Silent Hill F Release Date, Trailers, And Everything We Know So Far

Silent Hill is on its way back. After many years spent away--the last mainline game came in 2012--there's suddenly a ton of Silent Hill projects on the way. Though it won't be the first out of the gate, the one that seems to have the most buzz around it is Silent Hill F, a new mainline sequel from a studio in Japan comprised of some survival-horror veterans. Here's everything we know about Silent Hill F.

Silent Hill F release date

Given that we know very little about the game so far, it's sensible that the public doesn't yet have a release date for the game. We can surmise it's probably at least another year away, given how the Silent Hill 2 remake is expected to land in 2024. It seems unlikely both would launch in the same year.

Platforms

As for platforms, none were mentioned during its reveal, but we can reasonably assume that it will land on PC as well as Xbox and PS5. Last-gen platforms, however, seem less likely the further away we are from its launch. Unlike the Silent Hill 2 remake, which will launch as a timed PlayStation exclusive, no such stipulation was mentioned for Silent Hill F. For now, we'd bet it's coming to all major platforms at once, perhaps with the exception of Switch, which is proving less capable of handling current-gen games as time goes on.

Silent Hill F dev team

Silent Hill F comes from Neobards Entertainment, a team that has largely been a support studio in the past. The studio has worked on several Capcom games, including Resident Evil 2, 3, 7, and ReVerse, the multiplayer mode tied to Resident Evil Village, as well as titles like Marvel's Avengers and No Straight Roads.

Though the team has only lent a hand to horror games in its past portfolio, there's reason to believe it's ready to take the next step and lead the development of a major sequel. The game's story will be penned by famed Japanese writer Ryukishi07, the author of the acclaimed When They Cry visual novel series. Additionally, Motoi Okamoto, who previously worked at Nintendo from 1998 to 2007, has been named a producer on the project.

Trailers

Because we've only seen the game pop up once, we have just the one trailer to go off of, but it's a fun one for those who like the series' penchant for mystery and weirdness. In the trailer below, which notably does not include imagery taken from the game itself, we see a Japanese village blanketed in fog. Following that, we see what looks like a student standing by a roadside memorial of some kind. As the trailer jumps around between different scenes, it morphs into what may be the Otherworld, a twisted reflection of the safer world the characters in Silent Hill games usually start in.

As piano music plays and the world rapidly decays, a young woman, seemingly a different one than that who was mourning, runs for her life from an unseen threat. The trailer then cuts to a girl--it's unclear if it's a third one or one of the others shown before--as she moves across still, foggy waters atop a float made of vibrant flowers. The flowers grow from her head and vaguely recall Midsommar's fateful final moments, though it arguably surpasses that grotesque final scene with one of its own: The girl's face peels off her head like a sticker that's no longer adhesive. Yuck.

Why is it called Silent Hill F?

The weird name given to this project does not appear to be a working title. Instead, it may be a reference to sheet music, as the F, or more accurately, "f," as it's styled in the game's logo, is the symbol for forte, which means loud. Musicians can use this symbol in their sheet music to denote that a section ought to be played loudly. Given the creeping piano music that builds in tempo and volume as the trailer goes on, it may be that the story involves music, or perhaps even stars a musician--maybe the girl mourning in the beginning of the trailer goes to a school for aspiring musicians.

There's seemingly something musical going on here, though it'll take some time before we can piece it together better.

Other upcoming Silent Hill projects

If you're looking for a different Silent Hill project--or even all of them currently in the works--here's a quick rundown:

Silent Hill 2 is being remade from the ground up by Bloober Team (Layers of Fear, The Medium) and will come to PS5 first for a period of exclusivity. Silent Hill Townfall is a likely smaller project from the horror legends at No Code (Observation, Stories Untold). Already available, Silent Hill Ascension is a MILE, or massively interactive live event, which blurs the line between video game and serialized spectator horror. For something outside of games, Silent Hill 2 is also being adapted into a movie--the third movie in the series. It's an exciting time to be a Silent Hill fan.