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Jon McKellan is the writer and game director of SILENT HILL: Townfall at Screen Burn, the Glasgow studio he co-founded in 2015 under its original name, No Code. Konami's own material credits him as lead writer and game director. He also writes the studio's development update posts.

Before Townfall

His brother Graeme McKellan is lead game designer on Townfall. More than one account describes the studio as founded by veterans of Alien: Isolation rather than by one person alone.

On the Setting

McKellan has said he chased a Haar, the sea fog that rolls in on the east coast of Scotland, and photographed it rather than imagining it: "I could go to a town that looks like St. Amelia and find a fog that looks like SILENT HILL and come back and show the team, here's what the game needs to look like." On one of those trips the fog closed in until the team could no longer tell which way the coast was, and he has said that moment is where the game's opening came from.

On why Scotland: "Scotland is naturally a very foggy region, making it a perfect fit for Silent Hill." On what the research trips were for: "It's the smell and the wind and the sound of the place, all of that together is what you're trying to recreate. You're not just trying to recreate the visuals, you're trying to recreate the vibe, and there's no better way of doing it than spending time there."

He has named isolation as his subject: "There's like an existential dread that comes with that. Silent Hill has always had a sense of not being able to leave the town, and face why you're there. That isolation isn't just for the protagonist, but also for the town." He has called the town itself the story's main character. More is on St. Amelia.

On the CRTV

The idea of replacing the series radio was there from the start. "In the earliest stages, it was a standard radio, but we set a challenge for ourselves: how could we make the radio an active tool rather than a passive one?" He has described the unease as deliberate: "In a modern context, analog technology feels a bit unstable, unreliable, or hard to trust completely. We wanted to create a situation where players have to rely on this device to survive, even while feeling uneasy about relying on it too much."

In the studio tour he holds up a very small handheld television and says it inspired the device. He has described analog technology as his visual calling card. The device is covered on CRTV.

On Design

On refusing to pick a playstyle for the player: "Rather than forcing a single playstyle, we want players to experiment and discover which approach feels most effective or suitable for each situation as they fight to survive." On audio doing the work a narrow field of view cannot: "We intentionally created situations in which players must rely heavily on subtle noises and audio cues to perceive threats lurking beyond what their eyes can see."

On the palette: "as you progress through the game, players will discover that these two colors hold a deeply symbolic and vital significance for our protagonist, Simon." On how the three principals relate: "Zoe's story is with Simon, and Simon's story is with our other character we see at the beginning. They're all deeply connected, but they don't really know how or why."

On how endings are decided: "They're not based on the A, B choices. It's more how you play, the things that you've done, the time you've spent in areas." On whether any of them is canon: "I don't think there's a canon of this is what happened." See Endings.

He has described the tone he was aiming for as an intelligent thriller, closer to prestige television than to a conventional horror script, and has said every creature represents something tied to the story. He has also confirmed the game was developed as a Silent Hill title from the very beginning rather than pitched as something else and reskinned. In an interview conducted at gamescom and published on September 13, 2026, he said the first-person view opened new possibilities rather than posing problems: Simon's thoughts are shown as text on screen instead of spoken aloud, which lets the game convey his inner state without a visible face, and the CRTV is a system that only works from that perspective. He said the game deliberately blurs where reality ends and delusion begins, avoids saying or showing too much about what really happened, and is meant to leave players wondering even after the ending which events were real. On Simon he was specific that the character's lack of memory of the island is not amnesia; see Simon Ordell.

Working Method

McKellan wrote to the composer's demo tracks before either voice-over or motion capture was recorded, using the music to work out pacing and atmosphere first. He has said the demos became the soundtrack to development itself. He worked with Byron Bullock for years on Alien: Isolation and described bringing him back for Townfall as getting the band back together. See Music and Audio.

On September 16, 2026 he co-wrote a post with Motoi Okamoto for the platform holder's blog on the PlayStation 5 version, covering ray-traced lighting, the custom 3D audio systems built with Audio Director Byron Bullock and the DualSense features, and describing the game's horror as less about jump scares and gore than about tension and escalating uncertainty. See PS5 Features.