"Silent Hill F" is another work that can rekindle people's hope for this IP.

After Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill ƒ is another title casting new hope over the IP.
As part of the “Silent Hill revival plan,” prior multimedia experiments—such as the interactive streaming drama Silent Hill: Ascension and the smaller Silent Hill: Text Messages piece—were met with mixed reception. While Silent Hill ƒdoes have Ryukishi07 serving as the writer (which given his past work is a double-edged sword), the fact that it’s being developed by a relatively unknown Hong Kong outsourcing studio, NeoBards / “泥巴娱乐”, initially made many fans wary.

Yet after a full playthrough, one finds that Silent Hill ƒ is not as terrible as the skeptics predicted—but it also doesn’t exceed expectations in every respect. While the game bears signs of a small studio—the battle feel is somewhat rough, the pacing is sometimes awkward—it still succeeds in delivering the essence of a true Silent Hill experience.

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Japanese Small Town, Fog, and Mystery

Silent Hill ƒ is set in a 1960s Japanese town called Ebisugaoka (戎之丘), placing it chronologically even earlier than Silent Hill: Origins. The protagonist, Hinako Shimizu (深水雛子), is a high-school girl living with her parents and having close friends at school. After a quarrel, Hinako leaves home and meets up with friends, only to return to find the town wrapped in fog and all residents vanished. Red spider lilies bloom everywhere, and strange monsters—including one named the “Fog Phantom” (雾之怪)—begin stalking Hinako and her friends.

Within ten minutes of the game’s start, players transition with Hinako into the “surface world”. Here, the explorable environment is limited—town street layouts, occasional residences, blocked paths, and a handful of side-nooks containing collectibles. The structure is heavily linear, so it’s rare to lose your way.

The early sections evoke the feel of an RPG Maker horror game: narrow corridors, dead ends, even voice lines like “this path is completely blocked, let’s go another way” when logic says it should be passable. Traditional horror tropes appear too—for instance, entering a room, seeing a corpse; returning, corpse gone; reentering, the corpse turns into a monster and ambushes you.

When Hinako falls unconscious or enters a trance, she enters a separate “Shrine World” (里世界)—a dreamlike domain filled with Inari statues. Unlike prior Silent Hill “other worlds” that were tied to real town areas, this one is a distinct psychological realm. The Shrine World’s layouts shift each time; puzzles are more abstract. Interestingly, the horror intensity there is often lower than on the surface—because Hinako receives guidance from a fox-mask man and weapons in the Shrine World don’t degrade, unlike in the surface world where weapons suffer durability loss.

In gameplay terms, both surface and Shrine worlds mix exploration, puzzle solving, combat, and item collection. The puzzle design is a highlight: in the surface world, there are scarecrow puzzles in fields where you must identify the genuine ones from twisted imposters, sometimes under threat of retaliation. Some “scarecrows” move when unobserved, adding to the tension. In the Shrine World, puzzles may require toggling colored switches in paired fashion, where activating one side disables another pathway—so sequence and positioning matter.

These puzzles don’t feel tacked on; they hint at narrative depth. Even though Silent Hill ƒ’s setting is distant from classic American Silent Hill, the game manages to evoke its uncanny flavor, rather than feeling like a generic horror title.

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Blood, Fear, and Combat

Fans of Silent Hill ƒ often label Hinako a “battle goddess” because despite her innocuous appearance, she can take down monsters many times her size. In narrative diaries she attributes her toughness to playing with boys. Mechanically, she is designed to be strong (balanced by stamina limits so she doesn’t just steamroll monsters).

Combat is where the game tries to stride between horror and action. The depth lies in “psychic energy” charging and timing signal windows in enemy attacks. Hold a button to charge, then strike when the enemy is in a moment of vulnerability to inflict a long stun and follow up with combos. Attacks have signals—a brief flicker before an enemy acts, akin to Bloodborne parries. Hitting correctly yields rewards similar to charged hits.

But precision is tricky: not all attacks show a signal, and some enemy patterns are unpredictable—called “neuro-knife” attacks by fans. Moreover, charging costs psychic energy; overusing it can leave you unable to perform charge attacks and force you into reactive play. Some enemies inflict psychic damage, which chips away at this energy bar—so attacking aggressively carries real risk.

Where Silent Hill ƒ struggles is in feel and variety. Hit feedback is weak, monster types are few (only a dozen or so across both worlds), and many battles feel redundant. Enemies drop nothing, so some fights feel like time sinks. The camera and narrow corridors sometimes block visibility, and occasional collisions or rebounds (when your weapon clashes with geometry) break immersion.

Still, the “Merit / Devotion” system is interesting. Players can convert consumables for health, psychic or stamina into Merit (功德) at shrines, which redeem into amulets (buffs for charge speed, perfect dodge windows, etc.) or ema (prayer plaques) delivering permanent stat upgrades. This puts you in a trade tunnel—spend now for survival, or convert resources for long-term growth.

Some healing items are locked from conversion, preventing greedy Corrupt builds. On Story Difficulty, consumables are generous. In a first run, I converted most items but still lacked enough to max stats. Silent Hill ƒ is clearly designed with multiple playthroughs in mind.

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The Loop of Replays

Rather than conclude with a full narrative closure, Silent Hill ƒ forces the first playthrough into a bad ending. Many plot threads—friend relationships, Hinako’s origins—remain unresolved. In a second run, dialogue and routes change, hidden truths emerge. It resembles visual-novel layered storytelling.

However, unlike classic Silent Hill titles, you almost must play multiple runs to fully understand the story. That can feel unsatisfying for players who prefer complete narratives in one go. And because gameplay loops recycle with minimal variant, the incentive to replay isn’t as strong as in more nonlinear or open titles.

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Conclusion

Ignoring the stillborn P.T. and the Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill ƒ is arguably the first legitimate new mainline entry in the series after over a decade. It’s unique: blending psychological horror, inner turmoil, and grotesque spectacle. Under its rough edges, the combat system offers a surprisingly tense, rewarding experience.

If you come for the core Silent Hill vibe, don’t mind replaying stories, and can forgive rough controls and limited enemy variety, Silent Hill ƒ delivers a worthy horror journey.

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