Highlights
- Konami released a surprise new Silent Hill game, Silent Hill: The Short Message, for free on PS5.
- The game deals with contemporary problems like social media and cyberbullying.
To the surprise of many horror fans, Konami has released a brand-new Silent Hill game on PS5 completely free of charge. Silent Hill: The Short Message was one of two Silent Hill projects that were given the spotlight at the latest PlayStation State of Play event.
Many Silent Hill fans are eagerly looking forward to the Silent Hill 2 remake, which is in development at Layers of Fear studio Bloober Team. The Silent Hill 2 remake was featured prominently at the latest State of Play, with a brand-new gameplay trailer that showed off some of the new game's creatures and revamped combat. But while many fans tuned in to the State of Play expecting to see Silent Hill 2, it's safe to say that there weren't many who expected to see Silent Hill: The Short Message.
Every Silent Hill Game, Ranked
Silent Hill is one of the only truly scary gaming franchises. Here is every one of the survival horror games, ranked.
Silent Hill: The Short Message is a first-person horror game that Konami made as an experimental project. Developed in collaboration with Hexdrive, Silent Hill: The Short Message deals with "contemporary problems" and tackles themes like social media and cyberbullying. Silent Hill: The Short Message is free to download on PlayStation 5 right now, so anyone interested in checking out the new horror experience can do so immediately.
Silent Hill: The Short Message Trailer
Longtime Silent Hill fans will recall that this isn't the first time that Konami surprise-dropped a first-person project for the franchise. A decade ago, Konami released P.T., the "playable teaser" meant to hype Hideo Kojima's Silent Hills game. Unfortunately, Silent Hills was canceled and Kojima split from Konami. Eventually, the publisher removed P.T. from the PlayStation Store altogether. This has helped some PS4 consoles gain some value on the secondhand market, but has otherwise left PlayStation gamers disappointed.
While unlikely, it's entirely possible that history could repeat itself with Silent Hill: The Short Message, so horror fans should be sure to snag it immediately. It's unclear at the time of this writing if Silent Hill: The Short Message has any kind of major connection to other Silent Hill projects, so fans will have to play through it for themselves to find out.
Silent Hill: The Short Message and the Silent Hill 2 remake aren't the only games in the beloved survival-horror franchise that are in the works. Silent Hill: Townfall and the mysterious Silent Hill f are also in development. Fans should be able to expect more information on those projects at some point after the Silent Hill 2 remake releases to the masses.
