If you’ve spent any time in the foggy, rusted-out suburbs of gaming history, you know how Silent Hill is. It’s messy, it’s traumatic, and it has more layers than a Christopher Nolan dream sequence.
With Silent Hill: Townfall looming on the horizon like a Pyramid Head in a grocery store aisle, everyone is trying to figure out where this new nightmare fits. If you want to understand the lore before Simon Ordell (our new lucky contestant) who starts his therapy-by-fire in Townfall, you need the real story.
Here is the sorted, slightly unhinged, chronological guide to Silent Hill games :
| Era | Game | Release | What’s Happening? |
| 1960s | Silent Hill f | 2025 | The Beginning: Takes place in Japan. It's about creepy flowers and schoolgirls sprouting petals. It proves the "Silent Hill" curse is global. |
| 1976 | Origins | 2007 | The Setup: A trucker named Travis saves a girl from a fire. This starts the "Cult Era" where a group tries to raise a dark god. |
| 1983 | Silent Hill 1 | 1999 | The Classic: Harry Mason crashes his car and looks for his daughter, Cheryl. He meets the cult and the "Otherworld" for the first time. |
| 1993 | Silent Hill 2 | 2001 | The Masterpiece: James Sunderland goes to town because his dead wife sent him a letter. This one's about James feeling guilty for being a "bad husband." |
| 1996 | Townfall | 2026 | The New Mystery: Set on a Scottish island called St. Amelia. You play as Simon, a guy with a portable 90s TV who is trying to solve a medical mystery. |
| 2000 | Silent Hill 3 | 2003 | The Sequel: Heather (Harry’s daughter) is now a teen. The cult comes back to finish what they started. Expect lots of blood and amusement parks. |
| 2001 | Silent Hill 4 | 2004 | The Lockdown: Henry is locked in his apartment. He finds a hole in his wall that leads to a serial killer’s dream. |
| Modern | Short Message | 2024 | The Present: A modern story about social media and bullying. It shows the "fog" can even haunt you through your smartphone. |
1. The "It’s All Alessa’s Fault" Era (The Foundations)
Games : Silent Hill: Origins (Set in 1976) - Silent Hill 1 (1983) - Silent Hill 3 (2000ish)
This is the "Holy Trinity" of this cult franchise. If you think your childhood was rough, Alessa Gillespie makes the kids from Stranger Things look like they’re on a permanent Disney vacation.
Origins: We start with Travis Grady, a trucker with 'mommy issues' who decides to run into a burning building. Rookie mistake. This sets up the psychic split of Alessa’s soul.
SH1 : Harry Mason (the Dad) crashes his car and spends the entire game shouting "Have you seen a short girl with black hair?" at demons. He’s, in a way, the Liam Neeson of the 80s, but with fewer bullets and more radio static.
SH3 : Fast forward to Alessa’s reincarnation, Heather. She’s a teenager who just wants to go to the mall but ends up birthed-by-a-god in a subway station.
The Townfall Connection : Townfall is being developed by No Code (the guys behind Stories Untold). The teaser features a portable 70s-era television. If Townfall is set in the 70s, it’s happening right alongside Origins. We’re talking peak cult activity here guys!
2. The "Guilt is a Literal Monster" Era (The Psychology)
Games : Silent Hill 2 (1993) - Silent Hill 4: The Room (2001)
This is where the series stopped being about "creepy cults" and started being more about "maybe it's too late for therapy."
Silent Hill 2 : James Sunderland receives a letter from his dead wife. Instead of calling a psychic or moving to Vegas, he goes to the town. This game taught us that if you’re a bad person, the universe will manifest a giant man with a geometric head to chase you with a knife (a really big one).
Silent Hill 4 : Poor Henry Townshend is literally locked in his apartment. It’s like a COVID lockdown simulator, except there’s a hole in his bathroom that leads to a serial killer’s dreamscape.
What you won't find anywhere else on the web : Most timelines forget that Walter Sullivan (the villain of SH4) was actually mentioned in SH2. The story is pretty much interconnected like MCU movies.
3. The "Wait, Are We Still in Maine?" Era (The Outsiders)
Games : Silent Hill: Homecoming - Silent Hill: Downpour
At this point, the town started importing protagonists. We got a soldier with PTSD and a prisoner on a bus. These games are more like the "spin-off" seasons of a show that ran for a bit too long - it has still got some good scares, but you can tell the fog got a little thin in these variants.
4. The Global Infection: Townfall & Silent Hill f
Majority of the gamers and gaming publications are assuming Townfall to be a standalone sequel. It’s NOT.
Silent Hill f : While the rest of the franchise is obsessed with rusty gratings and damp basements, Silent Hill f takes us to 1960s Japan, and honestly? It’s pretty beautiful. Instead of the usual fog, you'll find hypnotizing (and suffocating) infestations of red spider lilies and more. Instead of a nurse with a pipe, you see schoolgirls literally sprouting petals from their faces. By moving the timeline to the 60s, it challenges the idea that the "Order" (main cult of the series) is just a local Maine problem. It suggests that whatever cosmic rot infects the world has deep, beautiful, and terrifying roots that existed long before Harry Mason ever lost his daughter.
Silent Hill : Townfall: Takes us to a coastal town (likely Scotland, based on the "St. Amelia" hints). You play as Simon Ordell, a man who wakes up in the water with a hospital wristband and a heavy dose of guilt about something that he probably realized. Unlike previous games where you rely on a simple radio, Simon uses a CRTV (a 90s pocket television) to tune into the town’s unstable frequencies. You have to squint through actual analog static to see the monsters creeping through the fog. The game leans heavily into "Interface Horror," making you feel like a patient reliving an old (possibly repressed) memory. With the town’s "heart" officially declared dead, Townfall is all about the technical, grainy decay of the human mind.
The Pivot : The Silent Hill 'effect' isn't just a location anymore. It’s a virus. Townfall appears to be about the 'Heart of the Town' stopping. The code hidden in the trailer - "Whatever heart this town had has now stopped", suggests that the supernatural rot is spreading.
If Townfall is indeed a prequel set in the 70s, it might explain why the cult in the original games was so obsessed with bringing their God to Earth - maybe they were trying to restart a 'heart' that had already died in places like St. Amelia.
Graphics : From 'Pixel Fog' to ‘High-resolution Trauma’
In Silent Hill, graphics do a lot more than they are supposed to - they are a narrative tool.
| Game | Release | The Look | The "Vibe" & Technical Secret |
| Silent Hill 1 | 1999 | PS1 Grit | The Masterstroke: The iconic fog was actually a way to hide "pop-in" (objects appearing out of thin air) because the PS1 couldn't handle long distances. It turned a tech limit into the series' soul. |
| Silent Hill 2 | 2001 | Soft-Focus Sadness | The Grain Filter: This introduced a "film noise" over the screen to make it look like an old, decaying movie. It made the guilt-ridden atmosphere feel "dirty" and lived-in. |
| Silent Hill 3 | 2003 | Hyper-Detail | The Facial Peak: For 2003, the character models were witchcraft. Heather’s face showed actual emotion, sweat, and exhaustion, making the body horror feel way more personal. |
| Silent Hill 4 | 2004 | The First-Person Shift | Cramped Reality: The apartment sections were in first-person, forcing you to look at everyday objects (like a fridge or a window) and feel a sense of dread that you weren't safe even at home. |
| Origins | 2007 | Pocket Gloom | Portable Terror: Originally for the PSP, it mastered lighting on a tiny screen. It used harsh, narrow flashlight beams to make the dark corners feel deeper than they actually were. |
| The Short Message | 2024 | Lumen Lighting | Modern Menace: Built on Unreal Engine 5, this used advanced software ray-tracing (Lumen) to make a modern German apartment building look terrifyingly crisp. No fog to hide in here - just sharp, cold reality, in the face. |
| Silent Hill f | 2025 | Red Floral Rot | Nature Horror: Also a UE5 beast. It swapped rusty metal for creepy plants and flowers. The contrast between the beautiful cherry blossoms and eroding skin is the ultimate "pretty kinda gross" aesthetic. |
| Townfall | 2026 | Analog Decay | Diegetic UI: Coming March 26, 2026. This one has been designed to look like a cursed VHS tape. You’ll be squinting through the static of a 1996 pocket TV (the CRTV) to solve puzzles. |
Wrapping Up Townfall Launch and SH games Timelines
Is it a Prequel? Almost certainly. The tech in the trailer is analog. If you see a cassette tape, you’re in the past.
Do I need to play the others? You should at least know that the "Otherworld" (the rusty, bloody version of reality) is fueled by human trauma. If the protagonist looks sad, the walls are going to peel.
Pro-Tip : When Townfall drops, don't look for the monsters in the fog. Look for them in the transmissions. And if a radio starts buzzing? Run. Just... run. Unless you’re James Sunderland, in which case, you’ll probably just stand there and contemplate your life choices while a mannequin tries to kick your confused butt.