'Silent Hill: Townfall' Nears September 24 Launch — Konami Returns With First-Person Analog Horror Set in 1996 Scotland

Launch Overview

Silent Hill: Townfall arrives September 24, 2026 on PS5 and PC (Steam and Epic). It is developed by Screen Burn Interactive, the Glasgow, Scotland studio formerly known as No Code (Stories: Untold, Observation), and co-published by Konami and Annapurna Interactive.

The roughly 18-minute gameplay trailer released ahead of launch made the game's direction clear. The pitch is not gunfights but first-person analog horror: a device stitched from broken cathode-ray TVs called the CRTV, a fog-bound fishing town, and stealth-led evasion. It reworks the series' identity through a new setting and a new perspective.

Sources: PlayStation Blog — September 24 launch · Konami — SILENT HILL: Townfall · Silent Hill: Townfall — Wikipedia

Launch At A Glance

Setting: St. Amelia, Scotland, 1996

Townfall leaves behind the American fog-town imagery the series is known for and sets its story in St. Amelia, a fictional fishing town on Scotland's east coast in 1996. The developer's own Scottish roots feed directly into the backdrop; a cold, isolated coastal village dovetails naturally with the claustrophobia and dread the series trades in.

The story opens as Simon Ordell wakes in the town with no memory of his connection to it, and the narrative spine is his effort to work out why he is there. Locking the era to the mid-1990s is also a deliberate foundation for weaving CRT and analog media into the horror toolkit.

Gameplay: First-Person, Stealth, and the CRTV

The biggest shift is the camera. Townfall plays in a rare-for-the-series first-person perspective. Simon can defend himself with melee weapons such as planks and pipes, but the design leans toward evasion over combat — the studio has been explicit that when a fight is unavoidable you fight, but it is better to slip past the monsters with stealth where you can.

Its signature is the CRTV, a device assembled from broken cathode-ray TVs that players use to detect the town's creatures and find a way around them. The gameplay footage showed Simon crossing into St. Amelia's Otherworld and intercutting melee response with stealth tension. Multiple endings are confirmed, so player choices carry through to the finale.

PlayStation-Specific Features

The PS5 build pulls the DualSense's tactile features into the horror. Approaching footsteps register as haptic rumble, and in certain moments adaptive triggers convey the resistance of tools and interactions. Tuning the CRTV's signal even uses motion controls — twisting the controller to lock onto a weak broadcast — translating the act of handling analog media into gameplay itself.

The PC version ships alongside on Steam and Epic, but on consoles the game is PS5 timed-exclusive. The DualSense integration is the PS5 build's differentiator and a strength early previews consistently flagged.

Where It Fits in Silent Hill's Revival

Townfall is one pillar of Konami's ongoing Silent Hill revival. Konami has been resurrecting the series in quick succession — the Silent Hill 2 remake, Silent Hill f — and Townfall extends the studio's stated cadence of "a new Silent Hill each year." Because each entry picks a different developer, setting, and tone, the strategy reads as a refusal to trap the series in a single formula.

Screen Burn (formerly No Code) is a studio strong on psychological and media-driven experiments, and Townfall's CRTV, analog-horror direction plays to that identity. The open question is whether a first-person, stealth-led structure can feel fresh without losing the "Silent Hill-ness" longtime fans expect.

Community and Market Reaction

As launch nears, fan attention centers on tone and structure. The unfamiliar 1996 Scotland setting and the CRTV analog gimmick have largely been received as fresh, while the biggest talking point is how a first-person, stealth-led design will land with fans accustomed to third-person survival horror.

The lengthy gameplay trailer moved the conversation toward how the game actually feels to play — the balance of stealth and melee response, the staging of Otherworld transitions, and how much weight the multiple endings carry. With goodwill built up over Konami's run of remakes and new entries, anticipation and scrutiny have risen together.

The GamePeak Bottom Line

Townfall is a test of the idea that Konami's Silent Hill revival is a bundle of experiments rather than a single formula. Whether the gamble of moving to Scotland and switching to first-person pays off will be decided on September 24, in the fog of St. Amelia.