Silent Hill: Townfall Review - A Scottish First-Person Detour That Keeps the Revival Alive

Silent Hill's revival has been defined by reinvention. The 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2 rebuilt a classic with modern fidelity. Silent Hill f transported the franchise to 1960s Japan with action-forward combat. Now, Silent Hill: Townfall does something stranger still: it takes the series into first-person, strips away the combat players have come to expect, and drops them into a fog-choked Scottish fishing village. The twist is that it works.

This is a review roundup and synthesis of published coverage rather than hands-on impressions, and all claims are attributed to the outlets and official materials cited throughout.

A Series Finding New Ground

Silent Hill: Townfall launched on September 24, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. It marks the third consecutive yearly Silent Hill release, following the Silent Hill 2 remake in 2024 and Silent Hill f in 2025, per the PlayStation.Blog launch announcement.

The game is developed by Glasgow-based Screen Burn Interactive, the studio formerly known as No Code, the team behind the acclaimed narrative horror titles Stories Untold and Observation. The studio rebranded in July 2025 and operates with a team of roughly 30 people. The game is co-published by Konami and Annapurna Interactive. First teased in October 2022 and subsequently quiet for an extended period, the project weathered persistent cancellation fears before resurfacing with a confirmed release window in 2026.

Konami producer Motoi Okamoto has framed the series' direction in deliberately expansive terms, describing Silent Hill not as a fixed physical location but as "a phenomenon, a state of mind." That philosophy explains why a Scottish village is on-theme rather than off-brand: if Silent Hill is a feeling, it can surface anywhere the fog rolls in. It is a framing that has shaped not just Townfall's setting but the revival's entire creative logic.

St. Amelia, 1996, and the Weight of Scottish Fog

Townfall is set in 1996 in St. Amelia, a fictional Scottish coastal town modeled on St Monans in Fife. The developers chose the location for two reasons: Scotland's naturally occurring fog suits the series' visual identity, and the setting is home turf for the studio.

It is the third Silent Hill entry set outside the United States, following The Short Message's German setting and Silent Hill f's 1960s Japan. Critics have largely embraced the shift. Eurogamer framed Townfall as part of a "stellar revival," praising its meticulous world design and social realism, and noted how the village itself functions as a character rather than a backdrop.

The game adopts what the developers describe as a "wide linear" structure, a design that offers players room to explore and breathe while still funneling them toward key narrative beats. It is a deliberate middle ground between open-world sprawl and corridor-bound claustrophobia, and reviewers credit it with sustaining both exploration and dread.

First Person, Stealth, and the CRTV

Townfall is the first full-length Silent Hill game played entirely in first person. The Short Message experimented with the perspective in a smaller standalone format, but Townfall commits to it across an entire campaign.

The gameplay pivot is significant. Where Silent Hill f leaned into action, Townfall trades combat fluency for sustained stealth tension. Players spend more time avoiding threats than confronting them, and the slower pace has become the primary point of division among critics.

At the center of the experience is the CRTV, the series' iconic radio reimagined as an "active" tool. Rather than passively emitting static when enemies approach, the CRTV is a visual instrument players use to tune into unstable signals. The tuning process works like a dial-based scanner: players sweep through frequencies to isolate transmissions, and the clarity of the signal itself becomes information. A clean signal might reveal a hidden path or a piece of environmental storytelling; a distorted one warns of nearby danger. The mechanic turns navigation into a form of active listening, and reviewers have noted that the tension of tuning, knowing something is out there but not yet seeing it, does much of the game's atmospheric heavy lifting. The developers have described it as a way to make retro technology central to play rather than atmospheric dressing.

Combat, when it occurs, is handled in first person. Reviewers flag friction here: the perspective shift makes encounters more tense but also less precise, and some critics argue the stealth systems repeat themselves over the campaign's runtime. Where the atmosphere earns near-universal praise, the moment-to-moment gameplay loop is where opinions diverge.

Story, Cast, and a Five-Ending Structure

The story follows protagonist Simon Ordell, voiced by Jovan Adepo. He is joined by Zoe (Kezia Burrows) and Richard (Terry O'Quinn), whose role reviewers have carefully avoided spoiling, a discretion that itself suggests the character carries more narrative weight than a simple ally or antagonist designation would imply.

Townfall features five endings in total. According to the official PlayStation.Blog developer interview, three main endings are reachable on a first playthrough, with a secret ending unlocked after clearing the game once. Additional endings are accessible via New Game Plus, bringing the total to five. This multi-ending, replay-driven structure echoes the design of the original Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, both of which rewarded repeated playthroughs with new narrative context.

The structure reinforces the series' long-standing interest in subjective, player-shaped horror. Townfall's endings are not simply alternate outcomes; they are framed as revelations that recontextualize what players thought they understood, each one a different answer to the question of what St. Amelia actually is.

Critical Reception, Transmedia, and Editions

Townfall holds a Metacritic score of 81 based on 60 critic reviews, with 78 percent positive, 22 percent mixed, and zero negative reviews. Praise clusters around three themes: atmosphere and world design, the game's willingness to take risks, and the coherence of its vision. PCGamesN awarded a perfect 10/10, calling the game "hypnotically haunting" and "a credit to the series." Eurogamer, IGN, GamingBolt, and DualShockers all published favorable assessments, with the Scottish setting and the CRTV drawing particular attention as successful gambles.

The mixed reviews are not outliers so much as honest counterweights. The most common criticisms target pacing, stealth repetition, and the friction introduced by first-person combat. For players accustomed to the more kinetic rhythms of Silent Hill f, Townfall's slow burn may feel like a step back rather than a step sideways.

The launch is accompanied by a transmedia push. An official tie-in comic, "Silent Hill: Townfall - The Dock House," written by game director Jon McKellan with art by David Roach, ran in 2000 AD Prog 2500, with a UK release on September 16 and a global release on September 30, 2026.

The Deluxe Edition includes an alternate outfit for Simon, an interactive artbook, a digital soundtrack, and 48-hour early access. Reviews went live on September 21, ahead of the September 24 launch, under standard embargo practice.

What Townfall's Gamble Means for Silent Hill's Next Decade

Silent Hill: Townfall is valuable precisely because of what it risks. A first-person perspective, a stealth-first design, a Scottish village, and a 30-person studio are not the ingredients of a safe franchise entry. Yet an 81 Metascore with zero negative reviews suggests the gamble paid off, even where pacing divides players.

Zoom out, and the bigger picture is striking. Three consecutive yearly releases, from the Silent Hill 2 remake to Silent Hill f to Townfall, have reframed the series as a state of mind rather than a zip code. The franchise has now sold over 17.8 million copies worldwide as of June 2026, and Konami's willingness to hand the reins to a small Glasgow studio is itself a statement about where the series is headed. For an industry where AA horror development often struggles to find footing, Townfall's reception offers a counterargument: modest budgets and unconventional settings can compete when the creative vision is sharp enough.

Who should play it? Atmosphere-first horror fans, stealth enthusiasts, and series loyalists will find plenty to admire in St. Amelia's fog. Who might bounce off? Players who came to Silent Hill for action-forward combat, and anyone impatient with slow burns, may find the pacing harder to tolerate than the scares.

If Silent Hill can work as a Scottish stealth game, the series' next decade is wide open, and that's the most exciting thing Townfall leaves behind.