Silent Hill: Townfall Is a PS5 Horror Time Capsule I Can't Wait to Play More Of

Silent Hill: Townfall is one of my most anticipated games of 2026. I came upon the series for the first time having loved the Silent Hill 2 remake and really enjoying what I played of Silent Hill F. However, Townfall was of particular interest to me because of its setting.

Heading off to the misty seaside town of St. Amelia, Townfall is set in Scotland in the mid-90s. As a Scotsman born in the mid-90s, sure, there may be a bit of bias towards this setting – it’s certainly what amped up my enjoyment of Scottish horror Still Wakes the Deep.

However, it’s not just the Scottish connection that excited me when I was invited to play around 90 minutes of the game on PS5 at Gamescom. It’s what Glasgow-based developer Screen Burn is doing with that setting.

Unlike previous Silent Hill entries, Townfall has gone to great lengths to capture the essence and iconography of late 90s Scotland; St. Amelia feels like a place ripped straight from my memory. In fact, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was actually on holiday last year just one town over from the real-life inspiration of St. Amelia — a fishing village called St. Monan in East Fife.

I was hit with a shockwave of nostalgia as I explored this version of these streets, encountering things like the plastic dogs that act as charity collection points stationed outside of corner shops, or the obvious reference to the BT phone boxes that were scattered all around Britain just two decades ago. Screen Burn has managed to craft up a horror time capsule that I can't wait to rifle through.

And it’s not just superficial either. There’s a section of the game where I need to turn on the power to access a code on someone’s personal computer. But to do that, I need to put credit on the electric card, or "leccy" card as we call it here in Scotland.

I was struck with a memory of staying at my uncle’s as a kid, watching a horror movie with my cousins when the leccy card ran out, and we were plunged into darkness. We even headed over to a shop similar to the one in Townfall to top up our credit the next morning.

Those niche references to Scottish culture that I’m sure I couldn’t even specifically refer to without reminders are what help create this really authentic vibe to Townfall’s setting. It felt so tangibly real, like a little seaside town that I’ve passed through a million times.

But of course, this isn’t some seaside holiday. Townfall is also dripping with an ominous sense of dread and thick, oppressive atmosphere. Reminiscent of the openers to the rebooted series, it starts quiet. Real quiet.

A quick monologue states that Simon needs to “make things right” as he washes up on the docks of St. Amelia, with an IV injection in his hand and a drip strapped to his arm. You are then left to explore the silent, foggy town. There’s not a peep to be heard, nor a person to be seen. It immediately leaves you on edge.

That’s helped by the game’s impeccable visuals and the switch to a first-person perspective. This is easily the best a Silent Hill game has ever looked, and possibly the most cinematic too, with the game’s default black bars. I think it gives Townfall a really distinct look, but naturally I immediately went into the settings and turned them off.

Speaking of settings, I primarily played the game on Performance mode on base PS5, and it looks and runs fantastically. I briefly tried out the Quality mode, which introduces ray-tracing, but the drop to 30 frames-per-second wasn't worth it for me. It still looks incredible in Performance mode.

That opening hour really just left me to my own devices. I rooted around the streets of St. Amelia, trying doors, taking in details, finding things like a map, which you must examine as a diegetic prop.

It’s clear that, at least in this portion of the game, Townfall wants you to pay attention to its setting. Quite often I would find a discarded note referring to a specific shop, which I then needed to look at the map to find, with no markers of any kind.

This hands-off approach is even clearer when you pick up the CRT monitor. This little thing will show you glimpses of locations it wants you to explore, but it’s up to you to recognise where those locations are.

One particular example showed an alley with a car’s bonnet just poking around the corner. It was such a natural detail when I first encountered it, but distinct enough that I immediately knew where to go when I saw it on the monitor. That’s to say that while Townfall is very hands-off, it’s still designed in such a way that I never felt confused about where to go.

However, of course, some Silent Hill weirdness eventually prevails. The game utilises this really cool yet haunting red light in the weirder section of its demo. I adored the psychological horror aspects with its unnerving locations and distinct visuals. It felt like a perfect blending of the series history with this new setting.

It’s when enemies are introduced to the game that I wasn’t fully won over. Your CRT monitor can tune into frequencies which allow it to detect the enemies that roam the streets of St. Amelia. It's reminscent of the scanner from Alien Isolation, but I personally found this a little finicky, and when the enemies were close enough, I could just see them in front of me anyway with the handy peek mechanic.

I get the feeling that the CRT will be more important as the enemy numbers begin to increase, but I only ever encountered one enemy at a time during my demo, and they were usually located exactly where I needed to go anyway, so it felt like a bit of a needless mechanic.

Stealth is still very important though because when I eventually was spotted by these spooky husks, combat was actually quite difficult. Armed with a trusty plank of wood, you can strike and block attacks as long as you have stamina. However, it takes a fair few hits to take them down, and not many to send you to an early grave.

I’m a little embarrassed to say, but I died to the first enemy in the game twice over. I found the attacks a little difficult to read, and those enemies hit hard. So really my big concern is how the game is going to balance combat and stealth throughout, and how combat evolves beyond that opening hour.

That said, I still left eager to play more of Silent Hill: Townfall. That esoteric storytelling style so intrinsic to the Silent Hill experience feels very much alive and well here. But the new setting, bolstered by an authentic attention to detail, may well give the series one of its greatest settings yet.

Will you be playing Silent Hill Townfall when it launches on PS5 on September 24th? Find your way through the mist and into the comments to let us know.