners in the skull with a brick or shanking a clicker in the back with a shiv blade.

Killing Floor 2

Killing Floor 2 is dripping in visceral guts and gore, with limbs and entrails constantly flung across the screen. The game’s raft of melee weapons provides multiple satisfying ways in which to rip enemy ZEDs apart too, from conventional slashing katanas and swords, to more unusual items such as the bruising bone crusher, the combination sledgehammer shotgun known as the pulveriser, and the buzz saw spewing eviscerator. One of the best melee weapons in the entire game though is the medieval sword zweihandler. It isn’t especially expensive, but once paired with the massacre perk will transform players into an unstoppable slicing, dicing tornado of death.

Lollipop Chainsaw

Grasshopper Manufacture’s mindless Lollipop Chainsaw, in which players arm cheerleader zombie hunter Juliet Starling with a bedazzled chainsaw before slicing her way through a zombie infested high school, is perhaps the game made for this rundown. Juliet’s knack for pirouetting in kaleidoscopic rays of rainbow and blood is endlessly fun, and that chainsaw in question features tons of humorous, schlocky upgrades: adding an engine and exhaust pipes grants Juliet power to dodge, an 8 rocket cartridge transforms the bedazzled chainsaw into an explosive long-range grenade launcher, and possibly most sadistic of all is the Nick Popper, a speaker phone type attachment capable of launching jock boyfriend Nick Carlyle’s detached head as a projectile.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War       

Ostensibly a shooter set within an alternate history where humankind is locked in endless battle against Hitler’s undead Armageddon, Zombie Army 4: Dead War also features its fair share of glorious hack and slash elements. The sadistic X-ray kill cam from developer Rebellion’s Sniper Elite series makes an appearance here too alongside some seriously killer melee combat, with powerful close-quarter combat weaponry accompanying the brutal fisticuffs. The electric fist, for instance, is a powerful knuckleduster which stuns enemies with a supercharged electrical current; divine blast knocks multiple opponents down with a very useful shockwave; the machete smash blade slices through enemies like a hot knife through butter; and last but not least, the incendiary modified hatchet sets anything within range on fire as well as simultaneously cutting chunks off zombie soldiers withered bodies.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

This isn’t your typical horror; Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice instead chills players to the bone by way of its psychosis laden trauma dripping in existential dread, bringing Ninja Theory’s action adventure close to the realms of the best psychological horror games. Of course, it’s hack and slash combat can be exciting to pull off too, with spritely dodge ability and precise parry systems bringing an element of skill to the button mashing sword swings. Rudimentary combos are also possible with light and heavy attacks that can be chained together to a spectacular stab and launch-kick finishing move.

Going by the comparison (via @JeamWSR on Twitter), it looks like Dragami Games will be trying its best to stick to the original game’s aesthetics, while still trying to modernise its visual fidelity to some extent. The original model of Juliet, for example, quite clearly looks like a character from a game released on the Xbox 360 and PS3, while the new model seems to feature improved details.

The remake for Lollipop Chainsaw was announced back in June. The developer since then has spoken about its plans for the remake, and in a recent interview, spoke about how it plans to keep the game as close to the original release from 2012 as possible.

While the Lollipop Chainsaw remake doesn’t yet have a specific release date, the game is set to hit stores some time in 2023.

㊗️謹賀新年2023㊗️
本年もLollipop Chainsaw RemakeをはじめDragami Gamesをよろしくお願いいたします…!!!#ドラガミゲームス#ロリポップチェーンソー#リレイヤー#ラヴアール pic.twitter.com/ti8O7yUF8A

— ドラガミゲームス【公式】 (@Dragami_Games) December 31, 2022

https://twitter.com/JeamWSR/status/1611123404362457097

The general gist is that the Lollipop Chainsaw remake is going to be a very faithful one, and will attempt to preserve as much of the original game as possible- to the extent that Dragami Games wants to make it “as close as possible to a remaster” (which, incidentally, was what they initially wanted to do).

“The primary goal of the Lollipop Chainsaw remake project is to make it so that players who wish to play Lollipop Chainsaw can do so easily, not to make a new Lollipop Chainsaw game,” Yasuda wrote. “Of course, the ideal thing to do would be to make a remastered version of the original game, changing nothing. However, we were unfortunately unable to include 16 of the licensed songs, which were a great part of the original game’s feel, and so we are instead aiming for a remake that is as close as possible to a remaster.”

Yasuda has also provided assurances that the story will remain unchanged in the remake, while the development team does “not intend to change the aesthetics” either.

“The mention of how the game will have a more realistic look in the previous announcement was meant to refer to how we will make use of the advanced rendering technology available in current game consoles,” he wrote. “We do not wish to change Juliet’s design, and the assumption that we want to is baseless. We were the ones who created Juliet’s model data after great trial and error 10 years ago, and feel attached to her more than anyone else.”

On the topic of censorship, there is less clarity for now. Yasuda wrote: “We learned after the announcement of Lollipop Chainsaw remake that many fans are worried about censorship in the game. We have not yet discussed the issue with the platform holders yet, and thus cannot say anything about the topic, but what we can say is that we intend to negotiate with the platform holders to make it so that the game can be as close to the original version as possible.”

You can check out Yasuda’s full message in the tweet below.

The Lollipop Chainsaw remake is due out sometime in 2023.

ロリポップチェーンソーリメイクに対し沢山のファンよりご質問を頂戴しましたのでお答えします…!!!
Many fans have asked questions about Lollipop Chainsaw Remake, so I will answer them.#ロリポップチェーンソー#lollipopchainsaw #ドラガミゲームス#dragamigames pic.twitter.com/V6iQG8mVDx

— 安田善巳 Yoshimi Yasuda (@yasudaD5) July 12, 2022

Giochi Suda a.k.a. Suda51 was the original game’s creative director, while filmmaker James Gunn of Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad fame served as a writer on it, though neither of them will be involved in the remake. The same was made clear by both Gunn and Suda over on Twitter, with Gunn saying that he doesn’t “know anything about” the remake, and Suda saying that “Grasshopper Manufacture has nothing to do with development or anything.”

Grasshopper Manufacture is, of course, now owned by NetEase, while Gunn hasn’t written for any game since Lollipop Chainsaw (or any game before it, for that matter).

The Lollipop Chainsaw remake will be out in 2023. No platforms have been announced for the game yet.

I neither endorse nor condemn it! I simply don’t know anything about it. But as articles are starting to slap our names on there, I think it’s important to make clear no one ever approached us about it. https://t.co/yPOT76AeWp

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) July 5, 2022

To add my two cents, like @JamesGunn says, neither he nor I am involved in this project at all, and Grasshopper Manufacture has nothing to do with development or anything. https://t.co/ctLfTvk1yn

— SUDA51/須田剛一 (@suda_51) July 6, 2022

It’s been announced that Dragami Games is developing a full remake of Lollipop Chainsaw. The hack-and-slash title launched back in 2012 and was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture. Though the original studio is now owned by NetEase and the remake is going to be developed by a new studio, several of the staff that worked on the original are working on the remake as well, including producer Yoshimi Yasuda.

In a message, Yasuda explained that Lollipop Chainsaw will feature several changes made over the original game, including a new soundtrack and a more realistic and higher fidelity visual style. Check out his full message in the tweet below.

The Lollipop Chainsaw remake will be out sometime in 2023. There’s no confirmation yet on what platforms it will release for.

Lollipop Chainasaw Remake の発表に関する Producer message をお届けします…!!!
Please check Producer message about Lollipop Chainsaw Remake.#lollipopchainsaw#ロリポップチェーンソー pic.twitter.com/ILeLTKNVZ3

— 安田善巳 Yoshimi Yasuda (@yasudaD5) July 5, 2022

Originally released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, Lollipop Chainsaw came out to polarising reviews. Reviews of the game (including ours) praised its surreal tone and satire, while at the same time criticising its otherwise shallow gameplay and short length.

Originally developed by Suda51’s studio Grasshopper Manufacture, Lollipop Chainsaw‘s development also saw the involvement of the at the time obscure film director James Gunn. The game quickly got a cult following since its release, but the lack of a PC release and the march of time has largely left the game in obscurity.

Lollipop Chainsaw stars Juliet Starling, as she fights off zombies during a zombie apocalypse while carrying around the (still living) decapitated head of her boyfriend.

Lollipop Chainsaw はドラガミゲームスで復活させます。楽しみに待っていてください…!!!
Lollipop Chainsaw is back by Dragami Games. Please look forward to it.#ロリポップチェーンソー
#DragamiGames pic.twitter.com/RlcLrxMkKK

— 安田善巳 Yoshimi Yasuda (@yasudaD5) June 14, 2022

Reports are coming out that to celebrate the success of Lollipop Chainaw a new trailer for the upcoming Killer is Dead is out, edited by Kadokawa Games CEO Yoshimi Yasuda himself.

Famitsu and Impress Watch, who saw the trailer first-hand at the Lollipop Chainsaw Summer Appreciation Event, seeing a “man with a cyborg left arm and a katana in his right hand engaged in combat”. The cel-shading is still in keeping with No MOre Heroes, but it presents a new range of effects in tune with Grasshopper’s recent efforts.

Suda talked about wanting to make a new hero for Killer is Dead, and crafting an assassin story along the lines of No More Heroes and Killer 7. He did assure us that there’d be “lots of hot girls” though.

Classy as always, Suda.

After two massive bombings that would leave a gigantic crater in normal circumstances, it seems that Grasshopper Manufacture, the creators of Lollipop Chainsaw and the award winning Shadows of the Damned, have survived the commercial performance of their latest game.

They also switched publishers, mind. That could be one of the reasons for the better performance. Their previous titles were published via EA Partners, while Lollipop Chainsaw was published by Warner Bros. Interactive.

The game shipped 700k units, and before you bring big selling games into the equation, remember that for the studio this was their best performance yet. No point comparing with others when you can still outdo yourself, isn’t it?

Their last two games sold 30k something on NPD while this did 110k, so it’s a marked improvement. Killer is Dead is their next game which is scheduled to hit the PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime next year and they don’t have a publisher for that yet, and you know what, they should go for Warner Bros. again.

Via Andriasang.