Screen Burn’s first-person Silent Hill wins praise for its 1996 Scottish setting and puzzles, while critics disagree about its CRTV device.
About this review roundup: GAME MODE has not playtested this game. This is original analysis of the credited reviews and official information below, researched October 18, 2026. The displayed 8.0/10 is the equally weighted average of these two critics’ scores, converted to ten and rounded to one decimal. It is not a GAME MODE playtest score or a comprehensive review aggregate.
Released: September 24, 2026 (Steam’s US listing shows September 23). Platforms: PC, PS5.
Static over St. Amelia
Silent Hill: Townfall takes Konami’s horror series to St. Amelia, a fictional island town in Scotland in 1996. The Steam listing describes Simon Ordell returning to the island to set something right, and calls Townfall the first full-length Silent Hill presented in first person.
His key tool is the CRTV, a pocket television that tunes into signals revealing nearby threats, story fragments and puzzle clues. Screen Burn developed the game, Konami and Annapurna Interactive publish it, and the PlayStation Store page lists a September 24 release on PS5.
An 89 and a 7, side by side
| Outlet | Score | Platform | Takeaway |
|---|---|---|---|
| PC Gamer | 89/100 | PC | A vividly alive town and a brilliant CRTV |
| Push Square | 7/10 | PS5, played on PS5 Pro | A standout setting, but easy combat and a CRTV that fades |
Read past the numbers and the picture gets simpler:
- Common ground: both critics praise the detail and atmosphere of St. Amelia, both enjoyed the puzzles, and neither reports significant technical problems.
- The split: the CRTV. Gould sees a brilliant tool that turns navigation into one long, tense puzzle, while Croft sees a defining feature that fades in importance.
Does the CRTV stay essential?
Elie Gould’s PC Gamer review is based on PC testing, and she considers the CRTV one of the most creative puzzle-solving tools she has used, since it let her track monsters through walls and sneak past most encounters. She found St. Amelia vividly alive and enjoyed the lateral-thinking puzzles, though one late puzzle stumped her for a while. She also singles out the playable sections starring Zoe and Richard, who show the town’s disaster from different sides. Her only real complaint is that she wanted more time with that pair, because Simon seems a little flat by comparison. Her playthrough took about 13 hours.
Liam Croft at Push Square reviewed the PS5 version on PS5 Pro and calls the 1990s Scottish setting the highlight, with lived-in homes to search and puzzles built around period technology such as floppy disks. He finds combat easy to master, though, and limited to a handful of enemy types, so monsters soon stop feeling threatening. He argues that the CRTV matters less as the roughly 10-hour campaign goes on, and admits the story’s full meaning escaped him by the credits. He reports smooth performance in Quality Mode on PS5 Pro.
Our reading is that both can be true. Gould relied on stealth for most of the game, while Croft found combat easy enough that tracking enemies stopped mattering. How you choose to play may decide how much the device adds. The average is a fair midpoint between an enthusiastic review and a measured one, and the reasons behind each score are more useful than the number itself.
The buying call
Silent Hill fans who value atmosphere, environmental storytelling and puzzles should put Townfall on their Halloween shortlist. If you want frequent, dangerous combat, Croft’s review suggests the monsters may lose their bite.
On the technical side, Croft found the PS5 Pro version smooth, but PC players should compare their hardware with the published requirements.
Cited scores and sources
- PC Gamer: 89/100 (PC).
- Push Square: 7/10 (PS5 Pro).
Calculation: (8.9 + 7.0) ÷ 2 = 8.0/10, rounded. These are selected reviews, not every published score.
For a wider view, OpenCritic listed a Top Critic Average of 80 for the game when we checked on October 18, 2026.
Official game information and artwork source. Artwork: Konami / Screen Burn / Annapurna Interactive.
The Verdict: Positive reception
Average of the cited critic scores, normalized to 10. See the methodology and individual scores above.
