Own a PlayStation 5 and don’t mind a scare? A game from a legendary series has just been released – and it’s completely free.
Silent Hill: The Short Message acts as a taster for the Silent Hill 2 remake, due later this year. It’s a kick-start for a brand that has been largely dormant for a decade.
The game was released without any prior fanfare, bar rumours, during a Sony PlayStation State of Play preview event.
It’s a short first-person horror experience that lasts 90 minutes to two hours, based on play-through videos already filling up YouTube.
You play as Anita, friend to Maya, who has recently committed suicide. You awake in a “crumbling apartment block" and have to find your way out. And things only get much more unsettling and scary from there.
Silent Hill: The Short Message plays out as a first-person exploratory horror adventure, one loaded with genre tropes likely to terrify those with a more sensitive constitution.
But why release this game completely for free when it’s not loaded with money-grabbing mechanics like the free games you might download on mobile?
It “marks the return of a horror franchise that has been with us since the original PlayStation", says Shawne Benson, director of Portfolio at Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Silent Hill hasn’t seen a major home console release since 2012’s Silent Hill: Downpour. But publisher Konami now has massive plans for it, with a Silent Hill 2 remake due this year. Silent Hill: Townfall and Silent Hill ƒ are also in the works.
A release like Silent Hill: The Short Message reminds the gaming public what this horror series is all about, and will no doubt act as an intro for those too young to remember the classic instalments of years past.
This is not the first teaser from this series either. In 2014, Konami released P.T. (Playable Teaser), a first-person horror experience in which you wander around looping haunted corridors. It was a viral sensation, and a truly scary one at that, but is no longer playable as the title was removed from the PlayStation Network.
P.T. was a teaser for the unreleased Silent Hills, which was to be directed by gaming icon Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear Solid series.
