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Screen Burn
August 20, 2026 at 02:32 AM
Initial version covering the studio's founding, rename, released games, awards and key staff
Screen Burn is an independent game development studio based in Glasgow, Scotland, and the developer of SILENT HILL: Townfall. Konami's description of it is "specialising in atmospheric and often tense, narrative-driven experiences." Its legal entity is Screen Burn Interactive Ltd.
The studio was founded in 2015 under the name No Code, starting, in its own words, as just a few close friends and family. It announced its rename to Screen Burn on July 23, 2025, in a post titled "End of Act 1, beginning of Act 2."
The reasoning was given at length. "No Code" made sense in 2015, when the team was told it was impossible to make games without a coder and did it anyway. By 2025 the studio had plenty of coders, and the phrase had also become a generic term for app development and training courses, which was clogging the inbox. Asked what they had always been instead, the answer they landed on was analogue televisions and 3.5-inch disk drives: "Nostalgic and imperfect. We make games that stick with you, long after the credits roll. Games that persist. Like an old arcade machine, with the UI burned into the display forever."
Name | Period |
|---|---|
No Code | 2015 to July 2025 |
Screen Burn | July 2025 onward |
Title | Year |
|---|---|
Super Arc Light | 2016 |
Stories Untold | 2017 |
Observation | 2019 |
Stories Untold and Observation were both released with Devolver Digital. Konami's press-release studio biography names only those two; the studio itself counts Super Arc Light as its first released title. These are the team's prior work and are not connected to Townfall's story or systems.
Observation won Best British Game at the BAFTA Games Awards in 2020. Screen Burn notes that this made it the first Scottish development studio ever to win the award. The studio has also twice won a Best Places to Work award.
The studio describes itself as a small team making a big game, and says the Townfall team is now three times the size of the one that made Observation. Secondary reports have put the headcount at roughly 30 people, though no primary source gives a number. Screen Burn has been hiring on Townfall itself, including a Senior Producer listing posted in May 2026. More than one account describes the studio as founded by veterans of Alien: Isolation rather than by one person alone.
Person | Role |
|---|---|
Jon McKellan | Writer and Director. Previously UI director on Alien: Isolation, where he designed its motion tracker. Author of the studio's development update posts. |
Graeme McKellan | Lead Game Designer, and Jon McKellan's brother. |
Anthony Scott Burns, as Pilotpriest | Composer. See Music and Audio. |
Byron Bullock and the team at Arrival | Audio co-development partner, handling cutscene audio, foley, sound effects and the dynamic score system. |
One QA Lead at the studio has said on camera that they have played roughly 3,000 hours of the game. The speaker is not clearly identified in the video's caption track, so no name is attached to that here.
After shipping Observation, the studio was working out what to do next when Annapurna Interactive called to ask what it would do with Silent Hill. "That froze us in our tracks," the team has said. "It's not an opportunity we ever thought we'd get, but it's one we knew we all wanted right away." Screen Burn put together a pitch and brought it to Konami, which took it.
Okamoto's account matches from the other side: Annapurna introduced Konami to Screen Burn, and Konami had played Stories Untold and Observation and was happy to leave the project in the studio's hands. McKellan has confirmed the game was developed as a Silent Hill title from the very beginning rather than pitched as something else and reskinned. The full project timeline is on Development History.
