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Silent Hill: Townfall Preview: A Fresh Perspective on a Beloved Franchise
Дата публикации: 11-08-2026 22:20:31
This is Hardcore Gamer's hands-on preview of Silent Hill, and an interview with series producer, Motoi Okamoto.
Основное содержимое страницы с новостью.
We Spent Hours Playing Silent Hill: Townfall and Speaking with its Developers; Here’s Why You Should Be as Excited as We Are
Published Aug 11, 2026, 6:20 PM EDT
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After a period of time when it seemed like fans could never really know what to expect from new entries in the series, the Silent Hill franchise has been cooking recently. The Silent Hill 2 Remake was a huge, impressive success story and brought many new players into the fray, and Silent Hill f, though a departure in many ways from previous games, was also genuinely great.
Up next on the docket of SH releases is the forthcoming Townfall, which is releasing fairly imminently on September 24 of this year for PS5 and PC. It's also the first game in the series to pair Annapurna alongside Konami for its publishing, and is also developed by Screen Burn, the Scottish team that's taking a crack at the series for the first time.
Last month, we were invited to attend a press event in Los Angeles at the famously haunted Biltmore Hotel, which was clearly the perfect, eerie setting to sit down and go hands-on with Townfall for over three hours and also hear from and interview the game's writer and director, Jon McKellan of Screen Burn, as well as Motoi Okamoto, the series producer of Silent Hill from Konami.
We asked both of them if there's any sort of pressure to follow-up both the remake of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill f, to which Okamoto responded:
[Silent Hil 2 Remake and Silent Hill f] were critically acclaimed, and that's good for us. We do feel a little bit of pressure to make sure that we reach the same heights.
McKellan then added:
Yep. Honestly, it was awesome to see. I think everyone's continued to be inspired by the new set of games to go. We'd been in the dark for so long, because that's what we did initially. To see [Silent Hill] 2 [Remake] come out to critical acclaim, and to find the fanbase... Each time it happened, we just felt more confident. There's a place for people that are excited about it. But then everybody's like, "Ooo. Us next." But I think we've made something really unique. We're just excited to see what fans think. But yeah, it's plenty of pressure.
Despite any of this pressure felt by the team, after trying the game out at this event, we can't wait for more. Silent Hill: Townfall is in very good hands.
Silent Hill in Spirit, Not in Literal Location
Of course, things are different in several substantial ways this time around in Silent Hill: Townfall. One of the most glaring examples of this is the game's setting, which takes place in the fictional village of St. Amelia, which is located in Scotland. Since Screen Burn is a Scottish team themselves, it of course made sense for them to set Townfall here, even if it's another departure from the titular town of Silent Hill itself.
Because of this location swap, however, we were curious if Townfall was always destined to be a Silent Hill game from the get-go, or if perhaps it was a situation where Screen Burn began pitching the game as something else, but then paired up with Konami and the actual Silent Hill IP later into the planning phase of development. McKellan told me, no, Townfall was developed as a Silent Hill title from the very beginning.
Okamoto added:
The reason we have had the privilege of meeting Screen Burn was because Annapurna Interactive was the one that made the bridge between our team and theirs. They were the ones that brought us together with Screen Burn. From there, we were given a pitch from their team. I think that gives some more context on how this game was imagined as a Silent Hill project from the get-go.
Diving into the game, this all starts to make a ton of sense, as Townfall is Silent Hill through and through despite any amount of new blood that's been brought to the series this time around and paired with the new location and ideas present here. St. Amelia is as foggy and terrifying as anything we've seen from the series before, and diehard fans of the franchise are going to end up being on board for this new journey and feel right at home quickly.
The mystery of "What the heck is going on here?" isn't a new one to Silent Hill, but it is a question that seems stronger than ever in Townfall all the same. The town, largely abandoned and now overrun by a collection of abominable monsters, is also jam-packed with so much environmental storytelling (like protest signage and notices posted all around town) that we really cannot wait to discover and unravel what happened in St. Amelia to end up in this horrifying state, and what role main character Simon played in everything (because he definitely seems to have a role despite his amnesiac state upon starting the game).
And then there are the abrupt jumps in Simon's mind that immediately transport us from St. Amelia to various other locations, drowned in creepy red mood lighting and cold, industrial concrete walls and floors that immediately evoke more and more levels of horror with each instance. There's a vibe here that reminds me personally of 2025's Sleep Awake in the color and art design, which might not be a game that was on your radar last year, but was another psychological horror title dripping with immense visual intrigue and masterful world-building. Townfall having the same thing working in its favor has me very excited.
An Analog Mechanical Tether in a Fresh Perspective
Silent Hill fans are familiar with the radio mechanic present in many of the series' titles. Townfall is tweaking this idea as well, and instead gives Simon a little CRTV, a retro handheld device that can be tuned to different frequencies, pick up visuals, solve puzzles, and most importantly, act as a tagging and tracking device for any creatures lurking around the streets and abandoned buildings of St. Amelia.
It's a cool idea on paper, and while there was a little concern that it may be cumbersome in practice, it's actually all quite smooth and intuitive. We were told Silent Hill: Townfall's puzzles were all designed with intention, meaning there aren't just puzzles for the sake of puzzles. If a puzzle is in the game, it also serves as some kind of narrative or environmental clue. The CRTV is great for this, and Screen Burn really has nailed the idea, which feels both fresh and familiar at the same time.
With the PS5's DualSense controller, there was also one puzzle which leveraged the gamepad's gyro features to move and tune the CRTV into the correct frequency/location to then be shown a reel of video clips that acted as clues to reveal a code for a lock. It was a cool moment, and only bolstered what we were already finding as a particularly interesting and rewarding scavenger hunt puzzle anyway. Silent Hill: Townfall is a game that seems to trust the player to figure everything out, and that's something we appreciate in a day and age where plenty of other games are signposted to oblivion.
The other massive change in Townfall is that the game is played from a first-person perspective, which is another first for the series. Even so, it's a change that made sense to me immediately. We've already seen this camera switch pay off in other contemporary horror titles like Resident Evil 7 and Village, so it really just seemed like a matter of time before Silent Hill tried their hand at first-person too.
As you can imagine, the result is a more intense, up-close and personal horror experience that works amazingly so far in Townfall. Not only do the game's enemies feel more dangerous and terrifying than ever, but this new perspective also feels natural and ideal for the game's exploration and puzzles as well.
Silent Hill: Townfall is in very good hands.
Townfall has a lot of things going on that just seem to work better in first-person, like hopping onto a computer to find clues in emails, sifting through letters and mail in abandoned homes, searching drawers, and of course, properly interacting with the screen on the CRTV.
Silent Hill purists have a right to be curious about how the SH formula translates to this new presentation style, but it was the correct choice, and also makes Townfall stand out as something incredibly unique for the franchise in an exciting way. The game is also presented in a 2:35:1 ratio, another first for the series, to give Townfall a more cinematic look. This can be toggled off in favor of the traditional 16:9 if you please, but the extra effort to make it feel even more enthralling is respectable.
Mysteries, Stealth, and In-Your-Face Terror
Townfall takes place in the 1990s and is backed by a soundscape that's both synthwave-y at times, creepily ambient in others, and pulse-pumping when it needs to be. The audio design in general is amazing to behold in Townfall, as the game's 3D audio, with the right gear, really is paying huge dividends to both the terror of the experience, and to best pinpoint and locate any threats around you that might be making noise.
When you are in immediate danger in Townfall, the game is structured around stealth, melee (as well as blocking), and gunplay, all of which seem like they'll be used in equal-ish measure, although our play session only featured a short section where Simon had a pistol (and of course, hardly any ammo) at his disposal. Still, we were a fan of all styles of dealing with any sort of threat in Townfall.
Stealth works well, and St. Amelia is peppered with plenty of little closets and nooks to quickly dive into if you're ever trying to shake an enemy. The enemy AI will grow tired of waiting for you if you're in one of these hiding places and quickly move along, which some players may feel weird about, but it felt fine, and almost a reward for being able to have a cool enough head to remember these hiding places in the heat of a chase.
Even though it might be arguably a little too easy to avoid an enemy if there's a hiding spot close, there are still tense instances of being chased down, quickly diving into a building, locking the door behind as the monster rams into the door. These moments are thrilling, intense, and fun.
Melee works well with your patented wooden planks of destruction, and there's definitely a layer of added skill to the gameplay with the blocking mechanics as well. It's also exciting to see how combat in general continues to evolve throughout the game as more and more types of firearms are added to the mix that we weren't able to test out yet.
But mostly, we're excited to keep unraveling the mystery of the story in Townfall as Simon. Players will try to figure out what happened in St. Amelia, why he's hooked up to an IV (that can be used as a revival tool in the game), why his memory is gone/selective in terrifying ways, who keeps calling him on the payphone, why some woman named Zoe has pictures of him in her house, and so much more that seems packed into this game.
There are five endings in Townfall, and we were told that these are unlocked largely by how one plays the game. Not just typical things like dialog choices and decisions, but how long certain sections take players, how they choose to approach them, their literal performance, and more nuanced and abstract factors that we've yet to be made privy to. All of this feels like yet another example of how Screen Burn is doing some things differently with Silent Hill: Townfall in exciting ways, and why it should be on your radar as the September release date quickly approaches.
Systems
Released September 24, 2026
ESRB Mature 17+ / Blood, Strong Language, Violence
Developer(s) Screen Burn
Publisher(s) Annapurna Interactive, Konami
Franchise Silent Hill
Number of Players Single-player
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