// PC GAMER — GAMING
Silent Hill: Townfall review
Silent Hill: Townfall is just the right mix of old and new. It has classic psychological horror and grotesque monsters with the added benefit of the CRTV as a new puzzle solving and stealth tool.
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What is it? A single-player psychological horror game which takes place on an isolated Scottish island. The protagonist Simon Ordell has to solve puzzles, fight monsters, and figure out what the hell is going on. Release date September 24, 2026Expect to pay $50 / £45Developer Screen BurnPublisher KonamiReviewed on RTX 3070, Core AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, 16GB RAMMultiplayer NoSteam Deck Unknown Link Steam
Walking up to the old town of St Amelia for the first time in Silent Hill: Townfall, I was greeted by that familiar thick fog and eerie quiet—an omen of the horrors to come. I know what kind of monsters are waiting for me beyond the fog and I am painfully aware of just how unprepared I am for it—with no flashlight, healing items, or weapon on hand. But weirdly enough none of that matters, because for the first time in a Silent Hill game I feel content.
St Amelia is a fictional town, but as I'm sure many players based in the UK will soon discover, developer Screen Burn breathes so much life into this sleepy fishing village that I could've sworn I'd been here before. It's certainly a strange feeling to have in a game like this, but with Konami opening Silent Hill up to the world it's now the UK's turn to have our sense of home toyed with.
The story follows Simon Ordell, a man unknown to us and himself. The only sense of person he has comes from a medical bracelet with his name, date of birth, and blood type written on it. I watched as he dragged himself up from the waves of the North Sea, onto the docks, and headed into St Amelia seeking help and answers as to why he's here on this cold foggy island.
A Silent Hill game is nothing without its setting and St Amelia delivers. I spent more time than I'd care to admit reading info boards about the history of fishing on the island and peeping over fences to see how the locals had done up their gardens. The more I explored, the better sense I got of the kind of people who lived in this town and what had happened to them.
Simon also sees more than just the old town as he ventures to a hospital, a corporate office, your classic Silent Hill supernatural 'other place', and, brace yourself, some new builds. My time in St Amelia flew by rather quickly, with just 13 hours spent in total, but that was more than enough to be rewarded with heaps of brilliant visual storytelling and the usual gift of stressful encounters.
St Amelia has its fair share of gut-wrenching horrors lurking around each corner, though—you don't spend a grand total of 35 minutes and five seconds hiding in lockers unless there's something pretty bad waiting for you on the other side. But even still, I found myself drawn to exploring the fog because my curiosity outweighed my fear.
But the further I progressed the less content I became. Not because there were more faceless and bound monsters stumbling around (although that didn't help), but because there was more to the island than St Amelia's historic old town. There was a side that was painfully familiar—cobblestone streets shifted into tarmac roads and cottages were turned into flats for better efficiency. The island changed as Simon moved away from the heart of St Amelia and towards the parasite which had latched onto it.