With the resurgence of the franchise with 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake, Konami is full steam ahead on bringing the iconic horror series to the modern age. The publisher has since outsourced two new entries, with more on the way. With Silent Hill: Townfall, the series is brought into first-person for the first time, opening up a few new doors when it comes to story, gameplay, and their unique flavor of psychological horror. Scottish developer Screen Burn Interactive has crafted one of the best Silent Hill narratives in years, offering both old and new fans a survival horror experience easily worth your time. And while this doesn’t take place in Silent Hill proper like last year’s Silent Hill f, everything you’d expect from a new game in the series is on full display here.
For my money, Townfall’s narrative is one of the series’ best with topical themes of corporate injustice and the weight of one’s choices at the forefront of protagonist Simon Ordell’s mind. It’s a complicated tale that unravels slowly throughout your roughly 15-hour first playthrough, and I think it’s one of the easiest to understand compared to previous entries. Silent Hill games are no stranger to allegory and metaphor, and sometimes their stories can come off as a bit obtuse and too esoteric for their own good. But with Townfall, understanding the plight of the people of St. Amelia is both poignant and clear-cut, and the franchise’s signature metaphorical body horror baddies are back in full force.
There’s Always a Town
Simon washes up ashore in the Scottish island town of St. Amelia, called back to right a terrible wrong. I won’t delve too deeply into spoilers here, but as the story unfolds and you meet the game’s small but mighty cast of characters like the nurse Zoe and the mysterious Richard, you’ll piece together the tragic events that befell the quaint town. But it wouldn’t be a Silent Hill game without strong puzzle design and horror elements, and Townfall introduces a new mechanic to inform your gameplay experience. Early on, Simon finds a CRTV, a sort of two-way radio that expertly serves both narrative and gameplay functions.
Previous Silent Hill games had a much stronger emphasis on combat. You’d get plenty of melee options or abundant ammo to take on the Cronenberg-inspired enemies. With Townfall, while these combat options are still present, you’re heavily discouraged from engaging in combat. Using the CRTV, you can find enemy’s frequencies and avoid them from afar, using the environment as cover or throwing bricks to distract them. Honestly, you’re much better off just not fighting most of the time. The game really wants you to slow down and focus more on hiding and evasion. If you try to brute force your way through enemies, it’ll result in more than just a few game over screens.
“Level design in the later half of the game is some of the best I’ve seen”
Luckily, the evasion mechanics are really well-designed and are sprinkled throughout each encounter very intuitively. You can hide in closets and peak through grates to track movements (or just pull up the CRTV). But there are also plenty of seemingly-useless rooms with doors you can lock manually. If you’re caught by an enemy, indicated very clearly by a loud bang sound, you can run to one of the lockable rooms and hold out until they lose interest. This level of thought put into not engaging in combat is something I was really impressed by, and level design in the later half of the game is some of the best I’ve seen thanks to these mechanics.
Go Analog, Baby
But the CRTV isn’t just used to avoid enemies and get story exposition; you’ll also use it to help solve puzzles. Silent Hill games are no stranger to incredibly robust and tough puzzles, and Townfall is a prime example of this. There are a few instances where I had to tune a new frequency to the CRTV. This is done by using the PS5 controller’s gyro controls to match up the frequencies, hold the controller in place to sync up, then use the corresponding images to that give hints to a puzzle’s solution around you in the environment. Silent Hill: Townfall really emphasizes the importance of using analog technology in numerous aspects, and using the CRTV is one of the most creative ways I’ve seen something like this used. The game doesn’t hold your hand; you have to think outside the box more often than not to proceed.
As a horror game, Silent Hill: Townfall is heavy on the tension and tight spaces. And it’s no secret that one of the most important aspects of a quality horror experience is sound design, and I’m happy to report that this game nails it. From exploring the eerily quiet town square with the game’s signature fog and faint hints of the horrors beyond, to the mortifying sounds enemies make when they spot you, Townfall’s sound design is impeccable. Playing at night with noise-cancelling headphones on gave me such a sense of dread that I often had to wait until the next day to play in sunlight. And thanks to its under-reliance on combat mechanics, the tension is turned up to 11. Controlling Simon feels great, as well. Movement is slow and methodical, and is clunky in a way that serves the design instead of being frustrating.
“Even some of the puzzles left me scratching my head”
It took me about 15 hours to complete my first playthrough, earning one of the five possible endings. Silent Hill games aren’t necessarily known for being the easiest around, and Townfall is one of the hardest. But this isn’t an indictment of the game’s quality by any stretch. Learning the game’s mechanics isn’t tough, it’s everything else around it that makes for a very challenging experience. When you do happen to get into a combat encounter, enemies are relentless and sometimes missing a block means the difference between life and death. Even some of the puzzles, expertly designed as they are, left me scratching my head a bit and weren’t the most intuitive. But this level of challenge heightens the experience, and in my frustration I still found it to be one of the best Silent Hill games I’ve played.
Verdict
Aside from moving into the first-person perspective, Silent Hill: Townfall isn’t reinventing the wheel. But Screen Burn Interactive has crafted one of the best games in the series. Its story and characters are deep and complicated, with a topical subject matter that any middle-class person can easily relate to. It’s also of the highest quality as a horror experience, with incredible level and puzzle design to keep the tension tight and the hairs on your arm on end.
This is bolstered even further by it’s impeccably macabre sound design, and its emphasis on avoiding combat kept me terrified throughout. Some encounters and puzzles admittedly left me a bit frustrated, but getting through them was a rewarding experience. With the series getting annualized releases moving forward, I’m concerned of a dip in quality over time, but if future entries are anything like Silent Hill: Townfall, we have absolutely nothing to worry about.
Score: 9/10
Silent Hill: Townfall launches September 24 for PS5 and PC. Reviewed on PS5, review code provided by the publisher.
