Silent Hill f lands this September

A new Silent Hill game places Hinako in a foggy 1960s town where social pressures and supernatural terrors collide.

Silent Hill f Reimagines 1960s Japan as a tense survival horror

Silent Hill f transports players to a fictional 1960s town named Ebisugaoka, where Hinako, a misunderstood teenager, navigates a hostile social landscape and creeping dread. The setting nods to Japan’s women’s rights movements of the era, with developers saying the period helps deepen the horror by grounding it in historical tension. Combat leans on melee weapons like daggers, baseball bats, and scythes, and a sanity meter adds psychological pressure as players explore the fog-draped streets. The town’s beauty stands in contrast to its danger, offering a different visual vocabulary from the usual neon Tokyo or samurai epics.

There is a deliberate shift in Silent Hill f toward action infused horror rather than pure scares. The creators describe a balance between visceral encounters and quieter, tense moments that push players to manage resources and nerves. Early preview impressions note a learning curve in combat that gradually yields to a satisfyingly deliberate rhythm. As Hinako searches for friends amid haunting memories and shifting realities, the game uses its period piece to ask how much of horror comes from what we fear and what we remember. Silent Hill f arrives on PC, PS5 and Xbox on September 25.

The game marks a purposeful return for Silent Hill, aiming to fuse Western and Japanese horror tropes while foregrounding a distinctly Japanese historical lens. By centering a female protagonist and tying fear to social context rather than only monsters, the creators push horror into a more reflective space. The mix of Lovecraftian elements, period detail, and restrained action signals a broader trend in the genre toward psychological rather than gratuitous shocks. Yet the choice to tackle sensitive themes from the era invites scrutiny of how gender, abuse, and social norms are depicted. The challenge will be to balance earnest historical texture with the franchise’s signature sense of dread without sliding into stereotype or sensationalism.

Highlights

The return of Silent Hill is as much about evolving the franchise as it is about honoring its past.