Silent Hill has been having a much needed renaissance over the past few years. The scars of the 2014 PT incident still remain in some people’s memories, but Konami has remained diligent in their attempts to renew interest in their landmark psychological horror franchise. 2024 brought us the Silent Hill 2 remake by Bloober Team, while 2025 gave us Silent Hill f from Ryukishi07, both of which offering familiar yet new takes on the beloved horror franchise. Now, there is Silent Hill: Townfall, Screen Burn’s very own new take on the series.
Rather than the classic third-person camera, Townfall is a first-person horror experience where you live through the eyes of Simon Ordell, an everyman who wakes up in a mysterious Scottish village. Both the gameplay and narrative premises seemed like an interesting reinvention of what a Silent Hill game could be. As such, my expectations were quite high, in part because of the all-star creative team of Screen Burn, Annapurna, and Konami. After playing Silent Hill: Townfall for myself, I was left with an experience that surprised me, despite not quite meeting my expectations.
Breaking Ground
Silent Hill: Townfall starts with protagonist Simon getting a call to return back to the town of St. Amelia to “make things right,” despite it being a place he has no memory of. The first thing that was immediately noticeable was just how good Townfall looks. Being powered by Unreal Engine 5, Townfall fills each area with tons of detailed props and environments that truly make the town feel lived-in. It really does feel like each house holds a story as you walk through the rooms and see how some of the people in the town lived.
Environmental storytelling is used throughout the game and led to some of my favorite details in the game such as the abundance of “For Sale” signs that litter the town of St. Amelia. Players with keen eyes will definitely be able to pick these details out, and especially as clues about the story progress. Environments can feel eerily familiar akin to those you would find in other “liminal spaces.” While Silent Hill has been doing this sort of concept since 1999, Townfall really feels like a distillation of that feeling.
As you find your way across the town, a traumatizing story begins to unfold as the past of St. Amelia is revealed to you. Stores lie bare as you find notes from overworked staff complaining about the lack of supplies being airdropped. Fliers line the streets, all referring to some sort of protest that occurred. I only had more questions as I found a notice informing citizens that the children’s ward of the local clinic had immediately closed with no sign of reopening. The way the environmental storytelling directly impacts the tone is incredible.
Soon, Simon finds a handheld television, the CRTV, which eventually leads him to the second of 3 people left in St. Amelia: Zoe. Zoe becomes a key player in the story, who even ends up being playable in some major points. The beginning sections of Townfall keep you consistently invested through questions and intrigue as sections reveal small pieces about their relationship as well as the situation within the town. As the true nature of their relationship comes to a head, so to does the reasoning of why Simon has returned to the town of St. Amelia, which forces him to delve deeper into the incident that occurred within.
At several moments in the story, you’ll have to make your way through dark and brutalist corridors that feel reminiscent of the Otherworld present in previous games. Another one of Townfall’s best aspects shine in these dark rooms, literally. The lighting used throughout Townfall is consistently impressive and used in beautiful ways. Greys from fluorescent bulbs compound a lifeless hospital and bright streaks of neon red line the floors of the solid concrete rooms, giving brief shadows to the monsters that stalk within. Lighting is also used to bring emphasis on some of the game’s most poignant story moments. The sky turns stark red, bathing the town in what feels like blood for some very striking scenes throughout.
Screen Burn definitely took the time to craft a very visually appealing game, and for that they definitely deserve their flowers. Working in conjunction with the visuals is the audio design and Screen Burn also understood the importance of this as well. High quality sound effects and audioscapes spatially surround you as you roam the town. The cold breeze of the sea air as you walk around the barren streets, or the warm breath of the monstrosity waiting right outside the closet you’re hiding in are equally effective as sound greatly builds immersion.
The sounds of the world around you aren’t the only things keeping you company. Canadian musician Pilotpriest composed the music for Townfall, and ambiance seemed to also be the focus of his contributions as well. Soft synths and piano contrast against harsh bass generators, like finding a sense of normalcy within the darkness. While it does work well while you’re in the game, the music doesn’t leave too much of an impact afterward. It makes sense given the focus on atmosphere, but realizing that I had to go back into the game to remember what the music sounded like did sting a little bit.
Another thing that disappointed me was the pacing. As Simon, Zoe, and additional character Richard all realize their significance in St. Amelia, the pacing starts to feel slightly uneven. The former half of the game’s story in particular is a lot more subdued as it mostly acts as a build up with vague questions and statements. Granted, the latter half of the game answers all those questions at once and really hits its stride as the depth of all the different ways the incident affected the town is explored, so its able to make up for it somewhat.
The most annoying part of Townfall is the abundance of glitches and bugs. I experienced several major crashes throughout my playtime, forcing me to replay large portions of the game, which absolutely killed the momentum the game builds up at points. There were also a few times where Unreal Engine assets would pop-in out of nowhere. While the game was fairly optimized, at points more post-processing intense moments made the game a lot more prone to the aforementioned frame drops and crashes. This sadly ruined a lot of the most climactic moments of the game, which made having to relive these sections arbitrarily quite infuriating. Unfortunately, that frustration is only heightened by how much of a mixed bag the gameplay is.
Clinical Trials
A large part of that momentum is growing tension. Tension is everything in a horror game: resource management, enemy behavior, weapon handling, even how you move around are all decided depending on how much tension they can generate. Townfall does a very good job at building that tension, and a large portion of that comes from the gameplay itself. Simon remains fairly defenseless for the first half of the game meaning that evasion is your best course of action. However, two pieces of your inventory quickly become your best friends through the game: the CRTV and your throwables.
Simon’s portable television acts as your radar as you wander through St. Amelia. If you hear a spike in static, that means an enemy can have their signal tuned into and tracked on the CRTV. While the CRTV does give you an unobstructed 3D view of where the enemy is in relation to you, you can only view one enemy at a time. This quickly becomes a juggling act as more and more enemies start to populate areas, forcing you to quickly check to see where enemies are while planning your route out of a sticky situation. When things get too packed, that’s when your throwables come into play. Rocks and bottles can be picked up all throughout St. Amelia and act as a great way to lure enemies away from your path.
Encounters with enemies become this silent dance as you weave between monsters as quietly as possible. Anxiety builds as you try to get out of sight, always leaving the possibility that you might be spotted suddenly. Townfall is at its best in these moments and the early game is filled with them. I never knew how scary a fight with one monster could be, and making these small encounters still feel significant is an impressive feat. That’s why it really pains me to say that the second half of the game really stumbles.
As you move further into St. Amelia, areas start populating with more enemies. When playing, it felt like the sweet spot for the amount of monsters was around 1 to 3. 4 felt like the max I could handle but later encounters can have a lot more than 4 enemies. Enemies don’t have set rotations between patrol points, leading to a lot of overlap and extremely tight windows for movement. At points it felt as if Townfall was more of a stealth game than a horror game.
Bottles and rocks become a lot more important as they’re your best way to clear a path, but some areas don’t have throwables to pick up, leaving you out of luck with no way past. While eventually you do get a gun, bullets are extremely scarce, making it an unreliable solution for these more frequent problems. There’s a fine balance when making horror, and tension can easily turn into frustration when things get too heavily stacked against you.
Much like prior Silent Hill games, Townfall has several major endings to further emphasize replayability. The developers have talked about how they set out to make it different from an average A/B choice. One of the factors that come into what ending you get is how many enemies you’ve killed, and as the story progressed it definitely made sense why that would be a factor. This does have an unintended side-effect in the more stealth oriented gameplay which also adds to the frustration later segments can give.
You’ll be constantly dying in situations where you don’t have any means to lure enemies, all in the pursuit of pacifism and a better ending. Killing enemies sometimes feels like a necessity and I felt awful doing it. While the meta-commentary of your actions ties into the impact of the story very well, it only does so after the game has ended. When you’re stuck in the darkness with nothing to use except trial and error, it’s hard to garner the sympathy the game is looking for.
Then there are Zoe’s segments. At a later point, she becomes playable in several key sections, which contrast heavily to Simon’s. As Simon can utilize various weapons strewn about in St. Amelia, Zoe cannot. She does not have any protective strengths and can only rely on throwable items to aid her. Instead of the CRTV, Zoe only has a pager that can be used to message her in-game boss. Zoe has to manage her surrounding areas with a handicap that at times can feel almost debilitating.
Needing to navigate through small homes, backyards, and tight corners, you gain the same feeling of helplessness that Zoe feels. This is a common theme that her sections carry forward throughout the game. The emphasis on Zoe as a nurse is seen consistently throughout the story. These elements shine primarily due to their thematic importance. It is a great example of how the gameplay and storytelling worked together in perfect lockstep. Even still, these high moments are not enough to completely distract from the game’s major problems.
Prognosis
The expectations that I had garnered through trailers and interviews for Silent Hill: Townfall had me incredibly excited. I went in hoping to get invested in the story and its characters, while also being horrified by its gameplay. What I got is a game that is another strong entry in the franchise, but one that doesn’t quite reach its full potential. Townfall has a lot of strengths that are seen throughout, but it has multiple moments where it can falter. The horror that I had anticipated certainly delivers, but at the cost of uneven game pacing and several strange design decisions that dragged the game down at moments. I feel terrible because the game is still great, but I feel apprehensive saying that it’s the best version of what it could be.
Horror game fans will definitely still enjoy the experience, and I do think it is one worth going through, but I have a feeling that there will be some varied discussion on the choices the game makes. Screen Burn has still managed to make a great horror game, and one in a franchise with overwhelming expectations. I sincerely do hope that Konami continues to take big swings when it comes to Silent Hill. I hope they continue their partnership with Annapurna, because some great things have already come out of it. If another studio like Screen Burn dives into the depths of Silent Hill, we may get an even closer glimpse of the beauty within decay.
Disclaimer: Konami provided a PC copy of Silent Hill: Townfall for review purposes.
