It’d be presumptuous to say, but the Silent Hill franchise might be back.
That is to say, if you consider Silent Hill 2 Remake to be a fluke, and Silent Hill f’s critical success to be an aberration, then you’d hate to hear that Silent Hill: Townfall — the newest game from Konami and developers Screen Burn Interactive — is also a very good game.
If you’re a diehard about the canon of Silent Hill, you’re not going to like this. Townfall is the latest installment in the psychological survival horror franchise, and it’s the first full game to shift to first-person instead of over-the-shoulder. More importantly, it continues Konami’s direction of turning Silent Hill, the franchise, into an anthology series, focused on the vibes of its predecessors rather than continuing to create stories set within the namesake town.
The trend started with the short, not-that-good free-to-play game, The Short Message, which came out in 2024 and was set in a German apartment complex. With the success of Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake, Konami went full gear, making Silent Hill a yearly release with Silent Hill f, which was set in 1960’s rural Japan. That brings us to Townfall, set in 1990’s Scotland and featuring, to date, Silent Hill’s first Black protagonist.
Having played through the game fully twice on PlayStation 5, thanks to an early access code from Konami, I can safely say that Townfall is not only a beautiful game, but it’s also in general a good game. Though it may be lacking in enemy variety and is also a victim of third-act padding, Townfall‘s foray into first-person horror was dreamy, tense, and at times, annoyingly predictable.
Welcome to St. Amelia
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
For starters, St. Amelia is no Silent Hill. Like f, the next stop in Silent Hill’s international tour is the coast of Scotland, in the fictional town of St. Amelia. Set in 1996, you play as Simon Ordell, a Black American who’s found himself washed up on the shore of this quaint fishing village, trapped in fog, despite having no connections to the town in the first place.
I’ll try to remain as spoiler-free as possible, but Simon is not the only other playable character. For a couple of chapters, you’ll also play as Zoe Ellis, a nurse from the local clinic who’s harboring severe guilt over not being able to save lives after a mass casualty event rocked the town.
As far as the plot goes, the central mystery of the story, “what happened to the town,” dangles enough carrots to keep me interested. Context clues and just using your brain will quickly piece together what did happen, as the game trusts the player to understand without being spoon-fed.
If anything, my biggest gripe is a lack of character development for our main protagonist. Simon’s connection and importance to the town is an interesting thread to follow, but Simon himself is as charismatic as a block of wood. Most of Simon’s dialogue is him trying to get someone, anyone, to tell him what’s going on. His interactions with Zoe also offer nothing, as Zoe is a very muted and introverted person, so she’s not much help in Simon’s quest.
There’s also Richard, a mysterious figure who reaches out to Simon, guiding him to where he needs to be.
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
It, at times, feels so one-dimensional, and not to rant, I hate the way Simon is designed. For a game set in 1996, Simon is dressed like a 2010s-era hipster. The beanie, sleeveless puffer jacket, and flannel with rolled-up sleeves are the wardrobe of a Funko Pop-collecting IPA enthusiast. Even knowing why he’s dressed like that, I hate that of the few Black protagonists in horror gaming, Simon has absolutely no drip.
What does have drip (i.e., a better design), is St. Amelia itself. Based on the fishing villages along the coast of Fife in Scotland, the true terror of St. Amelia is not the monsters themselves but the existential crisis that befalls the community at the hands of oil barons. The empty brick-laid stores and abandoned townhouses and duplexes reveal a dying town, and at the center, a mural for those lost by disaster. Townfall is very much about the many, many, many consequences of Thatcherism.
It truly captures the spirit of Silent Hill, even though it’s not set in the town or shares any canon with it whatsoever. While the literal “whys” of the Silent Hill franchise have never really made much sense, the “vibes” of Silent Hill are present. It’s a daunting task for Screen Burn, but they did a wonderful job in my opinion.
Can Simon “set things right”?
Despite my complaints about the plot of Town Hall, the gameplay itself is pretty good. Smooth, performs well, and does a lot of things right in this modern era of Unreal Engine survival horror games.
It seems Screen Burn’s first focus was cinematic immersion. Townfall strives to be as diegetic as possible while navigating St. Amelia. Like the Silent Hill 2 remake, opening the map doesn’t pause the game, and exploration will translate on the map in terms of locked doors/gates and points of interest.
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
In addition, saving your progress requires a visit to the phone, either in a booth or on a landline you find throughout the map. Unlike, say, Resident Evil’s typewriter, you have to physically put in the 1-0-0 number on the phone to access the save menu. At first, I was worried this would be tedious, but I got used to it quickly and found it effective at aiding the immersion Screen Burn was looking to achieve.
The star of the show is Simon’s CRT monitor. Like the radio, this is how the game alerts you to nearby enemies. The big gameplay change here is that the monitor enables you to see enemies through the screen. This allows you to see enemies through walls, which is helpful; it comes with several caveats. The first is that the screen itself, when locked onto enemies, is visually similar to a Nintendo Virtual Boy. So, while you can see enemies behind objects, as they appear as black figures contrasting against the red screen, it’s not helpful in figuring out their actual, physical proximity to you. The second caveat is that you can only lock onto one enemy at a time. In practice, when new enemies appear on screen, you have to manually change the CRT’s frequency to lock onto them. However, once you do, you can use L1/R1 buttons to quick switch between them.
It makes the gameplay loop all the more tense, since stealth is crucial. Entering new areas can quickly put you in a panic, as you have to stop to manually find each new enemy’s signal while having to mentally keep track of who belongs to what signal, and where, as you explore. And sometimes, they’re not that close to you, and other times, an enemy could be moving around, but it turns out they’re stuck in a locked room.
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
Zoe functions similarly to Simon, except instead of a portable CRT, she has her pager. It doesn’t alert you the same way the monitor does with static clicks, and it can only show the general direction of an enemy, rather than fully see them. Honestly, I think the pager is one, make it fit with Zoe being a nurse, and two, randomly scare the player because the pager makes a loud buzzing sound when it receives a message.
The enemies themselves are fine. There are only two main enemy types, plus a stalker enemy that pursues Simon in certain Otherworld sections. They’re well-designed — shambling corpses that seem to suffer from severe burn scarring all across their bodies. One variation has an axe protruding out of its face and runs really fast, and the other one shoots an IV needle at you from range if you try to run away. Engaging with enemies should be your last resort cause they hit hard, and melee combat just kind of sucks in general.
For melee, there’s the classic 2×4 plank or the lead pipe, both of which break if used too much. While nothing new, I did appreciate that finding supplies is very location-dependent. When you’re rummaging through apartments and homes, you’ll generally find health supplies rather than ammo. Planks can be found in the gardens and backyards of said homes, while the lead pipe is generally found within the rusted, industrial iron hell of the Otherworld. It’s rare to find ammo anywhere except in little wood boxes left by Richard that you can find through your journey. It’s not a big thing, but I did appreciate how the level design was crafted to fit the artificial scarcity inherent to survival horror games.
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
For most of the game, you’ll only have the revolver, but near the latter parts, you can find the flare gun, which is one shot and highly inaccurate, and the double-barreled shotgun, which you don’t get to use until really late in the game.
Shooting your weapon is a bad idea because it will attract every nearby enemy to your location. Plus, even though the creatures don’t have eyes, they can still see you, on top of being able to hear you. At extreme difficulty, they’ll aggro at the sight of your flashlight as well, which is annoying cause the game is dark as hell. It’s a minor nitpick of mine, but having blind enemies being capable of seeing you is dumb.
All in all, the tools present in Townfall are great ideas that elevate what is, for the most part, a standard modern survival horror game.
And, like any survival horror game, it has puzzles. To be quite honest, I found them lacking. Zoe’s big puzzle in the hospital was a lot of fun; Simon’s puzzles are not. Like its contemporaries, Townfall also suffers from the illness of item-retrieval puzzles set in large areas split into two halves. The first third of the game with Simon and Zoe in the Shorefront of St. Amelia, I think, was the best part of the game, puzzle and exploration-wise. There’s so much environmental storytelling in the town that I missed severely when I was stuck in the Otherworld.
Depending on your tolerance and patience towards stealth-focused survival horror, I’d say you’re in for a good time. My first playthrough took about 15-16 hours, and that’s cause some of the puzzles required some close reading that I am not capable of at times. My second playthrough took 6 hours. I imagine if I played it again, I could finish it in four. Annoyingly, like its predecessors, you’re going to have to play the game a second or third time to unlock the “true” ending. It wasn’t a feat I could achieve because the requirements are arcane and esoteric. (The behavioral factors needed for SH2‘s good ending make me want to go insane)
Performance/Presentation
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
In the 20+ hours I spent with Townfall, I was delighted with how well it performed on PlayStation 5. With games of this standard, I immediately switched to Performance Mode, and the graphical fidelity was still pretty good in my eyes. Townfall can be a pretty game at times, and I’d say the lighting is one of its greatest strengths in terms of presentation.
You should also turn off the black bars as well. Screen Burn really wants to make Townfall a cinematic experience, but it’s just kind of jarring. Like, yeah, it makes certain scenes stand out, but I couldn’t imagine playing this full 15-hour game in 4:3 aspect ratio.
Another plus is the sound. Produced by acclaimed musician Pilotpriest, the soundtrack is an amalgamation of atmospheric electronic synth that at times feels eerily similar to Stranger Things. It sets a moody, uneasy tone perfect for an environment that feels dreamy and out of time. It’s unlike the series’ usual industrial grind and heavy guitar tracks, and I imagine the aim is to highlight the contrast between the town’s old-English architectural design and the creeping technology being introduced into it.
As stated earlier, almost everything you interact with is diegetic in some way. From entering numbers into the phone to using computers, printers, and even a tape recorder. It’s purposeful but subtle in a way that doesn’t remove the tension or immersion, and the ambient synth soundtrack brings it all together.
Should you buy Silent Hill: Townfall
Credit: Screen Burn Interactive / Konami
If you’re a fan of the current era of survival horror, yes. Townfall is smooth, tense, and pretty, and it performs great on PlayStation 5. St. Amelia is also a wonderful place to get lost in, especially during that first stretch of the game.
Just know what you’re getting into. Townfall introduces some new elements, but beneath them lies the standard formula. Personally, that formula can wear on me fast, especially near the end, but that’s very plot-dependent. The central mystery of Townfall is engaging and was a driver for me to finish the game (other than having to review it for work), but I found the characters flat and the dialogue to be annoyingly allusive.
Lore and canon truthers should also temper expectations. This is a separate spin-off with nothing to do with the town, the previous games, or their characters, and if that’s a dealbreaker, you’ll be disappointed. Fans can be tough on anything that strays from the source. Resident Evil diehards already don’t like the new movie, even though it was a critical success.
Overall, in terms of good games in 2026, Townfall is one of them. It’s not in my top 10 list, but for the genre and series it’s a part of, Screen Burn did an excellent job. I expect it to fade from my memory sooner than most. But if someone brings it up in conversation, my first reaction will be “oh, I really liked that game.”
Silent Hill: Townfall is available for pre-order now for PS5; it will be available starting Sept. 24.
Source: https://mashable.com/entertainment/silent-hill-townfall-review-ps5
