SILENT HILL: The Short Message for PlayStation 5

A brief descent into madness

In the all-new, modern Silent Hill experience SILENT HILL: The Short Message, the player will step into the shoes of Anita, who gets lured into an abandoned apartment block to figure out what’s behind her friend Maya’s cryptic text messages. This free-to-play game is quite short in duration, with the overall adventure taking up to two hours, tops.

Powered by cutting-edge game technology, this newest installment of the critically acclaimed series offers unparalleled immersion into a world of psychological horror. Every texture, sound, and chilling encounter in The Short Message is rendered with hyperrealism, pushing the boundaries of what players expect from a horror game.

Explore the deserted apartment complex

Following the enigmatic messages from her friend Maya,  SILENT HILL: The Short Message features Anita being drawn to a crumbling apartment block. As you explore the place through her eyes, you both slowly discover its secrets, discovering that it’s notorious among locals for its tragic mysteries and whispers of young women suicides that have left an indelible mark on its walls. Within the eerie halls, every shadow comes alive, and every silence is filled with the echo of something unseen.  

Some of the game’s more thrilling moments include bizarre, otherworldly spaces that defy the laws of physics, stretching infinitely in all directions and creating a labyrinthine nightmare. The air is thick with desolation as an omnipresent, twisted monster lurks in the darkness, a manifestation of the building’s tormented past. Created by the legendary Masahiro Ito, this title’s monster is a tall figure dressed in white that’s wrapped with barbed wire and twistedly blooming cherry blossoms.

Accompanying the spooky visuals is a brilliant score created by Akira Yamaoka, which further elevates the tension. However, despite its promising premise, visuals, and music, the game’s promise of suspense and psychological terror quickly fades into a sequence of monotonous tasks. Anita’s character development is noticeably barely there, and the game’s handling of mature themes such as bullying, self-harm, and suicide are rather at surface level and for shock value only.

Short yet haunting

In SILENT HILL: The Short Message, players find themselves entrenched in the depths of a psychological horror that both fascinates and disturbs. Follow the journey of Anita, a character led into a haunting maze by the lure of a friend’s cryptic texts. The stunning visuals, intricate sound design, and Masahiro Ito’s nightmarish creature design combined with Akira Yamaoka’s haunting score coalesce to create a Silent Hill experience that briefly captures the series’ essence.