Konami’s next big Silent Hill game is the first original entry in more than a decade and thus loaded with expectations — especially on the heels of last year’s outstanding Silent Hill 2 remake. Silent Hill f, coming this September, is a big swing, shifting the traditional location and time period of the franchise, adding some serious combat mechanics, and employing new storytelling techniques.
After five hours playing Silent Hill f from the beginning of the game, I’m convinced that developer NeoBards Entertainment understands the soul of Silent Hill, but is taking some surprising (and potentially divisive) risks with the series.
The most obvious change in Silent Hill f is its setting: 1960s Japan. Players take on the role of high school student Hinako Shimizu, who like other Silent Hill protagonists (who are traditionally middle-age white guys), finds herself in a surreal nightmarish situation. Her hometown of Ebisugaoka has been drenched in fog and freakish monsters roam its winding streets. The twisting and turning pathways between Hinako’s home and the center of town also appeared drenched in crimson, as growths of red spider lilies spread across Ebisugaoka.
Ebisugaoka is dark and damp, and disorientingly vertical. Houses and small businesses crowd each other; these unpaved streets feel like a maze, creating blind spots that hide threats from view.
Hinako is not alone on her journey, though. As a strange fog envelopes Ebisugaoka, she encounters a handful of friends (and apparent frenemies) who are experiencing the same nightmare. Later, as Hinako enters Silent Hill’s “other world,” a dreamlike space filled with traditional Japanese shrines and ancient architecture, she’s guided by a mysterious masked man.
Many of Silent Hill f’s environmental and character elements feel familiar, despite being transported to another time and place. The game’s developers are aiming for a “strangely alluring” and “disturbing yet beautiful and breathtaking” world, which Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto has described as finding the beauty in terror.
“A noticeable feature of Japanese horror is the idea that terror can be found within beauty,” Okamoto said earlier this year. “When something becomes too immensely beautiful and perfect, it instead becomes deeply unsettling. And so, players will experience this world through the eyes of a young girl who is faced with a beautiful yet terrifying decision.”
As I played through the opening hours of Silent Hill f, admiring the realistic mid-century Japanese architecture, and the believable small-town emptiness of Ebisugaoka, I started to understand what Okamoto meant. Surrounded by the intimidating spread of otherworldly flowers, and battling grotesqueries composed of flesh and flower petals, I started to appreciate this very different take on the Silent Hill setting.
The Japanese setting of Silent Hill f isn’t just window dressing. The setting will extend to its characters, storytelling, and even its puzzles, the game’s creators say.
During a presentation attended by Polygon at Konami’s headquarters in Tokyo, Silent Hill f writer Ryukishi07 — his pen name — said that the game’s puzzles need to “reflect the player and setting” and will be “riddled with clues to unveiling the psyche” of playable and non-playable characters.
The puzzles I experienced in Silent Hill f were, at the very least, aesthetically Japanese. One required me to correctly identify markings on sculptures and pottery, and place them logically at a shrine. At another shrine, I had to study ema, small wooden plaques that contain written prayers, to solve a separate puzzle — all while being pursued by unkillable monsters.
Other puzzles were more straightforward, tasking me with finding locker combinations at the town’s high school. But the clues left behind were often written in diaries that told me something about their authors, and some provided insight into Hinako’s social circle and standing at the school.
But some puzzles were surprisingly obtuse, and I had to brute force my way through some. Speaking to a developer at the event, I got the impression that Silent Hill f’s puzzles can be intentionally opaque, requiring players to experiment or outright guess at solutions.
One of the more clever puzzles involved Hinako trying to cross a rice field, which was peppered with scarecrows. Many of those scarecrows were actually monsters that looked like Hinako’s high school classmates in dead-eyed mannequin form, some of which wielded kama, or small Japanese sickles. The trick to this puzzle involved finding which scarecrow classmate among the crowd was actually benign; pester the wrong one and they’d chase Hinako down. Finding the right scarecrow to inspect, and learning where to go next, required careful study of where each scarecrow was looking, or was pointing, or whom they were standing next to. That puzzle was easily one of the most tense moments in Silent Hill f’s first few hours.
The action of Silent Hill f mostly follows rules established by past Silent Hill games. The vast majority of combat is focused on melee attacks with makeshift weapons: metal pipes, hammers, and other objects one might actually find in town. I did not acquire any firearms; that wouldn’t be believable in the setting. But at one point I did acquire a naginata, a Japanese polearm, for a specific fight.
Al Yang, studio creative director at NeoBards, said that, like puzzles, Silent Hill f’s combat should “feel natural to the setting and character personality” of its heroine. Like other Silent Hill protagonists, Hinako is not some martial arts or firearms expert. But she can swing a heavy pipe just like anyone else and do some damage.
In a bit of a swerve though, Hinako’s really good at dodging and counter attacks. Silent Hill f has a “perfect dodge” mechanic wherein Hinako can basically slow down time and viciously maul an enemy if she avoids their attack with split-second precision. Counter moves performed after a perfect dodge can stun enemies and turn the tide of battle, Yang said, refilling Hinako’s stamina meter and regaining her momentum.
Yes, Hinako has a stamina meter. She also has a sanity meter, which is drained whenever she focuses on an enemy in combat. It’s a sort of trade-off in battle; you’ll want to focus on monsters to monitor their movements and tells in combat, but doing so comes at a cost. Lose your sanity and Hinako will take damage.
Hinako’s weapons can also take damage. They’re breakable, but you can also find small repair kits to patch up your important weapons. A big sledgehammer can be very valuable, I learned, for stunning enemies and then whacking them into mush with a common metal pipe.
While Hinako is not an action movie superhero, like most game protagonists, she can find upgrades and new abilities over time. Silent Hill f has a progression system in which Hinako can take offerings (food, mainly) to hokora, small Shinto shrines, where she can say prayers for status enhancements — improved sanity, for example — and earn omamori that confer special boosts.
Silent Hill f’s upgrade system presents some intriguing trade-offs as you play: Should you hold onto food that might offer a health or stamina refill, or save it for an offering at a shrine? You can only carry so much, after all. And is it worth saving up for better, more expensive omamori, or buying what you can now to be more survivable? No matter which path you choose, the upgrade system encourages exploration and smart resource management, while also offering some flexibility to match your playstyle.
Like many stories set in the Silent Hill franchise, the storytelling of Silent Hill f can be opaque and intentionally obfuscated. We know at the beginning of the game that Hinako’s home life isn’t great. She’s the daughter of an abusive father and a timid mother. She’s second fiddle to an unseen older sister preferred by her father who has been married off. Hinako admits that she is stubborn and rebellious, a bit of a tomboy, and maybe considered more than a little strange by her peers.
Some of Silent Hill f’s exposition comes from narration by Hinako, some of it through conversations with her classmates, Shu and Sakuko. But some of it is slowly revealed by a journal she keeps; entries in that notebook become visible over time, revealing new facts and facets about characters.
Other revelations about Hinako and the residents of Ebisugaoka come from her journeys to a Dark Shrine world, where a mysterious man seems to try to aid her. His intentions are unclear, but it’s implied that he’s trying to free Hinako from some burden.
Silent Hill f is also stuffed with fox imagery. There are references to O-Inari, a deity associated with foxes, fertility, rice, and agriculture, and many shrines feature foxes — known as shapeshifters in Japanese folklore.
Like other Silent Hill games, f features a mix of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat, with the occasional boss battle. There’s a constant undercurrent of dread as you explore Ebisugaoka, the surrounding nature, and the Dark Shrine world. Monsters are everywhere, and in Silent Hill tradition, you can often hear them before you see them. (Case in point, the scarecrows mentioned earlier can be heard scurrying when they’re off-screen. Turn around to catch sight of them and they’ll stop in their tracks. It’s highly unsettling.)
Keeping Hinako healthy and sane requires careful play. You need to manage her health, fueling her with snacks like ramune (a lemonade drink), sushi, tea, and confections. “Small red capsules” can alleviate pain, and bandages can heal her. In many cases, it’s advisable to run from combat encounters, or sneak around groups of foes. Learning the perfect dodge maneuver felt not only helpful, but critical to Hinako’s survival. An early, highly challenging boss fight — that took me at least 20 attempts — will ensure that players learn how to properly dodge.
While Silent Hill f shakes up the time and place, some of its locations feel a piece with the franchise. During my time with the game, I explored abandoned homes and businesses, and even traipsed around the local high school. The 1960s setting gave much of that a new flavor.
Many familiar Silent Hill franchise elements are present in Silent Hill f, from its everypeople protagonist, to its threat-masking fog, to highly challenging boss encounters with twisted monsters that reflect the personal strife of its hero. But Silent Hill f doesn’t feel like it’s crossing things off a list, just to make sure it’s a Silent Hill game beyond its title. There are some intriguing thematic and aesthetic twists on what’s become a very familiar setting over the past 25 years, and some solid gameplay to back it up. Konami and NeoBards may have another surprisingly good modern Silent Hill game on their hands, and we won’t have to wait long to experience its horrors.
Silent Hill f is coming to PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Sept. 25.
