Hideki Kamiya's Clovers Studio Hires Bayonetta and Okami Composers for Okami 2
Hideki Kamiya's new studio Clovers has hired six composers and sound designers from PlatinumGames — the developer Kamiya co-founded and then left — to work on the upcoming Okami sequel.
The hires, reported on 24 August 2026 by VGC, bring together much of the creative team behind some of Kamiya's most recognisable games. Composer Hiroshi Yamaguchi led the score for Bayonetta and wrote music for the original 2006 Okami, Bayonetta 2, Bayonetta 3 and Star Fox Zero. Composer Hitomi Kurokawa wrote music for the Bayonetta series and The Wonderful 101. Composer Aoba Nakanishi was lead composer for 2023's Bayonetta Origins. On the sound-design side, Misaki Shindo — lead sound designer for The Wonderful 101 and NieR: Automata, and a contributor to every Bayonetta game — joins alongside Hiroki Niwa, who worked on Ninja Gaiden 4 and Bayonetta 3.
Kamiya co-founded Clovers in 2024 with Kento Koyama, co-director of 2021's World of Demons. The studio is fully independent but is developing the Okami sequel in partnership with Capcom, the publisher behind the original game. Kamiya left PlatinumGames the year before founding Clovers, and a roster of key PlatinumGames staff followed him to the new studio.
Clovers first announced the Okami sequel at The Game Awards 2024 in Los Angeles, with Kamiya serving as director (Clovers announcement, 13 December 2024). The original Okami, released in 2006 by Capcom's now-closed Clover Studio, is a critically admired action-adventure game set in a world drawn in the style of Japanese sumi-e ink painting. No release date or target platforms for the sequel have been announced.
For fans of Kamiya's work, the hiring round is a reunion of sorts. Yamaguchi's music was a defining element of the first Okami's identity, and the broader group shaped the sound of the Bayonetta series across more than a decade. Bringing them into one studio suggests the Okami sequel's audio will carry a direct line back to the games that made these developers' names.
What remains unconfirmed is how many more former PlatinumGames staff might follow, or whether Clovers plans further hiring rounds as development on the sequel progresses. The studio has not commented beyond the reported hires.
