NERDAGES
Silent Hill: Townfall Review: A Masterpiece Story with Gameplay Better Left in the Fog
Eric Poole Updated: 10/01/2026 | Posted: 10/01/2026
(Credit: Konami / Annapurna Interactive)
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Mode Played: First Playthrough
A Silent Hill Story That Caught Me Off Guard
I am a huge fan of Silent Hill, for better or worse. I’ve played all of the modern games, most of the retro ones, and seen all of the movies. At this point, I usually know what I’m getting into with this series and feel like I have pretty reasonable expectations.
That’s where Silent Hill: Townfall really threw me for a loop.
This is one of my favorite Silent Hill stories, and I was genuinely surprised by how timely, relevant, and, well, coherent it is for a Silent Hill game. I’m thoroughly impressed with what the roughly 30 developers at Screen Burn Interactive managed to put together here.
Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn’t always live up to the story surrounding it.
Welcome to St. Amelia
Early in the game, I was immediately hooked on the aesthetics. Like Silent Hill f, Townfall isn’t actually set in the town of Silent Hill. Instead, it takes place on St. Amelia, an isolated island town in Scotland seemingly trapped in the mid-90s.
At this point, I think it further solidifies something about the franchise: Silent Hill is no longer necessarily a place. It’s a vibe.
And I’m here for it.
Within the first hour of wandering around St. Amelia, I never once cared that I wasn’t walking through a town literally called Silent Hill. The atmosphere immediately works. I wanted to know what happened to this unfortunate place, why everything seemed frozen in another decade, and what exactly I had gotten myself into.
That mystery is where Townfall really shines.
The environment feels appropriately lonely, unsettling, and slightly wrong without constantly beating you over the head with horror. More importantly, the story kept giving me reasons to push forward even when some of the gameplay mechanics made that journey more frustrating than it needed to be.
Combat Stuck in the Past
Unfortunately, even one of the most coherent Silent Hill stories isn’t enough to completely save Townfall from its shortcomings.
Much of the in-game technology may be deliberately stuck in the mid-90s, but sometimes the gameplay mechanics feel like they are too.
Keeping in mind that this is a Silent Hill game, and Silent Hill has never been a franchise I would praise for incredible combat, Townfall still disappointed me here.
You start with your typical broken-board-style melee weapon for attacking and blocking. It works reasonably well at first, but there just isn’t much depth to it. There’s no real finesse to the timing, no satisfying perfect parry to master, and no noticeable damage bonus for successfully sneaking up on an enemy.
You block. You attack. Repeat.
Unfortunately, the gunplay isn’t much better.
Calling it a mid-90s shooter would be hyperbole, but it absolutely feels like a first-person shooter from at least a decade ago. After thousands of hours playing modern FPS games, shooting in Townfall never felt particularly satisfying and frequently became frustrating.
Combat was easily my least favorite part of the game.
Then the credits rolled, and I discovered something that explained a lot: Townfall actually penalizes you for killing monsters.
There are five endings, with three available during your first playthrough, and killing too many monsters guarantees the worst ending.
Guess which one I got?
Give me a gun in a game and I’m probably going to use it.
I understand what Townfall is trying to accomplish thematically, and in hindsight I actually appreciate the idea. My issue is that I would have approached the entire game differently had I understood earlier that killing enemies could lock me out of the better endings.
When your game gives me a gun, puts monsters in front of me, and otherwise presents itself like a first-person survival horror game, I’m going to assume shooting those monsters is a reasonable option.
Apparently, Silent Hill had other plans.
Clever Puzzles With Foggy Execution
Townfall absolutely earns the Silent Hill name with its puzzles.
Unfortunately, it also continues the franchise tradition of coming up with clever puzzle ideas and occasionally fumbling their execution.
Most of the puzzles in Silent Hill: Townfall have genuinely interesting concepts. In many cases, within a few minutes I understood the goal and the basic rules, which is already an improvement over some previous Silent Hill games.
My problem was what came next.
I would regularly start a puzzle thinking, “Wow, this is a really cool idea,” only to spend the next several minutes trial-and-erroring my way through it. By the time I finally found the solution, instead of feeling clever or satisfied, my reaction was often closer to:
“Well, that was kind of dumb.”
And that’s a shame because the ideas are there.
One particular late-game puzzle was so poorly communicated that I started wondering whether the solution was intentionally nonsensical as a way of reinforcing what was happening in the story. If that was intentional, I don’t think intentionally frustrating puzzle design is a particularly good way to make that point.
The final puzzle is probably the best example.
The basic concept is great: interpret a clue and match its verb to a series of icons on a control panel. The problem is that most of the icons don’t intuitively communicate anything, while the few symbols that actually do have widely understood meanings aren't necessarily associated with the verbs you would expect.
It turns what should have been a satisfying “aha!” moment into another exercise in trial and error.
Again, great idea. Foggy execution.
The Final Boss Has the Same Problem
Unfortunately, the final boss fight left me feeling much like the final puzzle did.
Knowing now that Townfall discourages you from killing monsters, maybe some of my frustration comes from approaching the game with my trigger-happy FPS instincts. Still, I walked away from the encounter feeling far more frustrated than satisfied.
The fight itself is pretty basic. You run around an arena gathering supplies, avoid incoming attacks, and damage the boss whenever you get an opening.
That would be fine if interacting with those supplies wasn't so awkward.
To pick up items, you often need to stand extremely close to them and look almost completely straight down. During a boss encounter, that completely destroys the pacing. Instead of taking damage because I mistimed a dodge or failed to read an attack, I was taking damage because I was staring at the floor trying to convince the game to let me pick something up.
Those moments don't feel challenging. They feel clumsy.
For a first-person game releasing in 2026, basic interactions like this should be more polished.
Final Verdict
Reading all of that back, it probably sounds like I hated Silent Hill: Townfall.
I didn't.
Despite the frustrations, I genuinely enjoyed this game.
The roughly 30 developers who created this world should be proud of what they accomplished, particularly with the story, atmosphere, and overall presentation. If I heard tomorrow that Screen Burn Interactive was making another Silent Hill game, I would absolutely be excited to play it.
Most of my criticism is really a warning for players coming into Townfall without much experience with this franchise.
This is not a polished modern first-person shooter wearing a Silent Hill skin.
It’s a Silent Hill game that happens to be played from a first-person perspective.
And everything that comes with that description, the incredible atmosphere, strange characters, fantastic psychological storytelling, clever puzzles, questionable combat, and occasional moments where you wonder what the hell the game expects you to do, is here.
Silent Hill: Townfall tells a story worth experiencing. Just expect a dated shooter experience where you can eventually be punished for shooting, paired with some genuinely clever puzzles that occasionally get lost in their own fog.
Final Scores
Story: 10 / 10
Environment: 9 / 10
Combat: 4 / 10
Puzzles: 6 / 10
Performance: 9 / 10