Silent Hill: Townfall feels just like the fruits of two current developments: the renaissance of Konami’s survival horror sequence, dormant for the previous decade, and the rise of extra culturally genuine Scottish video games.
As a standalone spin-off, it delivers the primary full-length first-person Silent Hill expertise that was the preliminary promise of the cancelled Silent Hills meant to be directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro (although its playable teaser ‘P.T.’ finally turned a horror traditional in its personal proper).
Its setting within the fictional Scottish city of St. Amelia could not be extra excellent, provided that the sequence is iconic for its fog, which really happens on the Scottish east coast when heat air passes over the chilly North Sea through the summer season and may make its approach inland.
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And who higher to understand this imaginative and prescient than Display screen Burn Interactive, the Glasgow-based developer whose acclaimed video games Tales Untold and Commentary (launched again when the studio was often called No Code) have been additionally skilled within the first-person perspective?
But regardless of the authenticity of its setting, the Scottish studio has opted to not function Scottish-sounding characters in its major forged, in contrast to the BAFTA-winning Nonetheless Wakes The Deep. Protagonist Simon Ordell, performed by British-American actor Jovan Adepo, is one thing of an outsider who has been instructed by a mysterious voice to come back to St. Amelia to “make it proper” — no matter “it” could also be.
Make it proper
For the Gamescom demo, issues definitely begin off not fairly proper. Simon arrives on the city’s harbor not by boat, however merely rising from the water. Judging by the purple wristband together with his private particulars on one hand and tubes linked to the opposite (like he’s escaped from a hospital), one thing’s clearly up with him too.
St. Amelia, in the meantime, is a ghost city, as evident by the sight of deserted retailers in addition to one road lined with ‘home on the market’ indicators. When you get a creeping worry that this is likely to be a type of indie video games from over a decade in the past once you simply walked round in a photorealistic space within the aftermath of the particular story, it’s immediately resolved by the ringing coming from a close-by public cellphone field simply previous the city sq..
It goes useless after I choose it up. I survey potential numbers to ring and go along with “100,” which tells you to “save your self” (and is actually the way you save progress on this recreation).
Again within the city sq., I spot an upright man being fed some type of fluid coming from a tube seemingly connected to the sky above. As Simon instinctively goes to free him, his voice is acquainted — it is the voice from the start calling out to Simon to “make it proper”. Once I subsequent return to the sq., issues have modified once more, with protest banners and placards alluding to against the law that had occurred that could be linked to an organization with the acronym ‘CEG’.
As eerie, enigmatic, and atmospheric as this starting is, it additionally feels a bit aimless. There have been a number of events throughout my session after I was nonetheless slowly plodding round St. Amelia’s streets, solely to find doorways that have been locked, and the choice to dash had not but been unlocked.
It seems it’s because I had ignored just a few key numbers I may have known as on the cellphone. Whereas some video games could be overzealous in marking the vital with yellow paint, Display screen Burn appears fairly content material with letting you get actually misplaced in its world, even when which may make for a good slower burn than meant…
Tactile horrors
If there was one constant factor about Silent Hill: Townfall, it is that you just actually do have to concentrate to each element. That’s, happily, the advantage of the first-person perspective: you may actually scrutinize all of the flyers displayed on a group noticeboard with out having to carry up a bigger textual content field.
There’s additionally an actual physicality to the clues and gear you may have entry to, similar to a double-sided map you need to maintain and flip over manually fairly than simply mentioning a map UI. Essentially the most tactile of those is the CRTV, a conveyable tv that you would be able to tune utilizing the analogue triggers.
So you are not fully misplaced, a few markers do seem on the backside to trace on the sign you need to be tuning in direction of. When you get a video clip, it is about rigorously scrutinising the picture, typically ready for it to loop again, as a touch of what it’s essential discover subsequent or the place to go.
Not that these hints will spell it out for you. In a single case, I used to be speculated to search for a white home, which isn’t the obvious clue when many of the homes in St. Amelia’s streets have white partitions.
The CRTV additionally has one other operate, as it may be tuned to detect enemies close by. Even when they’re obscured by partitions, their outlines can nonetheless be made out via noise and static. Alternatively, you may as well maintain one other button together with the left stick with peek round corners.
Regardless that I solely encountered a few enemies throughout my hands-on, which keep true to Silent Hill conference as nightmarish deformed figures with uncanny actions, fight stays a clunky side of the sport, made no higher or worse in first-person. This made it extra necessary for me to prioritise evasion as a tactic.
However from what I managed to play at Gamescom, it is the unsettling vibes that resonate strongest over hostile threats, such because the dread of what might be in a locked field that is meant for carrying human organs, or a particularly Scottish puzzle that entails having to prime up an electrical meter with a pay as you go card from a newsagent.
Having moved to Glasgow beneath two years in the past right into a newly renovated tenement constructing that nonetheless nonetheless had one in all these relics within the cabinet, it was a second when Silent Hill: Townfall‘s mundane horror turned just a little too actual. That is additionally positive to make this in contrast to some other Silent Hill recreation I’ve performed.
Silent Hill: Townfall releases for PlayStation 5 and PC on September 24, 2026.
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