Silent Hill: The Short Message is dubbed the start of a "new wave" for the series, sweeping ill-fated live-stream project Ascension firmly under the rug

Konami has revealed that Silent Hill: The Short Message is the start of a "new wave" of games for the series, forgetting all about Silent Hill Ascension.

Yesterday, during the PlayStation State of Play, we finally got our first look at Silent Hill: The Short Message, which after years of speculation was shadow-dropped during the presentation. The "short-form" Silent Hill game features a new protagonist, explores modern psychological horror themes, and, judging from the trailer, has P.T. energy.

To promote the game's reveal, The Short Message's producer, Motoi Okamoto, discussed the game's development on the PlayStation Blog and revealed Konami's plans for the iconic horror series. Speaking about the recently launched game, Okamoto says: "We announced a revival for the Silent Hill series, along with several new titles in development, and this marks the first of that new wave of games to be released."

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You may remember back in 2022, Konami held a Silent Hill Showcase which revealed games such as the Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team, Silent Hill F, Silent Hill Townfall, and Silent Hill Ascension. Since The Short Message and Ascension are the only ones to be released so far, we're going to assume the "new wave" Okamoto is talking about features all of the aforementioned titles.

What's interesting is that the developer doesn't seem to acknowledge Ascension, which launched in October 2023. The "live real-time interactive series" didn't quite hit the mark for Silent Hill fans upon its release, causing its developer to promise to consider player feedback when designing future updates.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Okamoto discusses The Short Message's story: "We wanted to make a new, modern Silent Hill. As part of that, we explored how we could incorporate contemporary problems. We ended up looking at how modern youth communicate online and through phones, and the role that could play in a psychological horror story."

You can see this theme in the trailer, which sees our protagonist being haunted by her phone and other mysterious threats that lurk in the darkness.

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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.