Silent Hill: Townfall review – fear and loathing in Scotland

The famous Silent Hill survival horror franchise comes to a small Scottish fishing village, but while the location has changed the sense of fear and dread has not.

Konami’s attempt to revive the Silent Hill franchise has been a real roller-coast ride. It started off with the risible Silent Hill: Ascension and The Short Message, before suddenly finding its feet with the Silent Hill 2 remake and all-new Silent Hill f. Their success has led to Konami stating it wants to make the horror series an annual franchise, which is a strange fate for something that has never been a massive seller and lacks the humour or action of the likes of Resident Evil.

The Silent Hill games aren’t about overcoming monsters as much as they are battling the inner demons of the various luckless protagonists. The lore of the series is usually kept in the background and recent games in particular have made it clear that Silent Hill is not limited to one physical location, with recent entries taking place in Germany, Japan, and now Scotland.

Townfall Is made by Scottish studio Screen Burn, whose previous work includes the excellent Stories Untold and the disappointingly dull Observation. Given that track record we weren’t sure what to expect, but while you can see elements of both games in Townhall, this is a competent use of the Silent Hill formula and considerably scarier than its 16 age rating may suggest.

Oddly, none of the three main characters in the game are actually Scottish, with two being American and the other an English nurse. You start off playing as Simon, who seems to have amnesia and no idea why he’s wandering around the fog-shrouded town of St. Amelia. The place proves deserted, but with signs of political protest and vague references to some kind of tragedy that has caused dozens of deaths.

It’s not too hard to guess what’s going on, but as always with the best Silent Hill games it’s not the plot that’s important but the psychological impact it has on its characters. Guilt haunts the protagonists far more assiduously than any monster and while Simon doesn’t initially remember his connection to the town, it’s clear that nurse Zoe is all too familiar.

Townfall is viewed from a first person perspective, which isn’t entirely new for the franchise, but this is the highest profile entry to use it. Since acrobatics have never been a part of the series it works perfectly fine, although it does create obvious comparisons with Alien Isolation, in the fact that that you have very limited means to deal with monsters and the game expects you to spend a lot more of your time hiding from them than fighting.

Front doors standing ajar and handy cupboards – both of which you can quickly hide in – litter every location and while you can find planks of wood to batter enemies, or bricks and bottles to hit or distract them, you take damage easily and on normal difficulty most creatures can suffer quite a few blows before they go down. You do get a gun fairly early on, but not only is ammo limited but using it creates noise which can attract other monsters.

It’s a long time since we’ve played a big name game with this much emphasis on stealth and while it can be frustrating when you’re found out – especially as the checkpointing is very ungenerous – the tension it creates is great, to the point where we found it considerably scarier than Silent Hill f and at least on par with Silent Hill 2 – even if, overall, it’s not as good a game as either.

To help you out, you can peek around walls and objects and, as Simon, make use of a portable TV which you can tune in to track which direction a monster is from you. When not playing as Simon you can use other devices, that perform a similar function, but Simon’s TV can also tune into video sequences that give a clue as to where to go next and/or how to solve the problem when you arrive there.

People often forget, but the early Silent Hill games were filled with weird little logic puzzles and Townfall very much leans into that, with lots of lock combinations to figure out from in-game hints of varying degrees of obviousness. There’s also a nod to the sinister phone calls received in the very first game, which raises the question of whether the protagonists are purely victims of their own psyche or whether some outside force is tormenting them.

The game’s denouement is a little too obvious, but the atmosphere is maintained impressively well, with the creatures being far more effective stalkers than the enemies in most other stealth games. They will quickly spot you if you peek out of hiding for too long, or make too much noise, and it takes longer for them to forget about you, compared to the average Metal Gear goon. They’ve got good hearing too, and there’s a great bit early on when you set off a car alarm, that almost had us more terrified of going near a parked vehicle than one of the monsters.

Townfall is a very effective survival horror and despite almost no gore it’s the scariest of any of the recent Silent Hill titles, even if creeping around on your knees and hiding in lockers isn’t exactly new for the genre – and can slow progress to a literal crawl at times. Some of the locations (once again, you spend a lot of time wandering around a hospital) are also disappointingly familiar for the franchise, despite the unique setting.

Releasing a new game every year seems like a recipe for decreasing returns, but the last three titles have all been very different and very entertaining. Although, perhaps entertaining isn’t quite the right word. But if you think being filled with a sense of dread and unease with every step you take sounds like a good time then Silent Hill: Townfall is the game for you.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed) and PC
Price: £44.99
Publisher: Konami and Annapurna Interactive
Developer: Screen Burn
Release Date: 24th September 2026
Age Rating: 16

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