Revision 7

SILENT HILL: Townfall began as a concept during the 2020 lockdown, was announced in October 2022, then went almost entirely quiet for more than three years before a full reveal in February 2026. Screen Burn has framed that gap itself as the end of one act and the start of another.

Concept and Announcement

The studio, then still called No Code, met Annapurna Interactive and Konami not long after shipping Observation in 2019. "We started working on a concept in lockdown," the studio wrote later. The project was announced publicly on October 20, 2022, with a teaser trailer that had gone up the previous day.

Very little published in the years that followed describes the game as it exists now. The 2026 reveal was presented in a substantially different form, so material from the 2022 to 2025 window should not be treated as a description of the current game. One thread does connect the two: Screen Burn and Konami have both confirmed that the February 2026 trailer picks up where the 2022 teaser left off, showing the same pocket television and finally revealing who it belongs to.

The Quiet Years

In September 2024, Annapurna Interactive's games staff resigned as a group after a failed negotiation to spin the division out. Reported headcounts differ, so no precise number is recorded here. Annapurna publicly confirmed that this project would continue: "We deeply apologize for any concerns about SILENT HILL: Townfall. SILENT HILL: Townfall will continue to be co-developed by KONAMI, Annapurna Interactive, and No Code." That statement predates the studio's rename, which is why it uses the older name.

On July 23, 2025, No Code became Screen Burn, and the studio used the announcement to acknowledge the silence directly: a decade in, still crafting a nightmare, a small team making a big game, and asking for patience. The reasoning behind the name change is on the Screen Burn page.

The 2026 Campaign

Press played the game in two waves. The first ran in July 2026, in sessions of roughly three to four hours held at a hotel in Los Angeles, followed by developer roundtables. The second ran at gamescom itself, in sessions of about ninety minutes, with those write-ups appearing between late August and early September 2026. Both waves covered the opening of the game only, and everything reported from them describes a pre-release build. The build was characterised as near-final.

The Final Weeks and Launch

Everything Konami scheduled for August took place. The showcase trailer aired on August 25 and gamescom ran from August 26 to 30 with the announced booth attraction in place. Konami described that attraction in advance only as an immersive interactive experience and published no description of its format, and no first-hand account of going through it has appeared since, so what it actually contained is not recorded here.

Tokyo Game Show was the last scheduled event before launch, and Konami's own show material named the attraction there: a Townfall immersive theater, described as a special theater where visitors experience the world of the game ahead of release, a walk-through installation rather than a playable demo. Visitors who completed it received a replica of the medical wristband Simon wears, in limited quantities, and an original shirt went to Deluxe pre-purchasers. The Special Stage ran on September 19 from 14:30 to 16:00 with series producer Motoi Okamoto, followed by about fifty minutes of live play by a guest, and was archived as a recording the same day. Konami then cancelled its September 21 show day because of a typhoon, so the booth ran for two public days rather than three. The stage and the booth are described on Events and Appearances.

The final week brought the last pieces of the campaign. PlayStation published a ninety-second Features Trailer on September 16, 2026, alongside a post co-written by Okamoto and Jon McKellan about the PlayStation 5 version, and the Launch Trailer followed on September 21, described by Konami as featuring new monsters and haunting locations that await in St. Amelia. Review coverage went live the same day, three days before release, and critical reception was positive; the aggregate picture is on the SILENT HILL: Townfall overview. Digital Deluxe early access opened on September 22, and the game was released on September 24, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Steam and the Epic Games Store.

No preload window was announced before release. The nearest thing was on the storefronts rather than in a post: Steam carried an Advance Access module for the Deluxe Edition, telling pre-purchasers they could play two days ahead of full release, and the PlayStation Store's only download-scheduling language was a note that automatic download requires automatic login and sign-in to be switched on.

On launch day Konami posted two notices on Steam: an update to address performance problems in the Steam version was being prepared, with its date to be announced, and an issue that had stopped some pre-purchase and Deluxe Edition content from unlocking had been resolved. Konami's launch announcement also put the SILENT HILL series as a whole at more than 17.8 million copies sold worldwide as of the end of June 2026, a franchise figure rather than a sales number for this game. No sales figure for Townfall itself had been published as of September 27, 2026.

The event schedule and the press sessions are broken out on Events and Appearances.

Production Notes

Voice-over and motion capture were both recorded for the game. McKellan has described writing to the composer's demo tracks before either was captured, using the music to work out pacing and atmosphere first. Environment research trips to the Scottish coast fed directly into the art, and the engine and presentation choices are covered on Art Direction and Presentation.

Every official trailer and video released during the campaign is listed on Trailers and Media, and the people behind the game are on Jon McKellan, Motoi Okamoto and Screen Burn.