Silent Hill f Preview: Restless Dreams In Abundance

Silent Hill f is by far the best game I played at Gamescom 2025. One that immediately had me invested in its world and story, and one that I’ll be thinking about for the next few weeks (mostly through nightmares).

After a few hours with the game though I came away from the experience desperate for more, and I’ll tell you why.

Silent Hill f, like its predecessors, nails the atmosphere. Quiet Japanese towns and villages are often depicted as quite peaceful. Quaint little locations that serve as a starting area for the story where we learn more about our protagonists before they depart on their grand adventure.

This wasn’t the case with Silent Hill f because as soon as the game gave me control of its protagonist Hinako, the world around me was already blanketed by a thick fog, and it didn’t take long to find out what was lurking within it.

Konami

Tasked with finding your friends the town is quickly overrun by not just fog, but some kind of demonic, crimson vegetation.

Its inhabitants are replaced with mannequins that creak and crack as they move, limbs pointing in different directions and heads on swivels. They turn what should be a charming town into a claustrophobic nightmare that rarely lets you drop your guard.

The town itself wasn’t the only setting I explored either as Silent Hill f seems to be going all in on spirituality. The Silent Hill games have always been supernatural but it appears Silent Hill f will give players a tour of spirit realms, and even introduce us to some deities and demons that’ll tell our character’s faith.

My demo had a good mix of combat and puzzles, both of which could have their difficulty changed to suit your preferred playstyle. For the purposes of the demo and just so I could see enough of it I played with the combat on Story Mode and the puzzles on their default setting. I also played with the English dub but I’ll likely stick with the original Japanese for the full game.

Konami

Like most Silent Hill protagonists, Hinako isn’t built for combat, so in the several enemy encounters I experienced every swing of my metal pipe felt like I was gambling with my life. A combination of light and heavy attacks would always do the job but you need to time your hits carefully to avoid swingbacks. Like Silent Hill 2 (2024) you could dodge away from incoming damage, and striking an enemy at the right time would cause stun. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to soulslikes since playing the Gamescom demo and I thoroughly disagree with that.

Puzzles were no doubt the highlight of the demo for me though. My favourite involved a field surrounded by fog that could only be navigated with the help of “scarecrows”. These scarecrows had pins inserted into them which could be pulled out. The objective was to find the right pin to remove so it’d point you in the direction of escape, but choosing wrong would animate it, as it sprang to life and began slashing at me with a scythe.

There was much more to the demo but I’d hate to spoil it further, just know that Silent Hill f is impressive on multiple levels, and if you're a longtime fan of the series or getting into it for the first time, it’s well-worth your attention.