My first 90 minutes wandering through Silent Hill: Townfall’s 90s Scottish town were atmospheric… and aimless | Daily Reports Online
Silent Hill: Townfall feels like the culmination of two recent trends: the renaissance of Konami’s survival horror series, dormant for the past decade, and the rise of more culturally authentic Scottish games.
As a standalone spin-off, it delivers the first full-length first-person Silent Hill experience that was the initial promise of the cancelled Silent Hills meant to be directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro (though its playable teaser ‘P.T.’ ultimately became a horror classic in its own right).
Its setting in the fictional Scottish town of St. Amelia couldn’t be more perfect, given that the series is iconic for its fog, which actually occurs on the Scottish east coast when warm air passes over the cold North Sea during the summer and can make its way inland.
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And who better to realise this vision than Screen Burn Interactive, the Glasgow-based developer whose acclaimed games Stories Untold and Observation (released back when the studio was known as No Code) were also experienced in the first-person perspective?
Yet despite the authenticity of its setting, the Scottish studio has opted not to feature Scottish-sounding characters in its main cast, unlike the BAFTA-winning Still Wakes The Deep. Protagonist Simon Ordell, played by British-American actor Jovan Adepo, is something of an outsider who has been instructed by a mysterious voice to come to St. Amelia to “make it right” — whatever “it” may be.
Make it right
For the Gamescom demo, things certainly start off not quite right. Simon arrives at the town’s harbor not by boat, but simply emerging from the water. Judging by the red wristband with his personal details on one hand and tubes connected to the other (like he’s escaped from a hospital), something’s clearly up with him too.
St. Amelia, meanwhile, is a ghost town, as evident by the sight of abandoned shops as well as one street lined with ‘house for sale’ signs. If you get a creeping fear that this might be one of those indie games from over a decade ago when you just walked around in a photorealistic area in the aftermath of the actual story, it’s instantly resolved by the ringing coming from a nearby public phone box just past the town square.
It goes dead when I pick it up. I survey possible numbers to ring and go with “100,” which tells you to “save yourself” (and is literally how you save progress in this game).
Back in the town square, I spot an upright man being fed some kind of fluid coming from a tube seemingly attached to the sky above. As Simon instinctively goes to free him, his voice is familiar — it’s the voice from the beginning calling out to Simon to “make it right”. When I next return to the square, things have changed again, with protest banners and placards alluding to a crime that had occurred that may be linked to a company with the acronym ‘CEG’.
As eerie, enigmatic, and atmospheric as this beginning is, it also feels a bit aimless. There were several occasions during my session when I was still slowly plodding around St. Amelia’s streets, only to discover doors that were locked, and the option to sprint had not yet been unlocked.
It turns out this is because I had overlooked a few key numbers I could have called on the phone. Whereas some games can be overzealous in marking the critical with yellow paint, Screen Burn seems quite content with letting you get literally lost in its world, even if that might make for an even slower burn than intended…
Tactile horrors
If there was one consistent thing about Silent Hill: Townfall, it’s that you really do have to pay attention to every detail. That is, fortunately, the benefit of the first-person perspective: you can really scrutinize all the flyers displayed on a community noticeboard without having to bring up a larger text box.
There’s also a real physicality to the clues and equipment you have access to, such as a double-sided map you have to hold and flip over manually rather than just bringing up a map UI. The most tactile of these is the CRTV, a portable television that you can tune using the analogue triggers.
So you’re not completely lost, a couple of markers do appear at the bottom to hint at the signal you should be tuning towards. Once you get a video clip, it’s about carefully scrutinising the image, often waiting for it to loop back, as a hint of what you need to find next or where to go.
Not that these hints will spell it out for you. In one case, I was supposed to look for a white house, which is not the most obvious clue when most of the houses in St. Amelia’s streets have white walls.
The CRTV also has another function, as it can be tuned to detect enemies nearby. Even if they’re obscured by walls, their outlines can still be made out through noise and static. Alternatively, you can also hold another button along with the left stick to peek around corners.
Even though I only encountered a couple of enemies during my hands-on, which stay true to Silent Hill convention as nightmarish deformed figures with uncanny movements, combat remains a clunky aspect of the game, made no better or worse in first-person. This made it more important for me to prioritise evasion as a tactic.
But from what I managed to play at Gamescom, it’s the unsettling vibes that resonate strongest over hostile threats, such as the dread of what could be in a locked box that’s meant for carrying human organs, or an extremely Scottish puzzle that involves having to top up an electric meter with a prepaid card from a newsagent.
Having moved to Glasgow under two years ago into a newly renovated tenement building that nonetheless still had one of these relics in the cupboard, it was a moment when Silent Hill: Townfall‘s mundane horror became a little too real. That’s also sure to make this unlike any other Silent Hill game I have played.
Silent Hill: Townfall releases for PlayStation 5 and PC on September 24, 2026.
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