Silent Hill: Townfall from Outer Worlds publisher confirmed as Konami's "brand-new Silent Hill," but after 4 years of silence I don't know what to expect

Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland, screaming on the other side of a gate in Return to Silent Hill

(Image credit: Entertainment film)

Silent Hill is a spreading sickness, and Konami is determined to keep propagating it in a variety of great, fine, and startlingly terrible ways. The publisher has just confirmed that – shortly after the disastrous Return to Silent Hill movie, alongside Bloober's promising Silent Hill 1 remake – it's also currently working on the new Silent Hill: Townfall.

Don't confuse it with middling Silent Hill: Downpour from 2012, or the awful interactive TV series Ascension from 2023 – though Townfall was originally announced at the same time as the latter, in a 2022 stream. Konami hasn't spoken about the mysterious game at all in the four years since then, though it's told Japan gaming news site Gematsu that Townfall is indeed its "brand-new Silent Hill title" currently in development.

SILENT HILL: Townfall Teaser Trailer (4K:EN) | KONAMI - YouTube

Watch On

Konami is co-publishing the game with Annapurna, the Outer Wilds and Stray publisher, and Screen Burn Interactive (formerly known as No Code) is handling development. That's all fine. But as a long-suffering Silent Hill fan, what am I supposed to think? In a 2025 post announcing its name change, Screen Burn explains that Townfall was first conceived in 2020. "We keep saying 'we can’t wait to share more' and it's still true," the studio behind sci-fi drama Observation says. "We're getting closer and closer, but we're a small team making a big game."

So, Townfall is in approximately its sixth year of active development, with no release date, gameplay, or more than a minute of trailer footage behind it. I feel neither enthusiastic nor concerned. Konami raised my expectations for its games with the elegant Silent Hill f, then mashed them into the ground again with Return to Silent Hill. I'm going to give up and see if Pyramid Head will give me his number.

Silent Hill legend Akira Yamaoka doesn't think the franchise has changed as much as you do, since Konami's "philosophical approach" has always been the same.

TOPICS