Silent Hill: Townfall — Release, Story, Gameplay, Endings and PC Requirements

01What Silent Hill: Townfall Is (At a Glance)

Silent Hill: Townfall is a single-player psychological survival horror game set on the fictional Scottish island town of St. Amelia in 1996. You play as Simon Ordell, an outsider who wakes up on the town marina attached to an IV drip with no memory of how he got there. The game is a standalone spin-off — not a sequel — and is fully self-contained, so no prior Silent Hill knowledge is required.

02Meet Simon, Zoe, and Richard

Simon Ordell is the playable protagonist — an American outsider with no memory of his connection to St. Amelia, voiced by Jovan Adepo. Simon functions partly as a player surrogate: he arrives knowing nothing, so the town reveals itself to him at the same pace it reveals itself to you.

Zoe is a nurse from a local family clinic who reaches out to Simon through the CRTV, asking both "come back" and "what are you doing here?" at once. Richard, portrayed by Terry O'Quinn, is described as an enigmatic man who summons Simon back to the island. All three perspectives converge in the final portion of the game, and the story shifts between them at key moments.

The English cast was revealed on August 25, 2026, roughly a month before launch — a deliberate late reveal that kept the characters' roles in the story out of pre-release discussion.

03Story and Setting: St. Amelia, 1996

The story follows Simon Ordell after he washes up on the docks of St. Amelia, a fog-shrouded fishing town that appears abandoned but is not at rest. As Simon explores, he discovers fragments of a past that suggest he has a forgotten connection to the town and its former inhabitants. The narrative is written and directed by Jon McKellan, who based parts of it on real experiences from himself and the team.

Two other characters play central roles: Zoe, a nurse from a local family clinic who calls out to Simon through the CRTV, and Richard, an enigmatic man described as summoning Simon back to the island.

The 1996 setting was chosen deliberately — it sits on the cusp of home computing and the internet becoming widespread, which the game uses for its period-accurate puzzles involving floppy disks, dial-up modems, answering machines, and cathode-ray displays.

St. Amelia itself is based on the real Scottish coastal village of St Monans in Fife, and the game leans hard into that geography: marina, shoreline, residential streets, a hospice, a post office, and a laundromat all form a compact loop you learn to navigate by memory. The town is the second Silent Hill setting outside the United States, after 2025's Silent Hill f moved the series to 1960s Japan. Series producer Motoi Okamoto has said the shift exists because the original American small-town formula was "becoming slightly repetitive" — Konami now treats Silent Hill "not as a physical location but as a phenomenon, a state of mind."

Expect the series' trademark structure: a fog-covered reality that gives way to a blood-red Otherworld, with the environment reshaping itself around the story rather than around gameplay convenience.

04From 2022 Teaser to September 2026 Release

Townfall began development in 2022 at the Scottish studio No Code, known for the narrative games Stories Untold and Observation. Annapurna Interactive introduced the studio to Konami, and series producer Motoi Okamoto — who had played both previous titles — felt confident commissioning their own Silent Hill game.

The project was first announced in a 2022 teaser trailer, but the first real gameplay did not surface until February 12, 2026, when a trailer debuted at Sony's State of Play presentation alongside a Silent Hill Transmission follow-up. The release date itself was announced four months later, on June 2, 2026, at another State of Play.

In July 2025, No Code rebranded as Screen Burn Interactive — a nod to the project itself, with the name capturing the "ghost of an image burned into an old CRT screen." The studio remains independent and small, with development handled by a team of around 30 people, which Annapurna's head of games Leanne Loombe said allowed the team to "really realize their creative vision."

05The CRTV: How First-Person Gameplay Works

Townfall is the first full-length Silent Hill title presented entirely in first person, and the shift was driven by the CRTV, a handheld pocket television central to every part of the game. Tuning the CRTV to unstable analog signals lets you detect nearby threats through walls, pick up narrative clues, and solve puzzles woven into the world itself.

Combat is deliberately limited. You can swing improvised melee weapons such as planks and pipes, and firearms are available later, but ammunition is scarce and gunfire attracts more enemies. Stealth is usually the smarter option, and most encounters are designed around evasion rather than a fight.

Puzzles are integrated directly into the narrative rather than standing apart from it — each one is meant to reveal something about the town and the people who lived there.

The perspective choice was not a reaction to P.T. Screen Burn has always made first-person games, and McKellan has said the CRTV display itself forced the decision: in third person, showing a handheld screen would have meant rendering it as a UI element that would "feel like a mini-map" and feel "really out of place for Silent Hill." The result is that you physically hold the device up to your eye, which also means every scan is a deliberate, vulnerable action rather than a passive radar pulse.

DualSense features reinforce this on PS5: adaptive triggers convey weapon weight, haptics relay approaching enemy footsteps, and motion controls let you physically twist the CRTV to tune weak signals.

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  CRTV scanningDetect enemies and hidden signals
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  Stealth evasionHide, distract, and slip past threats
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  Melee and firearmsLast resort; weapons degrade, ammo is scarce
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  Narrative puzzlesPeriod-90s tech: floppies, projectors, dial-up
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  Multiple endingsShaped by how you play, not dialogue choices

06All Five Endings (and How to Unlock Each)

Silent Hill: Townfall has five endings. Three are earned during a normal playthrough based on a hidden comparison between your total kills and your total Discoveries (clues and documents collected). The other two are secret joke endings exclusive to New Game Plus.

There is no official canon ending, director Jon McKellan has confirmed — the game tracks what kind of player you were rather than presenting A/B dialogue choices.

Discoveries are text pickups: every clue and document you collect counts toward the 85 total, and no other collectible type affects the calculation. Combat is unavoidable in places — roughly 20 enemies must be killed during normal progression — so a fully pacifist run is impossible, but aggressive players who kill everything will tip toward the bad ending quickly.

For the two New Game Plus secrets, save manually before branching: the Dog ending needs three coins placed in Guide Dog statues across Parts 1, 4, and 6, while the Sci-fi ending needs three Strange Books plus a Strange Keycard. Both can be collected in one New Game Plus run and replayed from a single save near the end.

07How Long It Takes: 10-15 Hours, 25-30 for All Endings

A first playthrough runs roughly 10 to 15 hours, with thorough explorers reporting 15 to 20 hours. Seeing all five endings takes around 25 to 30 hours across multiple runs, though manual saves let you branch several endings from a single New Game Plus file. Speedruns can finish in under four hours.

Pacing is front-loaded: the opening hours are slow and exploratory by design, with the story accelerating in the back half. Puzzle-heavy sections add time for players who do not consult guides — some of the later sequences are genuinely demanding, and reviewer reports of puzzle sections taking hours are common. If you get stuck, the game does eventually signpost solutions through the CRTV, but patience (or a walkthrough) pays.

08PC Requirements: What You Need for 30 FPS

Konami published official PC requirements in July 2026. Both tiers target 30 FPS — minimum at 1080p Low, recommended at 4K High using DLSS, FSR, or TSR in Balanced mode. Players targeting 60 FPS will need hardware above the recommended tier.

Two details deserve careful reading. The 30 FPS targets are unusual for a 2026 PC release, and Konami benchmarked the recommended tier with upscaling enabled, so native 4K at 60 FPS is well beyond an RTX 3080. Storage needs are 75 GB at every setting level, and early reports indicate shader compilation stutters on PC that a patch is expected to address.

Practical advice from early testing: keep volumetric fog on Medium (it is the single biggest cost), run shadows on Medium rather than Ultra, enable DLSS or FSR Quality mode, and expect shader-compilation stutter in the first hours until the cache warms up.

09What Critics Are Saying (78% Positive on Steam)

Reviews landed three days before launch and consensus is strongly positive — though not universal. Tom's Guide called it "the best Silent Hill game in 25 years," praising the story, first-person perspective, and atmosphere while flagging one late puzzle and minor technical hiccups. PC Gamer highlighted the CRTV as "one of the most creative, fun, and useful puzzle solving tools" the reviewer had used.

IGN emphasized the stealth loop and letterboxed presentation, calling it a welcome return to the series' survival-horror roots after the action-leaning Silent Hill f. PCGamesN went further, calling it "hauntingly perfect."

Not every outlet agreed: PCMag found the combat clunky and the story impersonal, and CBC noted frustrating moments with a stalker enemy called The Weight. Steam user reviews sat at roughly 78% positive ("Mostly Positive") in the first days after launch.

The pattern across reviews is consistent: atmosphere, puzzles, and the CRTV earn universal praise; combat and a few late-game sections divide people. If you prioritize tense exploration over action, the positive camp describes exactly what you want.

10Townfall vs Silent Hill 2 Remake vs Silent Hill f

Townfall sits alongside two very different recent entries. The Silent Hill 2 remake (2024) is a faithful third-person reimagining of the series' most celebrated story — closer to classic Silent Hill in structure and mood. Silent Hill f (2025) was an action-heavier spin-off set in 1960s Japan, with a melee and parry system at its center.

Townfall is neither. It is slower and stealth-driven like classic Silent Hill, but with a first-person camera and a gadget-driven loop closer to Alien: Isolation than to Resident Evil. For players who bounced off Silent Hill f's combat or want something structurally new, Townfall is the most distinct of the three — and because it is fully standalone, it is also the easiest entry point for newcomers.

11Five Tips for First-Time Players

Five starting-point pieces of advice will carry you through most of the game — the list below covers positioning, scanning, and the ending you probably want on run one.

Save at every station you see rather than pressing on, because late-game chase sequences punish a stale save. And avoid weapon durability temptation early: a plank buys you one block, so disengaging and repositioning is usually better value than committing to a fight you cannot win cleanly.

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  Play with headphonesDirectional audio warns you before the CRTV does
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  Cycle the CRTV in crowded roomsIt shows one frequency at a time
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  Prioritize Discoveries over killsReading every document lands the good ending
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  Save at every stationLate chases punish stale saves
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  Disengage rather than trade hitsA plank buys one block

12Editions and Pricing: Standard vs Deluxe

Both editions are available digitally on PlayStation Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Pre-ordering the Standard Edition includes two bonus CRTV cosmetics, while the Deluxe Edition bundles an alternate Simon outfit, an interactive artbook, a digital soundtrack, and 48-hour early access.

13Where to Follow Patches and News

Official information — including any post-launch patch notes addressing the PC stutter reports — is published on Konami's Townfall site and the PlayStation Store page. The Steam listing carries the latest user review score and community discussion.

For the full ending walkthroughs referenced above, our endings section covers every requirement without needing an external guide.

Deciding whether to buy? Start with the Standard edition at $49.99 — the Deluxe extras are cosmetic and convenience items — then browse our gaming section for the next release guides.