The line between supernatural horrors and the psychological struggles of characters is often blurred between Silent Hill games, but it might never have been as hazy as it is in Silent Hill: Townfall. I recently played about four hours of the first-person survival-horror game, in which protagonist Simon finds himself in a foggy Scottish town full of horrors, but seemingly can’t quite make out what’s real and what’s only in his mind.
My preview began at the start of Townfall, with Simon apparently responding to a letter asking him to return to the mysterious town of St. Amelia. One moment it appears Simon is drifting towards the dock aboard a boat. The next, he bursts out of the water and pulls himself ashore as if he’s just awoken there. The details of Simon’s arrival to St. Amelia seems intentionally ambiguous.
He sets off into St. Amelia, trying to find out what’s going on, but it seems to be abandoned. As you make your way down the city streets, he hears shouting and sees flashes, implying there’s a protest or a riot — only to discover the town square is empty of people.
Is Simon hallucinating, or are dark forces leading him on in St. Amelia? It’s impossible to say, especially after Simon answers a ringing pay phone and hears a cryptic voice pushing him to find a woman named Zoe. He’s suddenly transported into an underground structure hued in red light, which indicates it as part of Silent Hill’s twisted version of the real world, known as the Otherworld.
Exploring the structure leads Simon, impossibly, to an apartment, where you discover the hand-held TV that is Townfall’s most important item. Tuning signals on the TV provides hints about how to solve puzzles, and you’ll need it to access an elevator that somehow returns you to the streets of St. Amelia.
A foggy past
As writer and director Jon McKellen explained, the puzzles you’ll face in Townfall are also direct hints about the story. The signals you find on the CRTV are directly related to St. Amelia’s and Zoe’s pasts, providing clues about who she was and where she might have gone.
Visiting Zoe’s empty apartment reveals that she’s a nurse, leading to the clinic where she worked. A set of three scales sits in her office, each awaiting an object that was important to her — but which she felt symbolized her failures, which led her to disappear from her job.
In Zoe’s apartment, you find her ID badge, and in the nearby pharmacy, you can find a prescription Zoe ordered, but discover that she mistakenly called in the wrong dosage. When you make your way to the apartment of Zoe’s coworker, you collect her medical bag with a broken stethoscope inside, the symbol of her inability to truly hear her patients.
Zoe’s story is inextricably linked with that of the town, which seemed to have suffered some sort of medical outbreak, and with Simon, even though he doesn’t know who she is.
This town is full of monsters
Townfall is the first Silent Hill game in which you’ll fight creatures in first-person, and compared to other recent titles like Silent Hill 2 or Silent Hill f, the change in perspective makes for some harrowing moments. A third-person camera makes it a little more viable to potentially dodge attacks and move around enemies, but in first-person, your options narrow to facing the threat head-on, or making a run for it. That adds an intensity to every battle, especially since it can be easy for Simon to get overwhelmed.
While following in Zoe’s footsteps, Simon learns that St. Amelia isn’t completely empty. Marauding the streets are faceless, writhing creatures, wrapped in industrial straps and sporting axe blades for faces.
Luckily, you can sometimes find pieces of wood to use as clubs to defend yourself, although these aren’t plentiful. If a monster sees you and attacks, you can block its vicious charges and swings with your melee weapon by holding L2. The trick is then to strike back with R2 when you see an opening. But combat is fast and frenetic, and enemies don’t go down easily. What’s more, your makeshift club can only survive the onslaught for a couple of battles.
Combat in Townfall is only something to resort to if you have no other choice. A much better option is to avoid enemies altogether. Turning the CRTV to certain signals allows you to see monsters through walls and fog, and you can duck behind walls, cars, and fences gives you a chance to stay out of sight. Hold L1, and you can peek over or around objects to see what’s awaiting you.
If something does spot you and give chase, the town has small spaces like closets, sheds, and half-opened doors where you can duck in and hopefully hide yourself until the danger passes.
A later section of the preview, in which the Otherworld invades the streets, sends you through the yards and alleys of a neighborhood. Here, I faced a new type of creature, which fires vicious tentacles from its chest to attack at range, or can grab and overpower you almost instantly, especially if your health is low.
Luckily, I also had a new weapon: a revolver. It might be more of a liability than a real defense, though. The gun is powerful but incredibly loud, and while it was good for quickly killing enemies, it always made the situation worse by drawing more. It also reloads slowly when you hit Square as Simon presses each cartridge into the cylinder individually.
Stealth is, again, the best option here, and you can pick up small objects like bottles and bricks to throw as distractions, or use machines you come across, such as radios or TVs, to draw an enemy away so you can slip around them.
A PS5 Pro-enhanced experience
Townfall channels an uncanny realism in St. Amelia, thanks to making heavy use of the PS5’s features. Its visuals are enhanced by the PS5 Pro, and it leans on aspects of the DualSense controller to create a singular experience.
The game uses a 2.35:1 aspect ratio to create a cinematic experience, and sports both a 30FPS Quality setting and 60FPS Performance setting. The developers at Screen Burn visited and photographed real coastal towns in Scotland in order to recreate their look and feel, and Townfall uses PS5 Pro’s upgraded PSSR to create a town that looks incredibly realistic at high resolution. Ray tracing to create hauntingly beautiful environments, whether they’re full of fog in the regular world, or bathed in oppressive red light in the Otherworld.
Haptics feedback with the DualSense controller adds a lot of intensity to combat, from the smash of a wood plank against an enemy, to the blast of blocking a counter-attack. Townfall also makes use of the DualSense’s gyroscope for certain controls, making them feel more tactile. With motion controls enabled, when you use the CRTV to hunt for signals in radios or other devices, you’ll need to physically move and twist the controller to tune in.
You can also use motion controls with firearms, moving the whole controller to carefully adjust your aim and land headshots at key moments.
Though my time with Silent Hill: Townfall left me with plenty of questions and a lot of mysteries, its twisting psychological machinations captured exactly what I like about the series. Its emphasis on tough combat and stealth mechanics also give it plenty of ways to make you jump out of your seat. You can try to keep your cool when Silent Hill: Townfall launches on September 24 on PlayStation 5.