Hideki Kamiya’s Clovers has hired composers behind Bayonetta and Okami
Clovers’ newly announced audio team is full of PlatinumGames veterans
Hideki Kamiya’s new Capcom-backed studio, Clovers, has hired a roster of former PlatinumGames composers and sound designers to work on Okami 2.
The studio announced in a recent update that Hiroshi Yamaguchi, the lead composer of Bayonetta who also made music for the original 2006 Okami game, Bayonetta 2, Bayonetta 3, Star Fox Zero, and more, has joined.
Clovers‘ other newly recruited composers are Hitomi Kurokawa, who wrote music for the Bayonetta series and The Wonderful 101, and Aoba Nakanishi, who was lead composer for 2023’s Bayonetta Origins.
Hideki Kamiya has also been reunited with longtime sound design collaborator Misaki Shindo, who was lead sound designer for The Wonderful 101, NieR: Automata, and worked on every Bayonetta game. Finally, Ninja Gaiden 4 and Bayonetta 3 sound designer Hiroki Niwa has joined the team.
Kamiya co-founded Clovers in 2024 with Kento Koyama, co-director of 2021’s World of Demons. The Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 2 director left PlatinumGames the previous year, and shortly after, he was followed out the exit door by a roster of key staff.
It seems many PlatinumGames staff also decided to follow Kamiya to his new independent venture.
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Clovers, which is fully independent, is leading development on a sequel to Okami, the 2006 adventure game Kamiya directed, in partnership with Capcom.
Last January, Platinum broke its silence with a statement about its future, which was followed by the announcement of a new Ninja Gaiden game, built in collaboration with Koei Tecmo and Microsoft. Earlier this year, it announced further work-for-hire projects in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin and eFootball.
Hideki Kamiya has previously said that he expects Platinum to continue the Bayonetta series without him, while expressing disappointment that he won’t get to fulfill his vision for the series.
“I’ve talked about this in various interviews, that the Bayonetta series would consist of a total of nine episodes, and that I wanted to grow the franchise as the Bayonetta ‘Saga’, but it seems like I may have to take the full saga to the grave with me,” he said in 2023.
“It’s a shame. It’s not like I own the Bayonetta IP, but I suppose those who do will probably keep it going.”
