Konami’s return to Silent Hill (not the movie) has surprised me in the best ways. Bold risks have pushed the franchise in entirely new directions. Each new entry has given developers a chance to try something new; from something as simple yet risky as remaking and expanding on one of gaming’s most impactful stories, to taking the franchise away from the titular town in Silent Hill f, telling a different type of story in the process. 

For Silent Hill: Townfall, Konami has enlisted the help of Screen Burn, formerly known as No Code, and the developers behind the sci-fi horror Observation. They kept what makes Silent Hill so special, while letting them do something we really haven’t seen in the series before. Silent Hill: Townfall is a bold new entry that isn’t afraid to take risks, and for the most part, it pays off. 

Oh no, is Reform UK in this game…

Once again, Silent Hill: Townfall takes us away from the titular town of Silent Hill, this time bringing us to St. Amelia; a small coastal town in Scotland in the late 1990s. Our protagonist, Simon, washes ashore with an IV still in his arm, only to discover that the townspeople have mysteriously vanished. All they’ve left behind are banners protesting a mysterious corporation. What happened to St. Amelia? What is this plague? Does the corporation have anything to do with it? And why has Simon washed up here in the first place?

Silent Hill: Townfall sets the stage in an intriguing, distinctly Silent Hill fashion, pairing a personal story with a deeper mystery to unravel. Unfortunately, Simon initially feels like a blank slate, with little interesting things to say or do. He’s not my favourite protagonist in the series, though the small supporting cast fares better. There’s Zoe, a nurse who blames herself for a patient’s death, and Richard, a mysterious figure who brought Simon to town and serves as a sort of guide.

You’ll experience their stories through Simon’s eyes, and the result feels very much in line with what you’d expect from Silent Hill 2, with its focus on the characters’ psychological struggles and trauma. The story feels a little thin, but it has some intriguing ideas and introduces unique elements, particularly around the midpoint, that I don’t want to spoil. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with some of the answers, nor did I feel especially invested in the story on my first playthrough. Still, the mystery is compelling enough to keep you going until the end.

Speaking of seeing things through Simon’s eyes, Silent Hill: Townfall marks the first time a full entry in the series has adopted a first person perspective. The franchise previously experimented with it in Kojima’s P.T. and The Short Message, but Silent Hill: Townfall takes the idea further. Much like Resident Evil 7: Biohazard did for its own franchise, it changes the perspective without losing the series’ identity. This is still unmistakably Silent Hill, with psychological horror and survival elements at its core.

I don’t think anybody is home.

You’ll explore St. Amelia and its surrounding areas, a small but densely packed setting that takes you from market streets to narrow alleyways and back gardens that double as shortcuts. There are plenty of buildings to enter, too, including a pharmacy, residents’ homes, and even a hospital. The maps are well designed, often looping back on themselves in creative ways. There’s plenty of mandatory backtracking, while the secrets scattered throughout encourage you to revisit areas even more thoroughly.

The shift in perspective also brings a significant change in gameplay philosophy. While avoiding enemies has always been part of Silent Hill, the games have never really felt like stealth titles. Silent Hill: Townfall actively encourages you to sneak past threats instead. During my first four hours, I barely engaged in combat, prioritising stealth and evasion. If you’re spotted, you’ll need to fight back or make a daring escape, ducking into alleyways or apartment rooms to find designated hiding spots where you can cower until enemies return to their patrol routes.

To help you navigate the deserted town, you’ll quickly find the CRTV, a clever evolution of the classic radio featured in nearly every Silent Hill game. Rather than simply alerting you to nearby enemies, it now has a screen used for navigation, puzzle solving, and tracking threats. Every enemy emits a distinct signal, and tuning the CRTV to it lets you see that enemy through walls. You’ll need to register each signal and switch between them on the fly, though, since you can only track one enemy at a time. With thick fog obscuring your surroundings, sneaking past a group becomes a genuinely tense affair.

You can also throw bricks or bottles to distract enemies and slip past undetected, or stun one that’s already spotted you, giving you a chance to fight back or duck around a corner into one of St. Amelia’s many hiding spots. In many ways, Townfall feels like a spiritual successor to Alien: Isolation. You can even peek around corners in a familiar fashion, while the CRTV feels like a combination of Amanda’s motion tracker and hacking device from that game.

Silent Hill: Townfall focuses on a small cast of characters. Each have their own traumas that bring them back to the town.

Unfortunately, when (not if) you’re forced into combat, things aren’t great. Silent Hill has never been known for tight combat, though it’s usually serviceable. Even Silent Hill f, which features some of the series’ better combat, suffers from familiar jank. Those issues are easier to overlook in third-person, but Silent Hill: Townfall’s first-person perspective makes them much more noticeable.

Despite the emphasis on stealth, combat is unavoidable, and it feels clumsy and inconsistent. Simon can wield a plank or occasionally a pipe, but neither feels particularly impactful. There’s no dodge mechanic, and enemy attacks offer little variety beyond basic strikes, grabs, and ranged attacks. Most encounters boil down to attacking, blocking, and attacking again. Combat has never been Silent Hill’s greatest strength, but anyone hoping for an improvement here will be disappointed.

Melee weapons break after just a few kills, and replacements are scarce enough to make you weigh your options. Supplies strike a reasonable balance: mistakes aren’t overly punishing, but you can still run out quickly. By the end, I’d accumulated enough healing items to brute force my way through encounters, though I rarely needed to. Simon also acquires a revolver fairly early on, but gunshots attract more enemies, so it’s worth planning an escape route before firing. Most enemies go down in two shots, although creative play can help you conserve ammunition.

St. Amelia covered in that signature thick fog.

The Otherworld has been renamed the Different, though it functions much the same way, providing some of the game’s most stressful sections. It twists St. Amelia into an industrial, brutalist nightmare, with pipes and towering concrete walls appearing out of nowhere to funnel you down specific paths. Outside, the sky turns red, while interiors combine harsh red light, bare concrete, and the series’ familiar rusted aesthetic. It’s not an especially “different” take on the Otherworld, but it has enough personality to suit this version of the “Silent Hill phenomenon” (which, no, the game doesn’t explain).

This is also where es some of the series’ better combat, suffers from familiar jank. Those issues are easier to overlook in third-person, but Silent Hill: Townfall is at its most terrifying. The rest of the game maintains a constant sense of tension and unease, but the Different ramps things up with horror gauntlets that rival those in Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Enemy numbers increase, flooding your CRTV with more signals than you can reasonably track, while tougher foes make combat even more punishing. It also introduces an unkillable stalker whose erratic behaviour makes its movements difficult to predict. You’ll need to keep moving while staying alert to other threats nearby. It’s a shame this enemy appears so sparingly; I would have loved to encounter it in more varied environments.

The puzzles, meanwhile, are a bit hit or miss. Although the CRTV is an important mechanic throughout, its most creative uses appear in the opening chapters before tapering off towards the end. It can guide you towards landmarks, encouraging you to pay close attention to your surroundings as you hunt for a signal. One early puzzle has its screen flash images of posters and objects in a pharmacy, providing clues to a locker code. At their best, the puzzles are creative, surprisingly intuitive, and memorable without being overly complex. Unfortunately, one of the later puzzles feels needlessly obtuse.

The mist can obscure enemies that the CRTV then shows on its screen.

Elsewhere, you’ll encounter simpler environmental puzzles, such as restoring electricity to a house by adding credit or following instructions to operate medical equipment. You can enable hints in the settings, which I did on the developers’ recommendation. However, they mostly just highlight information that’s already easy to work out from the clues, rather than changing the puzzles themselves as in some previous entries. I’d personally recommend turning hints off, though don’t expect the puzzles to blow you away either.

While I really enjoyed my time with some of the series’ better combat, it still suffers from familiar jank. Those issues are easier to overlook in third-person, but Silent Hill: Townfall does have some shortcomings. Enemy variety is one of the biggest. For most of the game, you’ll face just two main enemy types. A few more appear in the later stages, including the aforementioned stalker, but the roster remains limited, and there’s only one boss fight. That said, Silent Hill: Townfall is at its best when you’re sneaking through groups of enemies, desperately hoping to reach the next save point.

As is Silent Hill tradition, reaching the finale doesn’t mean you’ve seen everything. Multiple endings expand on the story and its themes, encouraging repeat playthroughs. There’s also a New Game+ mode that offers additional bonuses, though you won’t carry over your weapons or resources.

An initial playthrough should take around ten to fifteen hours, depending on your approach. I avoided combat whenever possible while trying to explore every square inch of St. Amelia, finishing in roughly twelve hours with very few setbacks. Aside from one late game puzzle, I never found myself stuck for particularly long.

The UK version of The Office is a little darker than I remember.

Screen Burn’s Scottish roots are on full display in Silent Hill: Townfall, with a beautifully realised small town full of immediately recognisable details. It’s undeniably British, and I love it for that. From the oddly iconic Gladstone bins to the glass BT phone boxes, which double as save points; St. Amelia feels like a window into a past that’s very familiar to me.

The town itself is the star of the show, thanks in no small part to its wonderfully tense atmosphere and attention to detail. Silent Hill’s signature thick fog drastically reduces visibility, and experiencing it in first-person makes it feel all the more real. Enemies can fade from view just a few feet away. Unfortunately, the environments are rather static and the enemy designs lack imagination. They’re repetitive and rarely inspire fear through their appearance alone, something I’ve come to expect from the franchise, and which recent entries have handled particularly well.

The PC version is solid, too. Aside from the usual Unreal Engine 5 hiccups, Silent Hill: Townfall runs well, and I encountered no major issues beyond a cutscene that went black, which was easily fixed by reloading a save. Otherwise, it was a smooth experience. There’s also full ultrawide support during both gameplay and cutscenes, with the latter filling the entire screen.

Come on mate, smile a little!

While Akira Yamaoka hasn’t returned to compose the soundtrack, Silent Hill: Townfall has enlisted Anthony Scott Burns, better known musically as Pilotpriest. The indie horror director behind Come True proves to be a great fit, delivering an excellent soundtrack for the most part. Unfortunately, the game sometimes leans on it too heavily. Loud musical cues accompany new enemy encounters a little too often, occasionally undermining the sense of isolation the atmosphere works so hard to establish. The voice acting is consistently good, particularly from the supporting cast, who bring some much needed emotional depth when it matters.

Silent Hill: Townfall takes the franchise in an exciting new direction with its confident focus on stealth horror and shift to first person. It’s often tense and terrifying, with a compelling mystery to unravel and a semi-open town that once again proves the series can thrive beyond its titular location. While the story doesn’t always hit the mark and the limited enemy variety holds it back, Silent Hill: Townfall is another worthwhile experiment for a franchise that continues to find new ways to unsettle us.

Silent Hill: Townfall is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Reviewed on PC with an RTX 4070, Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 32GB RAM.

A copy of Silent Hill: Townfall was provided by the publisher.