Annapurna's Silent Hill: Townfall Is Scarier Than It Has Any Right to Be | Hands-On

0:05What's good, everybody? We are here at Summer Games Fest. I got a chance to check out a bunch of dopeness from our friends over at Annapurna. Got a chance to check out Silent Hill Townfall, which has been one of my most anticipated games as a big Silent Hill fan. I've been waiting to check that thing out for a long time. You know, I think one of the things that people have been coming to that game with is, you know, does it feel like a Silent Hill game? We have a black protagonist now that has been a part of the conversation from a lot of parts of the discussion around the internet. And does it feel like we are now kind of getting that good Konami flavor that we are used to?

0:36And I have to say, you know, with the small and very fast demo that we got a chance to check out, it feels really, really cool to see how well they have put together a world that feels, you know, cohesive, feels really beautiful. They are using Unreal Engine 5 on this game and they've done something I think is really smart, which is taking this game from a third-person game to a first-person game, which I think changes a lot of the pieces of how this game kind of comes across as a horror game. One of the things they kind of talked about that I thought was really, really smart was kind of building scale within the world.

1:10You know, having the things that you're kind of touching and interacting with be basically one-to-one replicas in terms of their size and how you're kind of seeing those things in the world. it did give something that felt really interesting towards how you're going to kind of see the world how you're going to kind of be in the space and you know when you're thinking about things that are creepy around your your world that there might be things that are innocuous in the ways you think of them it gives a new kind of idea of like what this kind of horror can be it's very subtle in the way that it kind of comes across um there's also this really cool device that you have which is this almost kind of CRT-esque kind of device that you're holding while you're kind of getting those normal Silent Hill signals, that kind of static you feel, and bringing those things into the world.

1:55They had a really cool part of the demo where basically they were seeing the videos that were kind of being broadcast through the device and just kind of guiding you to where you need to go in the world because they didn't want to give you a ton of actual like direction in the ways that we usually think of. There weren't a lot of, you know, markers on the world. There weren't a lot of things on the HUD that were giving you like go here kind of moments but what they would do is they would have these um interactions with things in the world pictures other items in the space and your main character would kind of remark about those things but not audibly you would have the things that were being thought of in his mind kind of come up as text on the screen which was a really nice and kind of subtle way as well to kind of bring some level of immersion into the game that we hadn't really seen before and I think will make this game feel a lot, feel very different than what we've seen in the kind of Silent Hill lineage of games.

2:46So I came away really impressed with what I got a chance to see. Again, the game is gorgeous. It looks stunning. And I'm really hoping that we get a chance to check out more of it coming down the line. The second game that we got a chance to check out was The Lost Wild, which is coming from our friends over at Giant 8. They talked about the story of how this kind of, you know, Made, this one gentleman who who's the head of the team, got his fingers into the gaming space by modding some games that he had been playing around with in CryEngine, and then building out a team, and then having this game be their first foray into the big game development space.

3:24I'm really digging what this game is bringing to the table. You're at this one woman who's found herself in this lush environment, kind of found out in the woods, in this space that is run by this corporation that has been run down and you're trying to figure out exactly where you are what you're doing in this place that is inhabited by dinosaurs and usually in games like this you're looking to find ways to defeat those as enemies and try to figure out ways to kind of kill those monsters or even classify them or think of them as monsters while this game is looking at it very differently where they're looking at the dinosaurs as just creatures in the world that you are kind of you know the the foreign object in the space so how do you kind of interact with that how do you kind of move maneuver around it?

4:06And how do you think about the world that is kind of coming to your knowledge or finding the knowledge around the world that you're inhabiting, but also trying to figure out why are you there? What's the story of the world around you? And how do you kind of make sure that you're not getting tracked and hunted by these dinosaurs by being stealthy? You're crawling around, you're walking around, trying to hide through and use the foliage as cover. I thought it was really smartly done. I hadn't really seen a game that's trying to be the anti-kill game in that way in a while. It's nice to be able to see dinosaurs treated as not just enemies in the world, but things and animals that are trying to just live and survive in a space that I'm sure that they are also being given in a way that they don't understand as these kind of big animals.

4:57And they kind of ended it with this really dope supernatural kind of tinge to it that I thought was smart and brought everybody back into what this game is potentially going to wind up being for folks who are going to play it. So I left that demo really, really excited for it and really happy to see that teams are bridging out a lot of these different games in different ways and kind of expanding genres that we hadn't seen before. So I think, you know, Annapurna is doing a really fantastic job. There, and the last game that we got a chance to check out was Demi in the Featured Dream, which is very Zelda-esque.

5:29It was a very short demo. where you're kind of going through and learning the mechanics of this character who has a sword and is working through these small dungeons. There wasn't a lot of information given in terms of the backstory for what that was. We'll probably get some more of that when we get more of the information back from post-show, when we get a chance to talk to PR about the games themselves. But it was really taken with the art style. It was really pretty. It was really cute. And the enemies in that space felt easy, but didn't feel like they were trying to necessarily give you a ton of work to get those boys down and work through them.

6:04It felt very like if you're looking for something that's very casual, but fun and it gives you a little bit of pushback, this is a good game for you. And that's everything here from Annapurna. We got more stuff to show.