Silent Hill’s long-awaited resurgence has seen a strong start thanks to Bloober Team‘s Silent HIll 2 remake and developer Neobards’ Silent Hill f. So hopes are high for the survival horror series next outing, Silent Hill Townfall, which is now confirmed to be releasing for PlayStation 5 on 24th September.
Townfall was, of course, one of three Silent Hill games to be announced by Konami back in 2022 and, in some ways, it’s the most intriguing of the bunch, given it’s being developed by Screen Burn (formerly No Code), the small Glasgow studio behind the acclaimed Stories Untold and Observation. Perhaps more intriguing still is the fact Townfall is the closest the increasingly globe-trotting Silent Hill series has ever got to Eurogamer’s homeland, given its fog has now drifted to the small (and fictional) Scottish coastal town of St. Amelia.
As we learned back in February, during Konami’s big Silent Hill: Townfall reveal, St. Amelia is the place new series protagonist Simon Ordell is drawn to for an adventure that this time unfolds in first-person. Alongside the shift in perspective, there’s talk of “tactile and intricate” story-driven puzzles and combat, all built around a vaguely Game Boy-like device known as the CRTV.
The idea is players use the retro-inspired CRTV to pick up signals around town to reveal more of the story, and to ‘see’ through the environment and locate nearby threats – which is important given foes are said to “dynamically hunt” players. Fearless souls can fight back with melee and ranged weapons, but Screen Burn previously stressed that “stealth is an equally important strategy needed to survive.”
I for one am very excited to play Townfall, especially after the stellar Silent Hill f proved my skepticism wrong, demonstrating the series’ foggy formula works just as well away from its traditional smalltown America setting when it transplanted the action to Japan. So let’s see how the Scots fare when Townfall arrives for PS5 (and possibly PC, although that’s yet to be confirmed) on 24th September.