Silent Hill Townfall (PS5) review: satisfying horror and combat, but frustrating puzzles

It’s impressive how Silent Hill has made a comeback after years of obscurity following its long-standing dominance in the horror genre; Konami reached out to other developers for their own take. Bloober Team came back in full swing with the excellent Silent Hill 2 Remake, while Neobards took us to Japan with the fantastic Silent Hill f. Can the Scotland-bound Silent Hill: Townfall, developed by Screen Burn, continue the franchise’s annual win streak? It does, but not without some caveats.

The horror and tense atmosphere you’d expect from a Silent Hill game are here. It’s a horrifying experience trying to avoid or confront nightmarish monsters, and the puzzles can be challenging to figure out. However, annoying environmental design choices and a lack of enemy variety hamper the experience. Surprisingly, though, its combat feels the best that the series has had in recent memory.

Silent Hill's foggy mystery

Silent Hill: Townfall follows Simon Ordell, a middle-aged man who wanders around the fictional Scottish island of St. Amelia, following a woman’s voice. It’s currently unknown why he’s there, as even he doesn’t remember. As you navigate the island’s mysterious fog, you start to pick up on small hints about what happened to its inhabitants and the surrounding turmoil. The picket signs have phrases about workers' rights, and collectables about healthcare keep popping up. I found that Townfall’s story was much easier to follow than Silent Hill f’s, even if it lacks the mysticism and folklore wonder that the fantastical Japanese setting provided.

Townfall’s aesthetics are much more grounded than f’s, or at least as relatively grounded as a Silent Hill game could be. There’s no pretty boy with a fox mask or over-designed Soulslike bosses here. Just a normal dude with a beard and glasses. Made in Unreal Engine 5, there’s almost something remarkably plain about Townfall’s art direction that ironically works in its favour, giving it a sense of realism that some of the other dreamlike entries like Silent Hill f or Silent Hill: Shattered Memories didn’t.

One thing Townfall does well is mix up the different environments you’ll travel through. You won’t be walking through the outdoors of St. Amelia the entire time. Some levels have you sneak through a hospital, or even a multi-story office building. In other chapters, you’ll be transported to hellish otherworldly areas! This is the most bizarre you’ll see Townfall take its environments, and it's also where Townfall’s art direction shines the brightest. The bold use of red alarms to signal these diabolical levels really sells the sense of danger Simon is in. The rustic hues around the corners and pipes make the surroundings feel dilapidated, giving the area a more claustrophobic feeling.

Townfall's puzzling core

Townfall’s puzzles vary widely in difficulty. Most can be figured out without much trouble if you think hard enough, but some are pretty easy, and a few had me downright stumped. They often appear at the same level too. In one puzzle, I had to match different blood bags to IVs based on a patient’s injuries document. Ok, easy enough. The puzzle right after that had me figuring out blood types and initials, which took me way longer than I expected. The whiplash between the varying difficulty levels can feel odd, but they still offer plenty of satisfaction when you finally figure out the solution, no matter how long it takes.

Some visual inconsistencies in the environmental design kept me longer in certain areas than I wanted. A perfect example is that after I found a code that let me open a new room, I couldn’t figure out how to enter it. After a while, I realised that I not only had to scan the key card I found earlier, but also move my cursor to the number pad next to it and enter the door code. I was utterly confused as to why the scanner confirmed my key card but wouldn’t open the door, as every other door had before.

Turns out, this is the only instance in the game with this scanner-and-door-code combo, and the number pad looked completely different from every other one, which added to my initial confusion. Small visual discrepancies like these had me running around in circles, sometimes for up to an hour. Your mileage may vary with this kind of thing, but it’s easy to miss small details in Townfall.

A new-ish perspective

Townfall isn’t the first Silent Hill game to use a first-person perspective, as The Short Message and the cancelled P.T. (RIP) did. However, Townfall is the first big-budget experience to do so, and it works wonders. Like most other horror games, you’ll mostly want to sneak around monsters without getting caught. Townfall's biggest differentiator is Simon’s CRTV radio. Whereas other stealth and action games have a sort of “sonar” that lets players see enemy positions, you have to dial in the CRTV radio’s screen to “see” through walls. It’s a clever implementation of a common yet tired gameplay trope that gives Townfall more of a retro vibe.

After all, it takes place in 1996 on the verge of the technological explosion that was the internet. Additionally, Simon has to call a landline from a desktop phone or a phone booth to manually save progress. This aspect of Townfall’s art direction helps it stand out among other entries, especially those in similar time periods like Silent Hill 2 Remake, which is set in 1993. You don’t get a vintage feeling from Silent Hill 2 Remake, as it plays like a modern third-person shooter.

Simon starts with a wooden plank but can pick up stronger weapons along the way, including a metal pipe, pistol, shotgun, and flare gun. If you’re minimising your murder spree, there are bottles and rocks you can pick up to distract enemies while you run past them.

Townfall’s combat feels unexpectedly smooth, and the weapons have the right amount of kick and recoil. It’s leagues ahead of Silent Hill f’s combat, which was one of its worst aspects. Townfall balances survival horror and stealth horror well, so both feel like viable ways to get through the game.

That said, Townfall’s enemy variety is sorely lacking. Off the top of my head, there’s maybe like four different kinds of monsters. Seeing them over and over again gets repetitive after a while. There’s a skin monster, a skin monster with an axe head, and a bisected skin monster that rushes you really fast. Lastly, there’s also an aggravatingly designed large skin enemy with a bulbous back that appears during the hellish otherworldly levels. It can’t be killed, only distracted,, but will almost always OHKO you if it manages to catch you. I swear, this abomination knows your general vicinity no matter where you hide. It feels great to outmanoeuvre Mr X in Resident Evil 2 Remake, but this specific monstrosity in Townfall definitely feels like cheating.

Is Silent Hill: Townfall worth playing?

Developer Screen Burn has delivered a strong entry in the fabled horror series, with distinctive twists that set it apart. Simon’s introspective adventure stays engaging despite its more grounded backdrop. The gameplay strikes a compelling balance in both stealth and action, while its first-person perspective offers something fresh to veterans.

Although its puzzles can be maddening at times and the enemy variety could be better, Silent Hill: Townfall is tightly designed and worth at least one full playthrough. You can unlock five different endings based on your playstyle, so there’s plenty of replayability.