already one of 2026’s most terrifying games

During a preview event in Los Angeles in July, I had the chance to spend three hours in the moody and broody fictional Scottish town of St. Amelia. You play as Simon Ordell, a young bespectacled guy who’s washed up near the docks of this abandoned coastal village, with only fragmented memories of the people who once called it home. He’s got a hospital bracelet around one wrist, and an IV bag full of dark, viscous fluid on his shoulder that feeds into a port on his hand. He’s clearly not from St. Amelia — he doesn’t speak with a Scottish accent, for one. But as you investigate the town, you piece together evidence of his life and relationships there. My demo mostly covered the game’s opening hours, then jumped ahead to a section in the middle of the game, which ramps up the intensity and combat challenge.

The opening sequence is a wonderfully nightmarish blur, and even after taking copious notes, I know I’m remembering things out of order. Simon makes his way from the small harbor into the heart of town, passing shuttered shops and hastily abandoned homes plastered with for sale signs. Eventually, he reaches the town’s central square, where an ominous obelisk that reads ‘The Heart of St. Amelia’ is flanked with signs from a recent protest. One of them reads “CEG Widows.” At the opposite end of the square, a pay phone rings. Simon answers it, and a familiar voice says “help me.” There’s graffiti on the phone and a number that says “save yourself.” You dial it and turn around to see something horrible — I won’t spoil it.

Suddenly you’re elsewhere. Somehow it’s worse. It’s an underground bunker illuminated with misty red light. Groans and agonized screams echo through the air — distant, but never distant enough — as you pass through the tunnels. Eventually you reach an elevator, frantically willing the metal door to close as a shambling figure with a rectangular wedge protruding through its head sprints toward you.

“Nope. Nope. Nope,” I say aloud to no one, in a room full of people wearing headphones.

When the doors open once more, you’re back in the “real” world: a hotel room in St. Amelia that seems to have been used as a kind of impromptu hospital or quarantine facility. It’s here in the hotel that Simon gets access to a portable CRT television, which serves a similar function to the radio in earlier Silent Hill games. The handheld device can reveal clues about Simon’s memories, where to investigate next, and hints at puzzle solutions. It also lets you watch the movements of nearby enemies, ideally so you can remain safely hidden until they pass without being alerted to your presence. After following the CRT’s clues to solve a puzzle, you make your way to the hotel’s exit.

“Are you sure you want to open the door?” a daunting prompt with a red selection icon asks. No, thank you. Opening doors has not worked out so well for Simon and I thus far.

I look around the lobby for a few minutes, but there’s nothing else to do here. I return to the door and select the red “yes” button, though I very much do not want to. Nothing scary happens, but you wouldn’t know it from my heart rate. It’s from this point that the game begins in earnest, as you tentatively venture into the various abandoned homes and businesses dotted around St. Amelia, gathering clues and keys along the way. The disorienting surrealism of Townfall’s opening sequence raises the tension to a simmer with remarkable efficiency, and for the rest of the demo, I was in a perpetual state of cat-like jumpiness. That’s exactly what you want with this kind of game.

Like Silent Hill f, Townfall marks a geographic departure for the series, which has typically situated its hometown in small burgs in the eastern US. Townfall does a remarkable job of capturing the atmosphere of a small Scottish town, from the omnipresent damp of the air to the thick rubbery paint that aims to prevent it from seeping into the stone and stucco walls of the terraced houses. Despite the 80-degree Los Angeles weather around me, I constantly found myself squeezing my arms close, perpetually on the brink of an imagined shiver. St. Amelia is full of narrow stone-paved lanes that are just big enough for one person to pass through, which you might be inclined to walk past, because it doesn’t quite feel like you’re allowed to be there.

Image: Screen Burn / Annapurna Interactive / Konami

Those tight little alleys grow all the more daunting once your surreal, supernatural foes appear, tottering unsteadily when their attention is elsewhere, yet horribly surefooted when they become aware of your presence. You’ll come across some hefty planks of wood to clobber them and block their attacks, and you’re encouraged to hide in doorways, alleys, and behind parked cars and wait for the monsters to pass. The first-person perspective enhances the scare-factor — there were several moments where I was sneaking my way down a street, only to suddenly get accosted from behind and run away flailing for cover. (Keep that CRT close, kids!) Later on in the game, you’ll get access to handguns, but bullets are scarce and the sound will attract unwanted attention.

At least in its early hours, Townfall isn’t a combat-heavy experience like Resident Evil Requiem, but one that encourages stealthy exploration. Much of that takes the form of solving puzzles involving outmoded technology, like the CRT and dial-up internet. Screen Burn has earned a reputation for unique and satisfying puzzle design, with games like 2017’s Stories Untold and 2019’s Observation, and it brings the same expertise to Silent HIll.

In one especially memorable sequence, Simon breaks into a pharmacy in order to find pre-paid cards to re-activate a house’s electricity meter because that’s how people paid their electricity bills in rural Scotland during the mid-1990s. It’s not that the puzzle itself is particularly mind-bending, but there are a bunch of fiddly little steps you need to follow in a specific order to pull it off. The tension comes from doing this idiosyncratic, outmoded procedure while kneeling in a dark crawl space, knowing that at any moment some terrifying monster could sneak up and bite your ass off.

After this demo, Silent Hill: Townfall rocketed to the top of my most-anticipated list for the remainder of 2026. Even weeks after playing it, I can’t get that disorienting, dread-inducing opening sequence out of my head, and I’m itching for the chance to get back to Simon’s awful adventure. I’m probably going to be playing the whole thing standing up, with every light in the house on. But there’s no doubt I will be devouring this game come fall.

Silent Hill: Townfall will be released on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC on Sept. 24.