Considering the series went dormant for so long, it’s so encouraging to see Konami‘s Silent Hill series roar back into the spotlight with great confidence as a survival horror fan. From Bloober Team‘s solid work on the Silent Hill 2 remake in 2024, to a really successful new offshoot in NeoBards Entertainment’s Silent Hill F last year, Konami is looking to continue the streak with this year’s Silent Hill: Townfall, courtesy of a co-publishing agreement with Annapurna Interactive and developer Screen Burn Interactive.
For the unititiated, Silent Hill: Townfall is another Silent Hill spinoff that takes the series into the realm of first person survival horror. Konami’s tried flirting with the series in this format previously with the legendary cancelled project PT/Silent Hills and 2024’s brief free-to-play experiment in Silent Hill: The Short Message. Any first person Silent Hill project will always live in the shadow of what Silent Hills could have been, and while what we got to see from Silent Hill: Townfall behind closed doors at Play Days doesn’t seem like it’s trying to live up to the legacy of that repeatable corridor experience, its shaping up to still be a unique take on the series nonetheless.
Coming from the developers that delivered the unique Observation space survival horror game back in 2019, Silent Hill: Townfall provides a different tempo from the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill F. Presented more in the vein of an arthouse film complete with a letterbox presentation and photogrammetry rendering, Silent Hill: Townfall is set in the Scottish island of St. Amelia (developer Screen Burn is located in Glasgow, Scotland for reference) and puts you in the shoes of protagonist Simon Ordell. Simon arrives to this island looking for a mysterious woman that keeps appearing in his handheld CRT TV-like device that serves as the game’s version of the classic Silent Hill radio, and also serves as the game’s central mechanic.
In the 30-minute, hands-off demo we saw, we got to see a gameplay mix of town and in-door exploration, capped off with a glimpse of the game’s monster encounters. With the game’s first person perspective, Silent Hill: Townfall provides a slower, more pensive pace that reminds me a lot to an indie horror observation game, as you slowly explore the town using your CRT device to piece together clues over what happened to this mysterious woman and the town in general. Mood and atmosphere are key ingredients to a great Silent Hill experience, and the presentation flourishes of Townfall help the game both feel a piece to the Silent Hill franchise, while also having a unique look and feel to separate it from recent installments. The town of St. Amelia is perpetually creepy, and though we didn’t see a monster until the end section of the demo, the perspective and presentation kept the unnerving feeling throughout.
After piecing together a couple clues with the CRT which would then play cam-recorded videos of what happened, we see Simon make his way to one of the houses were we got a glimpse of the classic survival horror observation/puzzle solving gameplay typical of the genre. There is nothing out of the ordinary to how you resolve these puzzles (combining items, scouring different corners, etc.), other than the presentation of it all. It definitely takes cues from the recent modern first person Resident Evil games, though Townfall seems like it wants to take full advantage of the perspective to really hide the important items needed, as there were a couple pieces of a puzzle located in insanely hidden locations of this house I wouldn’t have thought of myself if I was playing this. Very curious to see how this evolves further into the game, and if it ever becomes frustrating or obtuse.
When Simon exits this house to go look for a particular item needed to complete a puzzle, we get a glimpse of a monster, which is a grotestque, contorted torso ball of flesh with a metal rectangle on its head. The demo’s presenter told us early on they’re pushing more towards evasion than actual combat in the early parts of the game, and confirmed later on you would get more items to fight back. In this demo, we saw the evasion/stealth gameplay that includes using your CRT device to try scan the monster through walls, which seemed neat. After a couple evasions, Simon makes his to the place he finds his missing puzzle item alongside a wooden stick which serves as his first weapon. He then faces off against the monster, and swinging the stick definitely looks raw and visceral in the first person perspective. The beast does prove quite challenging, which ends up taking Simon down. The demo ends with Simon coming back to life with an intriguing self revive mechanic that’s tied to an IV attached to his arm, which apparently gives him one revive chance before game over. And before we see more, this is where the demo ends.
With all these little intriguing teases and great presentation touches, I left the Silent Hill Townfall demo presentation highly encouraged by what I saw and the potential of continuing the streak of great Silent Hill content later this fall. Silent Hill: Townfall is scheduled to release on September 24, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and PC. Look forward to more coverage later this year!