Silent Hill: Townfall review – shame and suffering on the Scottish coast

PlayStation 5 (version played), PC; Screen Burn Tragedy, and an apocalyptic fog, befall a fishing community. It is up to outsider Simon to offer some kind of closure You spend a considerable portion of Silent Hill: Townfall in a kind of foetal position, cowering behind objects that will be eerily familiar to anyone who lived in the UK during the 1990s. Cars seem to be modelled on the era’s boxy Volkswagen Golfs; logos adorning phone boxes should narrowly escape the attention of copyright lawyers at BT Group.

(For millennials, the deja vu will likely intensify the horror, as if stepping back into a childhood nightmare. ) Simon, the nerdy, unassuming star of the game, pokes his head around corners to catch a glimpse of the demonic entities that wish to maim him, before shrinking back down again with a downwards motion of the analogue stick. In such moments, it’s easy to imagine him wrapping his arms around his knees, clasping his eyes shut and wishing himself away from this place. The game’s setting, St Amelia, is based on the fishing communities of the East Neuk of Fife. The terror lurking here is wonderfully specific: absent lairds, island poverty, an oil-drilling corporation.…