horror

Immersing yourself in Silent Hill f is like drinking a powerfully fragrant tea steeped in bloody metaphor and symbolism. The first new, full Silent Hill game in 13 years, f wields a powerful, standalone narrative about the expectations of gender-based roles, the challenge of maintaining relationships in the presence of such roles, and the foggy nature of transitioning from teenage life into adulthood.

The game satisfyingly eschews surface-level storytelling through its various twists and turns. As if retreating into its own mysterious fog, f isn’t easy to fully understand at first. Various plot threads and themes intersect and overlap in a dreamlike fashion. By the game’s ending (of which there are multiple), I had so many questions that weren’t answered–in a good way. I walked away unsure of what I had experienced, where the metaphors began and ended, and just what exactly happened in this sleepy mountainside village. Silent Hill f is a gorgeous and exquisite work of psychological horror that had me desperate to relive its narrative again after the credits rolled. And I don’t think I’ll stop until I squeeze every drop out of this game.

In its moment-to-moment gameplay, Silent Hill f challenges you to fight or evade various horrifying monsters, solve cryptic puzzles, and attempt to piece together a complicated, bi-directional narrative of resistance and submission, both against supernatural horrors and the pressures society places on people, particularly women. Silent Hill f takes a few big risks in its relocation of the series to a new setting and in its slightly more action-focused combat, but these elements all pay off and earn their stay. Its story, though ripe for pitfalls in how it depicts violence and subjugation of women, manages to deliver a shellshock of a horror experience with a rich atmosphere and unsettling tale that entertains on its own terms, and terrifies with depictions of violence and repression that are all too resonant with our experiences of the real world.

Developed by a studio new to the series and following the successful remake of Silent Hill 2, f sees Silent Hill pack its bags and take us on a trip to a fictional rural mountainside village in Japan called Ebisugaoka. Set in the 1960s, the game’s narrative centers the experience of living as a woman in a society that values us only for our potential to be married.

Silent Hill f casts you in the role of teenager Hinako Shimizu as she navigates an unfolding and perplexing set of ghastly horrors. Somewhat of a tomboy, Hinako is at odds with what the rigid expectations her society, and family, place on her as someone assigned female at birth. Early on, we learn that Hinako’s sister has left home after being married off, and that her alcoholic, abusive, and financially reckless father has similar wishes for her.

© Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

After a bitter argument with her parents, she leaves home to find her village slowly being overtaken by a thick fog; strange floral and fleshy overgrowths; contorted, animated mannequins wielding massive kitchen knives; and all sorts of other unspeakable horrors.

Hinako quickly realizes that the only solution is to escape the town she once called home, now transformed into a hellscape. Puzzles and hostile creatures stand in her way as she travels through foggy streets and alleyways, abandoned buildings, and a nightmare-esque realm known as the Dark Shrine.

The monsters stalking the oppressive alleyways of Ebisugaoka and the mire of the Dark Shrine aren’t the only things keeping Hinako company. She’s joined by three friends: two other teenage girls named Sakuko and Rinko, and a boy named Shu. Together, the four of them must survive an indescribable nightmare as they search for a way out of the altered town. Hinako also comes to meet another individual who promises to help her, a mysterious and charming gentleman referred to in writing as simply Fox Mask.

f’s narrative ups and downs can inspire a bloodlust in you that makes Hinako’s  maneuverability and lethality–which far exceed those of her generally clunky predecessor protagonists–all the more rewarding. A sometimes-frustrating weapon degradation system keeps the survival part of the horror grounded, but in moments when the story filled me with an emotional urgency, I was excited to be a more nimble and deadly fighter.

A steel pipe and the audacity to persist

In combat, Hinako is on her own when it comes to dealing with the menacing creatures of the fog. Far more mobile than protagonists in survival horror games usually are, I worried that Hinako’s dexterity might dilute the shambling dread often associated with the genre, but f earns its right to a more action-focused combat system.

© © Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

It’s not that Hinako feels like an elite soldier or something; the camera controls, quick dodge move, and stamina meter make her feel locked in to her survival, but the combat retains a sense of vulnerability essential for communicating terror and dread. f’s combat can be rather fluid and snappy when it wants to be. As in modern soulslikes, you can target a single enemy at a time which keeps the combat focused and intense. Hinako’s generous and speedy dodge costs her stamina, as do her light and heavy attacks.

Still, weapon scarcity and degradation make any scuffle with the game’s various monsters risky. Not every fight with a random wandering monster is worth having, but during scripted battles or when it makes sense to dispose of a creature, you’ll have to do so while managing your stamina meter as you sprint, dodge, and attack. Dodge at the right time when an enemy strikes and you’ll refill your stamina to resume your assault or expedite your retreat.

Hinako also has a meter for her “Sanity,” which allows her to use special “Focus” moves such as a counterattack and a charged-up version of her light melee strike. As you progress, you’ll be able to increase your health, stamina, and sanity meters by offering various objects at shrines which double as save points. You can also augment Hinako’s abilities with omamori found in the environment or drawn from a shrine; these benefits include boons like increased max health, recovering health when defeating an enemy, a quicker charge of Hinako’s attacks, and more. These gentle augmentations of Hinako’s abilities offer a welcome micro level of adjustment over the difficulty that I’m sure I’ll lean into more in my Hard mode run.

You can consume various items to replenish your meters, though while it worked fine when playing with mouse and keyboard, I found that even after 20 hours, item management while using a controller felt cumbersome.

Aside from some creatures that waited around corners to jump me, I would typically hear monsters before I saw them, their presence usually revealed by the sounds of painful moans, clanking footsteps, or the gentle and satisfying static that plays when you’re in the proximity of an enemy. The audio cues reminded me to check my health level and weapon condition, all while observing a few exit strategies if I suddenly found myself in over my head. In each scuffle, aside from the scripted scenarios that have you fighting bosses or enemies you have to defeat before you can proceed, combat remained as intense and methodical as I like it in a survival horror game.

• Back-of-the-box quote:

  “The f is for fun! Freaky! and Fuuuu….”

• Developer:

  Neobards Entertainment

• Type of game:

  Third-person action horror.

• Liked:

  Powerful story, dark and evocative visuals, satisfying combat.

• Disliked:

  Weapon degradation is a bit too fast, item menu can be confusing.

• Platforms:

  PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PC (Played)

• Release date:

  Standard edition: September 25, 2025 / Deluxe edition: September 23, 2025

• Played:

  22 hours covering the main story once through and about a third of the way through New Game Plus.

There’s a touch of build crafting in f, but it doesn’t dominate the game the way you’d find in Dark Souls or other similar games. Aside from your three meters, you won’t need to worry about Hinako’s stats or fuss too much over which weapons you’re carrying. And unlike more action-focused games, your central task isn’t to defeat enemies, it’s to survive them. That sometimes means killing them, but it’s not wise to spend all your time and resources on every monster in your path. In fact, you’ll quickly find yourself screwed if you take that approach.

Dealing with enemies is still a challenge despite how quick Hinako can be, and weapon degradation was an early sore spot for me. Fragile weapons combine well with the sense of dread the game’s aesthetic conjures and nicely limits your capabilities within the otherwise rather smooth combat system. This grounds the game, though some later sections let you cut loose on monsters in a satisfying, vengeful way. The game offers two kinds of difficulty at first, “Story” and “Hard,” and you can set the combat difficulty and puzzle difficulty independent of each other. On my first run, I played “Story” for combat and “Hard” for puzzles.

© Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

This choice let me be pretty sloppy in combat and still only die a handful of times. My second run, on Hard mode, has proven a tougher challenge, though it rarely feels unfair (my Hard mode run is a little bit easier given that I’m taking advantage of the stat carryover from New Game Plus). That said, I can already anticipate some late-game segments might border on frustration. We’ll see how that goes for me.

At first, I found the unexpectedly speedy combat to be a little discordant with the premise of being a teenage girl taking on vicious, otherworldly monsters, often with little more than a steel pipe. The beautifully dark and lush atmosphere of the game filled me with the dread I desire from this genre, but once combat started, I found myself feeling almost a bit too superhuman in how deftly I could dodge out of the way of a bloody knife.

As Hinako’s story and struggle progressed, however, I found f’s combat system to mesh well with her emotional state. Hinako makes it clear early on that she won’t go down without a fight, and a childhood spent mostly playing rough with boys along with her experience in track and field show she’s not afraid of a scuffle or two. The combat also, at times, gave me a sense of power over some monsters in a way that satisfyingly intersects with the game’s themes. I was skeptical of its approach to combat in those early skirmishes, but f earns its speedier battles with satisfying emotional arcs.

Fighting off bloody bastards isn’t the only challenge ahead of you in Ebisugaoka either. True to its form as a Silent Hill game, f features an assortment of puzzles you’ll have to solve, each one a treat containing some wonderful 3D models and mental challenges that aren’t easy to brute force your way through. You’ll collect clues in your journal which aren’t always the most obvious, and many of these puzzles stumped me at first. In two cases, I was forced to get help from people to figure them out, but this was mostly out of a need to finish the game in a timely fashion.

While I often love survival horror games for the unique intersection of terror and challenge they provide, I typically find the struggle of survival only as interesting as the environment they’re set in and the story they weave. And in this regard, Silent Hill f does not disappoint.

A dark narrative to commit yourself to

© Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

To be honest, the less I say about the particulars of Silent Hill f’s narrative, the better. You can only experience this game the first time through once, and as soon as you do, everything you just experienced gets reframed, and not in a concrete, easily digestible way. f resisted my attempts to understand it, left me with horrific depictions of violence strung up on narrative threads that involve real-world, relatable struggles of being a woman in society, what the value that society ascribes to her even means, the impact of cultural traditions, and a fear of the unknown. Throughout the game, mythology creeps into reality to make you doubt your own reasoning mind. This is all set to a captivatingly dark yet beautiful soundtrack from series composer Akira Yamaoka.

And while the game features difficult and lasting depictions of violence and suffering, Silent Hill f never feels like torture porn. Its gore never feels frivolous. That it manages to pull this off in a game focused on the violence imposed on women in a conservative society is a testament to the quality of writing on display here. Silent Hill f delivers gut-wrenching metaphors and symbols of resistance and submission that terrify and excite all at once.

I felt this acutely during the game’s Dark Shrine segments. The realm’s imposing and ominous fox statues and masks inspire an alluring sense of empowerment and protection, but they also felt like a clear warning that I was seconds away from being snatched up in their jaws. The same is true of Fox Mask, who appears early on as a heroic figure, but soon seems to have an agenda of his own that may not have Hinako’s best interests in mind. His piercing, glowing eyes and soft-spoken voice had me hypnotized as much as they did Hinako. As she followed him into the depths of the unknown, so too did I.

© Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

f’s narrative remains satisfyingly hard to predict throughout the whole ride. As soon as I thought I had a sense of what was going on, the story would resist falling into the predictable plot patterns I’d begun to anticipate. Even the premise of rebelling against the gendered expectations of womanhood is handled in a far more complex way than you might expect. It’s not just a story of Hinako giving the proverbial middle finger to what society asks of her. Though she is rebelling and is conscious of how her gender renders her a second-class citizen, themes of commitment, of holding onto who you are as you form bonds with other people, and just what it means to sustain any kind of relationship in the face of struggle swirl around in the fog in ways that I often found deeply relatable.

One scene in particular involving a bloody reconfiguration of a character’s body parts struck me so squarely in its depiction of commitment and physical trauma that it’s become a new metaphor for how I view a particular chapter of my own life. Though it depicts people of a different culture and time, there’s a universally human story at the core of f.

Even when f hits its narrative climax, when I thought I understood as much as I possibly could from a single playthrough, the ending that I ended up triggering based on what seemed a normal, non-consequential decision early on revealed one of the most unexpected twists I’ve encountered in recent memory. And still, true to the lush depths of obfuscating fog Silent Hill is known for, I barely understand what happened. But I couldn’t look at the story the same way twice after experiencing it. My own innocence was robbed.

© Screenshot: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

In addition to what’s revealed through your interactions and encounters with other characters and your journey through Ebisugaoka, a considerable amount of worldbuilding is also found in collectible notes scattered throughout the game’s world and in other bits of environmental storytelling. No meaningful playthrough of Silent Hill f will be complete without collecting and reading as many of them as possible–and New Game Plus will offer you new surprises here, too. These notes are all concise, written well enough, and don’t feel overbearing. They’re well worth pausing the action for.

These documents include women’s etiquette magazines, beer ads that promise a certain status of masculinity to those who consume it, and meditations on kitsune no yomeiri and other elements of Japanese culture and folklore, as well as fictional accounts of the history of the game’s setting. It all strings together a dark, kaleidoscopic narrative web that stirs intrigue and sparks the imagination. That it’s set in the 1960s also positions the characters and the town itself  between a rural, agrarian environment with conservative cultural values and affectations, and an encroaching layer of modernization through expanding industrial development and scientific medicine. Silent Hill f is never about any one of these things individually, but its various narrative layers let you drift among them as you would a sequence of thematically similar dreams.

Silent Hill f is ambitious in its desires. It asks for permission to deviate from the series’ traditional setting while offering up quicker, more action-focused combat. It leaves behind its titular setting in favor of a new horizon. It succeeds on all these fronts as a spin-off that explores Silent Hill’s classic gloom and internal psychological struggle, toying with themes of friendship, gendered expectations, commitment, and individual worth like a cat, or a fox, playing with its prey. It is a horrorscape I was terrified of and yet unable to look away from, one that’s resonated with me long after the credits rolled, and that quickly pulled me back in for another trip down the miserable foggy alleyways of this strange mountainside village.

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