[STEAM] Silent Hill Townfall's atmosphere is spot-on, but slow-burn terrors leave a tepid first impression

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St Amelia is where dreams go to die. Not unlike many other British towns, I think. I can tell as much as soon as I wash up on the shores of Silent Hill Townfall's Scottish-coded (though never stated outright) island, where fog sinks into the spaces between each cobblestone. I've lived in the *** full-time for about four years now, so there are many jokes to be made about feeling right at home in its dreary gloom (I'll save those for another time). But even if the setting's

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is lost on those less familiar with Great British environs, it's the perfect canvas for a Silent Hill game.

The first thing that strikes me about

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is how deserted it is. That, and how choppy the animations get when you climb or descend stairs. You've got smudgy grey fog. You've got empty streets with lights still flickering in vacant apartments, as if the town's inhabitants vanished on the spot mere moments ago. You've got an amnesiac protagonist wearing a hospital bracelet. Let's go, am I right?

Pacing through the town center from a first-person perspective – a series-first for a mainline game, as seen in

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– I expect some sort of glimpse of an enemy. An early warning that I'm not as alone as I feel, just like in

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.

But even after getting curiously turned around while picking through St Amelia's detritus, I don't come across a single bad guy. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of my hands-on demo session had more to show for itself than 70 minutes of walking and cutscenes, always keeping me at arm's length as I experimentally press against its edges, getting little in return

These dark times

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(Image credit: Konami) Except I don't actually see any before my eyes. Delaying the moment we first lay eyes on a monster is a clever way to build up tension in any horror game or film – fear of the unknown, the unseen – and suggest the ephemeral manifestation of the character's guilt and trauma. But by this point in my hands-on demo, I am desperate for something a bit faster paced. I've just spent ages wandering barren streets only to be met with the winding basement of an abandoned hotel. Enemies seem so far away that I couldn't stumble into one if I tried.

Silent Hill Townfall has the makings of a brooding horror game. It just fails to communicate that in a vertical slice demo by virtue of its slow-build horrors being so excruciatingly slow. Here's hoping that I'm able to get a bit more absorbed in it from the comfort of my own home than I was on the bustling show floor of Gamescom 2026.

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