Only some years in the past, the Silent Hill identify was thought of a relic of the horror style. Its finest efforts had been its earliest from 20 or extra years in the past, and it had since misplaced its approach. These days, although, it is discovered its footing once more, first with Bloober Group’s outstanding remake of Silent Hill 2 in 2024, then with 2025’s brilliantly rule-breaking Silent Hill f. Now, with Display Burn’s Silent Hill: Townfall, the comeback feels full. Townfall is the third memorable entry in as a few years, reviving a legendary sequence for a brand new period.
Like Silent Hill f, Townfall defies custom and takes the sequence outdoors the US, this time to Scotland. There, an American man named Simon Ordell washes up on the shore of a blue-collar island city, St. Amelia. Straight away, Townfall captures the all-important tone of a Silent Hill sport. It is greater than the fog that is develop into synonymous with the sequence: It is the unsettling stillness, the sense of unhappiness lurking in each store and down each alleyway that lingers like a harbinger of the dread that can definitely comply with. Although it adheres to a few of the sequence’ touchstones, it is a absolutely standalone entry. It really works simply as nicely if that is your first Silent Hill sport.
As you discover the city, it turns into clear early on that St. Amelia has suffered a tragedy so extreme that the group was shuttered nearly in a single day. Heartfelt memorials within the city sq. dedicate footage and phrases to family members taken too quickly, and the shows are solely matched in quantity and emotion by the numerous protest indicators demanding accountability. The finer particulars, in fact, aren’t yours to grasp for a protracted whereas. Just like the fog and its accompanying melancholy, Silent Hill additionally serves because the stage for startling truths that solely emerge late in a personality’s journey.
However when you suppose you recognize the place it is going, I guess you do not. Display Burn’s founder and Townfall’s author Jon McKellan as soon as ran a fansite devoted to this sequence, and that form of lifelong devotion is obvious by the top of Townfall. He and his crew perceive what Silent Hill has been, however also–and extra importantly–what it can be. The principles of this universe are performed a bit quick and free, and it is higher for it. Is Silent Hill a bodily place, or an concept? Is everybody discovered there despatched to undergo? Whereas some themes re-emerge like somber notes on a mandolin, a few of Townfall’s finest components are the way it toys with expectations, twisting them into new shapes and typically rejecting them.
Townfall feels so much like Silent Hill 2 early on. The unique music, as nice as it’s in its personal proper, intentionally recollects the sequence’ heyday, and you will spend some early hours navigating via the roundabout corridors of a hospital and an house advanced. However that is greater than a “fan sport” liberally reusing what’s labored earlier than. Display Burn makes it its personal.
That is most blatant in the way it’s performed. Townfall is introduced in first-person, as few video games within the sequence have been earlier than it, and introduces a brand new gameplay aspect that depends on a handheld piece of analog tech–the form of bodily contraption this crew made its identify on with video games like Tales Untold and Commentary. Whereas many video games within the sequence use a radio to passively warn you to close by threats, Townfall’s CRTV is nearer to Alien Isolation’s movement scanner and calls for energetic participation.
With it, Simon can see hazy outlines of the fleshy monsters left shambling across the streets of St. Amelia. Because the participant, you may must tune it usually, choosing up the alerts of those creatures, then swapping between them to fastidiously monitor their actions and keep away from their gaze. Early encounters made this tech really feel like an afterthought, however as soon as Simon is outnumbered three to one–or worse–it proves its usefulness. Mixed with the way in which Simon can lean round corners and over cowl, that is definitely probably the most stealth-driven sport within the sequence.
You can even distract enemies by turning on radios or throwing objects earlier than hiding in locations like lockers, ready for enemies to provide you a gap. In some areas the place enemies are particularly quite a few, I discovered these lockers to be too useful, however as a result of enemies had been finest prevented, I used them usually, which made these semi-scripted moments lose their impact earlier than lengthy.
However such moments weren’t the norm. Far more usually, you may must fastidiously decide your openings to sneak previous enemies, or else face them head-on. The music bears down on you in these shut calls, creating urgency and the correct of stress befitting any horror story, and once you do get noticed, dealing with them solely piles on that pressure. Regardless of being in first-person, fight in Townfall jogged my memory numerous the Silent Hill 2 remake, as a result of every encounter calls for focus and well-timed assaults, and it is best prevented each time doable. It is extraordinarily tense.
Enemies eat an excellent chunk of your well being with every hit, and although enemy design could possibly be extra various, they do specific some essential variations that make controlling a crowd of even simply two of them a breathless struggle to the demise. I spent greater than half the sport utterly avoiding fight each time I may, and about three-quarters of it by no means firing my gun, as a result of doing so runs the danger of alerting extra enemies.
Just like the fog and its accompanying melancholy, Silent Hill additionally serves because the stage for startling truths that solely emerge late in a personality’s journey.
Townfall’s fight is often soaked in desperation and had me bracing for dangerous outcomes in all of the methods a horror sport ought to. This modified within the latter third of the sport, the place I used to be handed greater than sufficient sources in a couple of totally different situations, trivializing some encounters. However these moments of empowerment weren’t the norm, fortunately, and Townfall maintained its creepy vibe from begin to end.
One other good thing about the first-person view is how a lot element it lets Display Burn pack into Townfall. Approaching desks or store home windows, it is nearly all the time the case that you would be able to learn something on these surfaces. You could find many notes to gather in a approach that signifies they’re extremely plot-relevant, and lots of even assist you to remedy the sport’s environmental puzzles, all of which really feel proper at residence for a Silent Hill sport, although they’re by no means as convoluted because the sequence’ early period.
Much more plentiful than these plot-relevant collectibles are the smaller particulars the sport does not name out. Noticing these particulars is not essential to having fun with Townfall’s story, however they’re no much less participating, filling on this planet’s historical past and teasing snippets of the sport’s central thriller. All the pieces is purpose-built, from the actual hue of the Otherworld sections (this time known as the “Totally different”) to the design of the monsters, which you’ll be able to’t simply discover earlier than you kill them. I used to be so apprehensive about Simon’s place within the story that I discovered myself dodging fight not simply to save lots of on well being kits, however to not earn the ire of the sport’s hidden ending calculator, and that stemmed from the way in which this sport invitations you to take a proverbial microscope to it.
As is usually the case with Silent Hill, it is solely when Townfall’s closing playing cards are turned over that a lot will make sense, and even then you definitely will be certain there are further endings to chase down in subsequent playthroughs for added context. However even on a primary move, Townfall is ready to stand out from the shadow of the sequence’ finest video games and earn its place beside them. Whereas it does not attain the height this sequence has beforehand discovered, Townfall’s story offers me a well-recognized, welcome headache as I attempt to piece every thing collectively.
Thematically, it does nicely to face in two universes without delay: feeling like an homage to the sequence’ finest whereas nonetheless sharing a perspective that’s painfully timeless. Townfall is ready in 1996, however its expressions of cruelty are alive and nicely at present. On the similar time–and possibly it will sound unusual as soon as you’ve got performed it for yourself–it’s additionally one of many extra hopeful entries within the sequence. It does not commerce discomfort for hope, by any means. It is nonetheless a darkish story that expresses some uncomfortable coldness the way in which this sequence is understood to do, but it surely finds a strategy to let just a bit mild in with out tearing out its jet-black coronary heart.
Townfall, like Silent Hill f earlier than it, expresses what I really like most in regards to the comeback. As the concept of Silent Hill is uprooted and moved everywhere in the world, we’re seeing it via new cultural views in a approach we by no means have earlier than. We spent practically 30 years discussing and debating what Silent Hill was and is. Even the groups assigned the daunting activity of changing Group Silent appeared intent on doing their finest impressions of the earliest and most beloved video games. Townfall does not simply show that studios like Display Burn know the place Silent Hill comes from; it reveals us the place Silent Hill can go.
