There’s always a foggy town that instills a certain fear, cryptic puzzles within that tense atmosphere, and an underlying trauma to ground the chilling horror. I had an inkling that Silent Hill: Townfall could nail the series’ particular style of horror, and after getting three hours of hands-on time with it, I’m thrilled to say my intuition was spot on. This being in first-person definitely sparked the thought of what P.T. could have been, because my time with Townfall showed that the more intimate interaction with the environment can bring you closer to both the story it’s trying to tell and the gameplay elements that give rise to such dread. I came in thinking Townfall would be just another direction the series could explore, and came away eager for whatever comes after the end of my preview demo.
Silent Hill: Townfall is developed by Screen Burn, which was previously known as NoCode, the crew that made the space-thriller Observation and has a direct lineage with Alien Isolation. Director Jon McKellan worked on it (and directed its DLC) and it’s a pretty clear inspiration for Townfall in terms of it being first-person and the way it builds tension through feeling vulnerable as the player,
