Silent Hill: Townfall brings horror series to a Scottish island

Silent Hill: Townfall was released on Thursday, bringing the Japanese-created horror franchise to the UK for the first time with a story set on a fictional Scottish island. [1]

The game was developed by Glasgow-based Screen Burn, whose team drew inspiration from the fishing village of St Monans in Fife. Director Jon McKellan told BBC News he wanted its depiction of Scotland to feel “authentic and natural”. [1]

“It's not tartan everywhere, but if you grew up in a working-class town in the 90s, you will get a lot of the references,” he said. [1]

Set in 1996, Townfall follows Simon Ordell, an American man who washes up on the fictional island of St Amelia wearing a hospital identification band and with an IV drip in his arm. [1]

Its everyday surroundings include red pillar boxes, 20 mph speed-limit signs and charity collection boxes shaped like guide dogs. Saving progress requires using a phone, often inside a coins-and-card telephone box, BBC technology reporter Laura Cress found during her playthrough. [1]

Period technology also shapes how players navigate danger. Simon acquires a handheld CRT device — essentially a small portable television — that displays fuzzy images of nearby monsters, helping players work out where they are and avoid them. Cress found it could become fiddly when several enemies were nearby. [1]

Cress praised the game's tension and inventive design but described it as uneven. Later sections relying on cruder enemy-detection technology increased the tension while substantially slowing play, she wrote. She said the game ran well on her PlayStation 5, while acknowledging reports from others of performance issues. [1]

The Scottish setting continues the series’ move beyond its traditional American locations. Silent Hill f, released in 2025, took place in rural Japan in the 1960s.