The people
Simon Ordell
The man you are. An American called back to St. Amelia to put things right, who wakes in the water by the docks with a hospital wristband (name, date of birth, blood type) and an IV line in his arm. Played by Jovan Adepo. The reviews find him a cipher at first, growing into an understated earnestness.
Zoe
A nurse who disappeared from her job at the Shorefront Family Clinic and has some connection to what happened to the town. She reaches Simon through the CRTV. Played by Kezia Burrows; her house and the clinic where she worked are both places you search.
Richard
The man who summoned Simon back to the island, sending instructions through the CRTV. Played by Terry O'Quinn. Not blameless or caring, and a fascinating character study.
The place and the year
St. Amelia is a fishing town on an island off Scotland's coast: fog-soaked streets, homes for sale, a clinic, a pharmacy, phone booths, and below it a red-lit structure the PlayStation Blog called the Otherworld. Screen Burn photographed real East Neuk villages to build it (St Monans in Fife was the model) and set the game in 1996 because it was, in their words, on the cusp of when technology started to explode in the home. The series' iconography reads through that lens: cramped NHS wards instead of gleaming hospitals, concrete shopping precincts instead of malls, and later a shift to stark brutalism. Konami calls the game a tale of introspection, loss and consequence, and Screen Burn a slow burn with social commentary built around the individual and society, and the individual and corporations.
Who made it
Screen Burn
The Glasgow studio formerly No Code (Stories Untold, Observation) rebranded in July 2025; the new name is the ghost of an image burned into an old CRT. About 30 people, on Unreal Engine 5.
Jon McKellan
Director and writer. Graeme McKellan is the designer, Paul Abbott the art director, and Pilotpriest, the name Anthony Scott Burns releases music under, composes — a haunting soundtrack, and a stellar series debut. Motoi Okamoto is the series producer.
Konami and Annapurna
Co-publishers. The first Townfall teaser was part of Konami's Silent Hill Transmission in October 2022; development had started that year.
How it arrived
| When | What |
|---|---|
| October 2022 | First teaser, in the Silent Hill Transmission |
| 12 February 2026 | Full trailer at Sony's State of Play, and a Silent Hill Transmission the same day |
| 2 June 2026 | Release date announced at State of Play |
| July–August 2026 | Hands-on previews, including gamescom |
| 21 September 2026 | Reviews published |
| 22 September 2026 | Deluxe edition unlocks |
| 24 September 2026 | Standard release on PS5 and PC |
What the reviews say, without spoilers
- Eurogamer: told with surprising directness for a series that delights in obfuscation; not concerned with big twists. TheSixthAxis: the most forthcoming Silent Hill at explaining the mythology of the fog and the Otherworld.
- Or too withholding: PlayStation Universe found long spells between breadcrumbs, and Push Square did not fully understand the events by the credits.
- The themes are new to the series: corporate greed and environmental mismanagement (IGN), corporate colonisation and worker exploitation (Eurogamer), banal corporate arrogance in the late-nineties North Sea (Rock Paper Shotgun), whistleblowers and cover-ups (GamingTrend).
- Simon is a cipher, deliberately, and the other characters are the interesting ones (Eurogamer, PC Gamer, PlayStation Universe). The three leads (Jovan Adepo, Kezia Burrows, Terry O'Quinn) get plenty of praise from TheSixthAxis, which wishes one of them were Scottish; nearly everyone else in the cast is.
- A second run reframes the first: GamesRadar+ calls New Game+ the first playthrough times a million, and TheSixthAxis wants a third, fourth and fifth.
Beyond the premise
You play three people
Zoe and Richard have chapters of their own (Part 2 and 3 for Zoe, Part 5 for Richard), and each shows a different side of the same disaster. The shift comes early; the reviews keep their identities back.
CEG
The organisation on the picket signs in the first square. Simon is heavily involved with CEG, the corporate entity with direct involvement in the island and its people, and the game is a playable cross-section of a company's reputation management: greenwashing, restructuring memos, damage control.
Zoe's nightmare
Her chapters relive the aftermath as a nurse and first responder trying to save one patient. The first half reads as the early months of the pandemic (NHS staff brutalised, minimal resources), with Dr. Glenn snarling orders through a speaker in the operating theatre.
Richard's office
Richard can never quite reach the tenth floor of a certain office, pillaging himself over and over in a quest for redemption; the trophy Find Yourself is making it back there. VGC: Part 5's repeating visual is darkly hilarious and brilliantly clever.
The chapter names are a map
The chapter list reads as the story's shape: Cold Open, Escape, A Connection, Searching for Zoe, Zoe Rounds, Journey to Medical, Zoe The Patient, Many Into One, Begin Again, Missing Parts, Inside CEG HQ, Richard: Getting Inside, Richard: Another Attempt, Fix This, Trying Again, Eraser, Returning.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 22 September 2026 against Konami's Steam description, the PlayStation Blog, Wikipedia, VGC, PowerPyx and the launch reviews at Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, IGN, PC Gamer, GamingTrend, TheSixthAxis, Push Square, PlayStation Universe and GamesRadar+. What each character did, and what happened to the town, is not on this page. Not from a playthrough: cross-referenced against official developer announcements and verified community archives. Still to confirm in-game.