February 12 was an exciting day for survival horror fans. Not only did Capcom present a new trailer for Resident Evil: Requiem during PlayStation’s State of Play that was packed with fresh glimpses at the game—including the reveal of “Raccoon City Syndrome” and the effect that it’s having on co-protagonist Leon Kennedy, all but explicit confirmation of Sherry Birkin’s return, and a quick taste of players’ return to the ruins of Raccoon City—but there was also a trailer for a title that we haven’t had any updates on since it was first announced back on Oct 19, 2022. That title was Silent Hill: Townfall, developed by Screen Burn Interactive (formerly No Code) in collaboration with Konami and Annapurna Games.

Townfall was initially revealed with a cryptic trailer featuring a pocket-sized CRTV radio and a monologue delivered by an unseen speaker. This was during the Silent Hill Transmission of 2022 that announced the series’ revival with five new projects, including three games. Of these five projects, four have released between then and now—those being Silent Hill: Ascension (2023-2024), Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake (2024), Silent Hill f (2025), and Return to Silent Hill (2026). But it wasn’t until last week that we finally got to learn more about Silent Hill: Townfall with the aforementioned State of Play trailer that properly showed off the game’s story and gameplay, followed an hour later by a brand new Silent Hill Transmission highlighting Townfall and its development.

Set in 1996 Scotland, Silent Hill: Townfall follows Simon Ordell as he wakes up in the fictional town of St. Amelia, having been called there and determined to “put things right.” With nothing except his clothes, an IV bag, a medical wristband with his name on it, and a pocket CRTV radio he picked up along the way, Simon ventures deeper into this quiet town buried by fog. Driven to understand his connections to St. Amelia and its inhabitants, Simon will discover a truth that refuses to stay submerged.

Townfall has a lot of firsts for the Silent Hill series; it’s the first game to have a black protagonist, the first game set in Scotland, the first full-length game played entirely in first-person, and the first game to have a radio with a video screen on it (no, the phones of Shattered Memories and The Short Message don’t count). Townfall’s writer and director, Jon McKellan, wrote about some of these things in a PlayStation blog post dropped on the same day as the new trailer and Transmission. Here, he describes Screen Burn’s motivation behind the new CRTV radio and how it affects Townfall’s gameplay: “Drawing on our previous experience designing interactive ‘retro’ user interfaces and VHS-style aesthetics, we wanted to take the handheld radio—an iconic tool of the Silent Hill series—and evolve it in our own way. The result of that evolution is the ‘CRTV’—a lovingly crafted device that uses real retro technology and innovative techniques to produce the gritty, authentic audio and video used throughout the game.

“While the Silent Hill radio has often been a passive device, alerting the player to nearby enemies through the sound of static, the CRTV takes this concept further. Not only is it a useful tool in encounters—allowing Simon to ‘see’ through the environment and locate nearby threats—but it also picks up signals from around the town that unveil more of the story and even help guide Simon through some of the other challenges he faces.”

The CRTV radio was also part of the reason why Screen Burn decided on a first-person perspective for Townfall.

“The CRTV especially could only truly work in first person, allowing the player to raise it into view while they explore, tune into signals and discover broadcasts, and gain an advantage in otherwise terrifying situations,” wrote McKellan. This change in perspective also affects the combat, allowing the player to peek around corners and block enemy attacks.

Just because the player has a lot of options when dealing with the monsters of Townfall doesn’t mean that things will be easy for them though.

“With these varied gameplay options comes varied challenges from the enemies themselves,” wrote McKellan. “Draw too much attention and they will dynamically hunt the player, using their senses to track them down as best they can. Having the options to run, distract, hide or take on the enemies in combat—as well as switching tactics if things don’t go as planned—is a vital part of what we consider a truly horror-centric encounter design.”

Now, as for why Townfall is set specifically in 1996 Scotland, McKellan says in the Transmission that, “there was a drive to create something that felt authentic to us, and it kind of felt natural to bring it home.” However, this choice seems much more deliberate to the game’s story once you realize the graphic historical context of that time in Scotland. On March 13, 1996, the Dunblane massacre took place at Dunblane Primary School, the deadliest mass shooting in British history. This resulted in legislation that banned private ownership of most handguns in Great Britain. Taking this into account with how Screen Burn is based in Scotland, Silent Hill is known for its intrinsic themes of trauma and guilt, and the trailer shows Simon finding a revolver that he then uses against the monsters he fights. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up tying into Townfall’s story, but we won’t know for sure until it’s finally out.

Thankfully, the last piece of news Konami gave us for Silent Hill: Townfall is that it will release sometime this year. In the meantime, they’ve promised that there will be more updates to come.