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| Title | Silent Hill ƒ |
| Developer | NeoBards Entertainment |
| Publisher | Konami |
| Release Date | Sept. 25th, 2025 |
| Genre | Horror |
| Platform | PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Windows, Epic Games Store, Steam, GOG |
| Age Rating | M for Mature |
| Official Website | |
I don’t really consider myself a Silent Hill super fan, since I’ve only played the original trilogy and the SH2 Remake, but I am very fond of them and consider the original SH2 as one of my favorite games of all time. So when Silent Hill ƒ was announced, I was stoked from the trailer alone. It looked hauntingly beautiful, and I was incredibly intrigued at the idea of a Silent Hill game set outside the titular town. How would it compare to those early Team Silent games, and would it end up lingering in my mind the same way those titles have? I had to know.
The game takes place in the fictional, isolated mountain village of Ebisugaoka in 1960’s Japan. Shimizu Hinako, our protagonist, storms out of her house following an argument with her father and heads into town to meet up with her friends. She needs someone to talk to. Along the way, she notes how empty the town feels, hearing only whispered rumors from unseen women. Eventually she meets up with her friends, Igarashi Sakuko, a bubbly girl with pigtails whose family runs the local Sennensugi Shrine; Iwai Shu, Hinako’s best friend and “partner” with whom she grew up playing Space Wars, and whose family are local physicians; and Nishida Rinko, a prim and proper girl who nonetheless has an ear for gossip and a very obvious crush on Shu. Hinako finds Shu in front of the general store, where they share an awkward conversation before he gives her a small box, after which the other girls show up. They chat, but our protagonist stops listening as she notices a deep, roiling fog heading toward them. Something unsettling and deeply wrong is coming for them all, and as Hinako’s world becomes enveloped in chaos, she has to fight with all she has to regain what she lost.
As the first mainline entry in the series in 13 years, Silent Hill ƒ takes a lot of big swings while still staying true to its roots. Rather than delving further into the lore of the town or the characters who have come before, SH ƒ instead focuses on series recurring themes and translating those into a new setting. The developers wanted to create something familiar but also completely new, and the mixture of Japanese mythology and cultural norms with Silent Hill‘s isolating and disorientating atmosphere delivers, recontextualizing the role of family, society, and expectations into a really fascinating exploration of Hinako’s mental state.
Penned by Higurashi When They Cry‘s Ryukishi07, the game deals with multiple sensitive issues including child abuse, spousal abuse, bullying, gender discrimination, self-harm, torture, and drugs, in addition to extreme violence and gore. Anyone with a severe aversion to body horror should know what they’re getting into and tread carefully. While none of these are new to the series itself, SH ƒ‘s structure very much is. Multiple endings are a series staple, but in the Team Silent games, you unlocked those endings through the choices you made during your playthrough. The core story and character interactions remained the same no matter how many times you replayed the game. Hinako’s story plays out over multiple playthroughs, with each replay revealing more of the story and character motivations through new text documents and altered cutscenes. For visual novel players, this is nothing new, but it is novel for Silent Hill.
I actually really liked the story structure, because in a game that deals with cycles of abuse, having to replay through the scenario multiple times to gain clarity and understanding felt thematically on point. I also really like the cast, especially Hinako. She’s relatively withdrawn, with bits of a more enthusiastic personality breaking through whenever she talks about Space Wars with Shu, but for the most part she’s quiet, stubborn and deliberate, masking a lot of repressed frustration and anger that explodes when things happen beyond her control. She wants to take things slowly and think her problems through, and she hates being treated differently just because she’s a girl. I can relate. Shu, Rinko and Sakuko are fascinating characters as well, so having more time with them and getting to see slightly different sides to their stories was really interesting. This is particularly true for Hinako’s relationship with her older sister Junko, and I found the approach incredibly engrossing. Also, I would die for Fox Mask, no questions asked. I would say the biggest issue the story structure carries is that it makes gameplay a bit repetitive and leads to some narrative choices that felt rushed and underbaked, particularly in the back half of the game.
First things first about gameplay: The camera is legitimately awful. It’s set just behind Hinako’s shoulder, which is great for exploration, but becomes a hindrance during combat when it will, inevitably, get stuck behind her head and obscure the enemy. Since being able to see monsters for visual clues on when they’re open to counter attacks is necessary in order to properly engage in combat, this is Very Bad and often got me killed. It does not help that several areas in the game are set in cramped, indoor locations, making the camera even more offensive. There is no enemy in this game worse than the camera NeoBards implemented.
The locations themselves are a highlight of the game, which is gorgeous to look at, with evocative art direction and design. The fog-shrouded streets of Ebisugaoka are eerie in how empty and silent they are; the heavily shadowed hallways of the Dark Shrine are foreboding and ominous; the cramped hallways and classrooms in the school are tense and claustrophobic. The team went out of their way to create a realistic, accurate depiction of rural Japan based off the real streets of Gero City, and that attention to detail made an incredibly lived in and memorable setting. It’s at odds with the more unnaturally proportioned city streets and layouts of previous games, but I really liked it. Instead of muted colors and rusty, broken industrial imagery, SH ƒ revels in bright colors and organic environments. As you progress, Ebisugaoka is enveloped in deep reds and oranges as spider lilies and grotesque fleshy growths encroach on the isolated town. The Dark Shrine’s Shinto-inspired locations are often bathed in soft blues that exude an otherworldly feel. The developers wanted to demonstrate horror through beauty, and they really nailed it here.
This is best exemplified through the monster designs, all of which are gorgeous in the best ways. In Ebisugaoka, the first and most numerous enemy is the kashimashi, a doll-like woman covered in scars who appears to be stitched together from multiple people. The ayakakashi are scarecrows dressed in school uniforms that hide amongst the crowd to make it easier to surprise attack. Irohihi are beer-bellied creatures that whine like dogs and constantly scurry around Hinako trying to grab her. When in the Dark Shrine, Hinako can encounter the kamugara, a faceless creature bound in chains that crawls on all fours listening for her footsteps; the harai katoshiro, which is an elegant woman in a noh mask with swords for legs; and the oi-omoi, created from an assortment of doll heads stacked on top of each other and connected by human spines. There are other monsters in both Ebisugaoka and the Dark Shrine, all of whom represent a different aspect of Hinako’s psyche or the world at large — some more on the nose than others. But lacking in subtlety does not make them less impactful or memorable.
My biggest issue with the designs is that too many of the monsters share similar models. The kashimashi, ayakakashi and harai katoshiro are all various doll-like creatures, almost all of which are female (the ayakakashi can also be male). The kamugara and irohihi are different shades of the same masculine form. Their move sets and specific meaning help differentiate them from a story perspective, but visually they feel like palette swaps, so while I appreciate their narrative impact, it did end up feeling like I was fighting the same five enemies my entire run through. It didn’t help that a major boss late in the game is basically the same as a mini-boss fought early on in Ebisugaoka that also has a palette swap in the Dark Shrine. It ended up devaluing an otherwise incredibly memorable and narratively impactful fight because it did not feature a truly unique boss. Having a small enemy pool in and of itself isn’t bad; most Silent Hill games draw on only a handful of enemy types. In a game as combat-focused as SH ƒ, though, it feels like a missed opportunity, even if the different variants offer unique mechanical experiences.
Delve deeper into the gameplay and more on page 2 ->
