The Silent Hill series has had a bit of a rocky history. While the first few entries in the series were fantastic (some could argue they are among the best horror games ever released), there have been plenty of titles that did not live up to that reputation. Thankfully, many of the recent games have brought the series back to its former glory, and its latest title, Silent Hill: Townfall, hopes to keep this trend going. Having played through the full game and spent some time with New Game+, I would say it mostly delivers, but some odd design decisions frustrate what could otherwise be a fantastic horror title and a good Silent Hill experience.
Let’s start by getting this out of the way: as far as I can tell from my playthrough, Silent Hill: Townfall does not have a connection to the titular town, at least not on the surface. This game is more in line with Silent Hill f, telling its own story of grief, loss and regret, and less about cults summoning eldritch beings. That said, many of the core concepts and ideas that helped make Silent Hill so memorable to so many are still alive and well in Townfall. In fact, moving the setting to a Scottish island helps give the game a unique place in the series and allows it to craft an identity all its own.
Setting the stage, Silent Hill: Townfall takes place in St. Amelia, a Scottish fishing village that has seemingly seen better days. You play as Simon Ordell, who wakes up in a place he has no discernible connection to, but people seem to know him. A phone call talks about him coming back, while a signal on a portable CRTV shows a mysterious woman talking to him.
This setup works wonderfully to establish the mystery and gives you a clear motivation for the early part of the game. Unlike protagonists in past Silent Hill games, Simon has no memories of his past, why he is on the island or who these two people are who keep trying to get him to do things on this strange island. I was immediately eager to see more and understand the world of Townfall.
Silent Hill: Townfall moves away from the series’ standard third-person perspective and gives us a full first-person experience, something new for a mainline Silent Hill entry. It does take some getting used to, and there are segments where I found the first-person perspective more of a struggle than it needed to be, but for exploring the town, it works well.
I quickly became immersed in the world of St. Amelia and wanted to learn more about this odd island town and what was really going on. The game takes its sweet time giving you any major clues about the reality of the world, but it sets up an incredibly creepy concept early on, and the more clues I uncovered, the more I wanted to know.
Of course, it would not be a Silent Hill game without its fair share of monsters and other horrors, and Townfall is no different. Even though we have moved to a first-person perspective, there are still plenty of creatures roaming the island that seem to want nothing more than to punish our absent-minded protagonist.
I will admit, there are fewer monsters than in some other entries in the series, but the concepts and designs are relatively unique and interesting. If you are averse to medical horror, though, this may not be the game for you. Many of the creatures in Silent Hill: Townfall seem to have some connection to illness, surgery or body horror, making it one of the more visceral-looking games in the series, and that is amplified thanks to the first-person perspective.
Speaking of the first-person perspective, while Silent Hill: Townfall shares some DNA with shooters, this is very much not one. Much like past entries in the series, combat is challenging, will often result in you getting hurt and is not always the best way to handle the situations you encounter. You will find the typical assortment of makeshift weapons, including a metal pipe and a plank of wood, along with an array of firearms and items to distract enemies. Even when you get a gun, using it can make noise and call more monsters to your location, so sneaking around and avoiding the creatures that lurk throughout St. Amelia is often the better option.
“Many of the creatures in Silent Hill: Townfall seem to have some connection to illness, surgery or body horror, making it one of the more visceral-looking games in the series…”
Thankfully, you have plenty of options for avoiding creatures, including using the bumpers to peek around corners. You also have the aforementioned objects that let you throw a bottle or bit of concrete to distract enemies, along with something new for the series: should you die, an IV can revive you, giving you another shot at what you were doing. The monsters are often still around, though, so it could mean another fight.
The IV concept is an interesting one, and the game even lets you upgrade your IV bag, allowing it to completely refill your life bar once you revive. Near the end of the game, I found I needed to rely on this mechanic a bit more than I would have liked.
And that brings me to my biggest gripe with Silent Hill: Townfall: the stealth segments. I mentioned that avoiding enemies is often the best way to handle many of the creatures in the game, but there is one creature that, even if you wanted to fight it, you cannot for most of the game, and it manages to instantly kill you if you run into it.
This would not be so bad if the game made its stealth mechanics a bit clearer, but there were times when it looked like I was well hidden and it found me, while other times I was standing in a room and, for some reason, it did not see me. The first-person perspective can make it hard to discern what its range of vision really is. Yes, you can hide in select locations, but I found the noise from these hiding spots often called more creatures to my location, so they were not always the ideal solution.
To make matters worse, every time you get caught, you need to watch the full animation of him tackling you and winding up for his killing attack. It is interesting the first few times, but around the 50th, I was pulling my hair out. These segments are also some of the most obtuse moments near the end of the game, filled with multiple puzzles that span a larger area, all while you are trying to avoid the big bad.
Let me tell you, it can get frustrating. I did find that getting killed and then gunning it when I revived let me get through these sections, but this feels like bad design and something the developers could fix with some tuning to how it all works. It is not unplayable, but when you are struggling to get through it, it can get very annoying.
This brings me to the puzzles, and while I normally like the puzzles in this franchise, the ones in Silent Hill: Townfall range from fun and easy to engaging and gruelling, with some having no clear rubric to help you sort out what they are looking for, leading to a lot of trial and error. There are some that use the CRTV in really clever ways, but for some reason, near the end of the game, these moments happen much less often, and you are stuck hitting your head against some of the puzzles trying to sort them out.
None of the puzzles are impossible, but some are downright diabolical in their solutions, and I sometimes lucked into a solution by thinking about the problem in a different way. That said, I really enjoyed the puzzles that used the world as clues and guided the player without giving away the answer. Using the CRTV and flashes of memory was a unique way to tackle puzzles, and when it works, it works really well. Solutions that use the time period or location, like when I had to get a power top-up card, were genuinely interesting and added to the feeling of St. Amelia.
Here is the kicker: while I may be complaining a lot about the gameplay of Silent Hill: Townfall, it bothers me more because the story is truly unique and offers a new take on the series. There are diverging narratives, different points of view and even after playing the game, I still feel like I only have half the picture of what really happened to bring Simon and the people around him into this hell of a world.
There are so many questions that feel interesting and exciting, and the more I learned about what was going on in this town, the more I wanted to know. As I explored the many homes and discovered logs and pieces of paper scattered around the world, I gradually got a clearer picture of what caused the chaos we now find ourselves in, and I wanted to know more.
Even as I rolled credits on my first playthrough, I wanted to dive back in and see what was really going on, what really happened and if there was any way to change the outcome. There are apparently five endings, based on the status screen that appears at the end, and I am determined to go back in and find out how to get each one. It is a linear game for the most part, so I want to know how the paths diverge. I can imagine a few ways, and I would be eager to see how those options could change the gameplay, but for the sake of avoiding spoilers, I will not touch on them here. Suffice it to say, the team at Screen Burn had some fantastic concepts for the story, and I want to know more.
That is amplified by the acting talent at the core of the experience. Jovan Adepo works well as Simon Ordell, embodying the character in a way that made me feel for his struggles and gave me a sense of the pain and stress he was experiencing as I went through the game. Kezia Burrows as Zoe and Terry O’Quinn as Richard also bring some fantastic performances to the game, giving me a real sense of their individual struggles and the demons they are facing that landed them in this new version of the Silent Hill Otherworld.
The visuals also help set the scene for this hellish town, with Screen Burn moulding Unreal Engine into a seaside landscape that is horrific and stunning at the same time. There are some moments in this game that are unique and horrifying, while others feel like I could be walking through any Scottish town in the ’90s, complete with winding streets, small shops and CRT monitors in every office I came across. St. Amelia feels like a living, breathing place, even if it is somewhere I never want to visit knowing what I know after my time with the game.
Silent Hill: Townfall is a hard one to review because Screen Burn has done a lot right here and crafted a deeply engaging story that I want to dive into headfirst, but some design decisions make it a pain to get through at times and, despite some unique mechanics, it can feel like a step back in many ways.
The first-person perspective helped bring me into the story but also made some of the segments painful to tackle, and while it does have New Game+, with some of those issues still present, it may be a challenge to see all the endings this game has up its sleeve. That said, Silent Hill: Townfall offers a fresh take on the series and brings new concepts to the franchise that I genuinely loved experiencing. If the team can refine some of the rough edges, this will be a must-play for any fan of the series. As it is now, it is an engaging game that could turn some people off well before they roll the credits for the first time.
