Silent Hill Townfall Is Further Proof That The Franchise Is Better Than Ever

The Silent Hill series has been suffering a bit of an identity crisis for some time now. Following the disbandment of Team Silent at Konami, which developed the first four entries, outsourcing to different developers for newer entries has resulted in a series of strong games that don’t quite feel like they belong together. However, despite once again featuring a unique setting and new gameplay mechanics, the overall feel of Silent Hill: Townfall seemed to be taking more inspiration from early Silent Hill games than games like Silent Hill f had. This, in combination with the emphasis on modern horror gameplay elements, gave me hope that the franchise was finally finding its footing again. As soon as I entered St. Amelia, I knew I was right. Wasting no time, Townfall immediately kicks things off by introducing Simon, who, without explanation, has just washed up on the Scottish shores of St. Amelia Island with a medical wristband and an IV bag strapped to his arm. As Simon makes his way into town for answers, he quickly realizes the whole place is deserted, and there’s nothing but a dense fog coating what appears to be the remnants of a town that descended into chaos. The first part of the game, fittingly named Simon, involves our hero wandering around the deserted town while searching for clues related to Zoe, the only person Simon seemingly has a connection to on the island, as well as avoiding enemies. Since most things are blocked off until you’re meant to explore them for story reasons, this unfortunately led to a bit of early tedium where I felt like I was being repeatedly directed from point A to point B with nothing to see along the way. The desolate town should’ve added to the overall fear factor, but it just made everything seem empty rather than scary. All that changed once Zoe was officially introduced. As many players suspected, yes, you will also play as Zoe during sequences of the game, and I actually found Zoe’s portion to be far more interesting. Zoe’s half of the story kicks off in the past, right as things started falling apart in St. Amelia, which meant the world still had some life to it. The gameplay itself is more or less the same aside from the tool used to track enemies; however, Zoe’s internal struggle with feeling as though she failed everyone as a medical professional during a city-wide health crisis is far more compelling to follow than Simon’s generalized confusion about what’s going on. The back-and-forth sequences between Simon and Zoe do eventually begin to mirror each other, and St. Amelia seems to change each time you swap perspectives, making passing through the same areas more interesting since you’re forced to take new paths and buildings suddenly look entirely different. I obviously won’t get into spoilers on where these stories ultimately lead as you learn more about Simon and Zoe’s connection to one another, but I will say that the game manages to reach a satisfying conclusion all around, and in true Silent Hill fashion, there are multiple endings and a New Game+ for players to enjoy if you do find that you’re not yet satisfied or want just a little bit more. CRTVs, Pagers, And Lots Of Fog Of course, it wouldn’t be a horror game without enemies creeping around every corner, and Silent Hill: Townfall is certainly full of those. Depending on your selected difficulty, the number of enemies you’ll encounter in each area will vary, but they all share the same off-putting humanoid creature appearance. However, the enemies were mostly specific to each playable character. For example, in Simon’s parts of the game, this included tall figures with an axe for a head, and in Zoe’s, it included sickly humans with cavities in their chests. You know, Silent Hill things. Unfortunately, despite their grotesque appearances, I still wouldn’t say the enemies themselves induced fear as much as I’d hoped. In fact, there was one specific instance in which I had thrown caution to the wind and made a run for a door, only to burst into laughter when it slowly creaked back open and two axe-headed enemies stood there patiently like two guests waiting to be let inside. Needless to say, use the locks, because these monsters know how to open doors. Thankfully, the environment and gameplay mechanics do make up for the enemies being a bit goofy at times. Being a Silent Hill game, the one consistent thing you can always count on is fog, and it’s everywhere. Enemies only a few feet away are barely visible, forcing you to use the provided tools for each character to track them, lest you hope to run face-first into them. In Simon’s case, this is done through the CRTV. While traversing areas of the map, a sound cue, which initially gave me a shock as it came entirely through the DualSense Controller I was using, will alert you that you’ve just entered an enemy's range. At that point, Simon tunes to different indicated channels, which give him a clear visual of the enemy in real time, almost like having X-ray vision. Each channel only displays one enemy, so you do have to flip between them while navigating areas with multiple, but I overall loved this mechanic. Between tracking them via CRTV and using the peeking mechanic to glance around corners, I quickly realized why the game was exclusively in first person. The intimacy and limited view of this perspective helped keep the tension high and, once again, forced you to use your tools and peek around corners if you wanted to avoid entering a fight that you may not win. You are given some weapons in case you absolutely need to fight back, which I was grateful for, but they’re sparse and have limited durability, so you won’t be able to go full barbarian mode and brute force your way through like you could in Silent Hill f. Townfall is clearly designed for enemies to be cleverly avoided and not faced head-on, as further evidenced by the limited health supplies and distraction items you can pick up later on. As for Zoe’s method of getting around enemies, she focuses more on the aforementioned distraction methods, but she also has a pager that lets her track them similarly to Simon’s CRTV. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show a picture of exactly where they are, but you can see their direction in relation to Zoe, and it will move as they do. These small changes were enough to make both character sections feel independent of each other and helped break up some of the monotony since they alternated back and forth. Perhaps the scariest thing of all, though, was the puzzles. Being trapped in a medical facility and poorly guided on how to care for a patient while a superior yells at me for being incompetent is something straight out of my nightmares. Thankfully, most of the puzzles had a balanced level of difficulty overall, but there was unfortunately one maze-like puzzle involving a particularly lethal and annoyingly observant enemy, where I started to feel as though the situation was designed to punish me, and it sucked the fun out of the entire sequence. The last thing I want to mention is that I also think Townfall could have benefited from a little more direction at points. Despite having map markers for points of interest, you'd often make a long trek to find that the three seemingly open paths on the map are all blocked. I even ended up loading saves at several points simply because I didn’t want to waste time backtracking through enemy territory to try the opposite direction. I eventually realized that enemies tended to spawn exclusively along the intended path, so I shouldn't bother looking anywhere else for a route to my objective, but the intentional map misdirection was frustrating. Welcome Back To Silent Hill Overall, aside from some minor annoyances with navigating around St. Amelia and dealing with one particularly difficult puzzle, Townfall still ultimately became one of my favorite entries in the Silent Hill franchise. The first-person perspective and cat-and-mouse gameplay were a perfect way to maintain tension rather than cheap jump scares, and the slowly unfolding story surrounding Simon and Zoe kept me hooked to the very end. My need to know what was happening in St. Amelia overrode any frustrations the gameplay might've caused. I think Silent Hill: Townfall might be the final confirmation that Silent Hill is back on track. Following the positive reception to the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill f, the franchise as a whole is on a winning streak (let’s ignore Ascension), and this is as close as the series has come recently to honoring what made the originals so enjoyable while also bringing the franchise up to modern-day horror expectations. It doesn’t quite reach the level of enjoyment I got out of Silent Hill f last year; however, there are a lot of elements that work incredibly well here, making this another strong entry in the franchise that I’d absolutely love to see inspire future games in the series. Silent Hill: Townfall Systems 3.5/5 Released September 24, 2026 ESRB Mature 17+ / Blood, Strong Language, Violence Developer(s) Screen Burn Publisher(s) Annapurna Interactive, Konami Pros & Cons Gameplay is designed to help extend the short runtime without needless filler. Simon and Zoes sections feel unique, despite covering similar areas. Most puzzles are challenging without being overly frustrating. First-person perspective, fog, and limited resources help maintain steady tension throughout. The world feels too barren at times, lacking points of interest for exploration. A large amount of gameplay is traveling from point A to point B. Enemies themselves lack a scare factor. Directions are occasionally unclear, which can lead to tedious wandering.