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.
Otherwise, Konami simply vaguely referred to the game as "a continuation of our ongoing efforts" in its latest earnings report, and even Townfall's reveal announcement was obscure. In a one-minute teaser, an unknown voice commends you for being "here to be punished" while indistinct images of bloody hands and empty hallways flash onscreen.
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.
