Preview Silent Hill: Townfall "It's phenomenal!", according to TheGamer

A short hour of gameplay at Gamescom 2026, alone with a controller and the fog of St. Amelia. That's not much to judge a Silent Hill game over the long haul, but it's enough to get a sense of the tone Screen Burn Interactive is going for. And the dominant feeling upon leaving the demo is the urge to jump right back in. At least, that's what TheGamer's journalist claims, and we're inclined to believe it!

What works first is the setting. Townfall takes place in Scotland, in 1996, and the studio has clearly put in the work on period detail: phone booths, electric meters that need topping up, abandoned protest flyers scattered across empty streets. There's a real familiarity with this 90s Britain, and it makes the gradually rising unease all the more effective. The shift to first-person view also seems to change a lot of things. Technically, it's mainly used to operate Simon's handheld camera to spot enemies and relive visions of the past, but the real effect is that it glues the player to the character's body. You no longer watch the horror from afar, you take it head-on.

The sound design does the rest of the work. Distant noises, red hues that appear without warning, warning messages scrawled everywhere: Screen Burn is clearly playing the card of diffuse tension rather than blunt jump scares, and for now, it's working, according to the journalist. Two creatures encountered during the session, a humanoid silhouette with an axe-shaped head and a gigantic monster glimpsed in the distance, are enough to give a taste of the art direction, without revealing too much about their origin.

What worries TheGamer, on the other hand, is precisely this sustained vagueness around the lore. Director Jon McKellan talks about grounding the story in reality rather than in the mythology-driven approach of Silent Hill f, but nothing in this demo yet allows us to verify whether the monsters will truly reflect Simon's traumas, as is the tradition in the series. That's the very heart of what makes a good Silent Hill, and this particular aspect hasn't been seen in action yet.

Provisional verdict: it's off to a great start if the pacing holds up over the long run and if the writing lives up to its promises. That remains to be seen over a full playthrough, not over three-quarters of an hour calibrated for a trade show.