The cancellation of Silent Hills,and subsequent removal of P.T. from Sony's digital stores, is a tragedy greater than anything faced by the protagonists of this once-great series. We could have had a Silent Hill game worked on by Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro, and Jinji Ito! For shame Konami, for shame. I sentence you to a journey through an ironically-themed hellscape where all the enemies resemble pachinko machines that don't make money.
Ever since the cancellation in 2015, the Silent Hill series has largely (and tragically) been seen as dead. There have been rumours but there was nothing concrete until 2022, when Konami revealed the multitude of new games in the works. Yes! Except no. With the exception of the distinctly Japanese-looking Silent Hill f (which looks to combine the series with a type of horror akin to Forbidden Siren and Fatal Frame), all the games looked kinda shit. Suddenly that longed for Silent Hill return seems more like a threat. A bit like how your stepdad "threatens" to come and see you after he's returned home from the pub,
Enter, Silent Hill: The Short Message - a game which wasn't revealed back in 2022, but was instead shadow-dropped on 31st January. So how is it? Well, for better and for worse we're right back to 2014 and P.T.
Developed by HexaDrive, a Japanese developer with a history of side games and remasters, The Short Message is a first person survival horror game in the vein of games like Outlast. The sort of game where 90% of your time is spent walking and exploring, while the other 10% is being chased and trying not to slip on your terror-induced piss. In contrast to other Silent Hill games - there is no combat of any sort and there is only one single enemy.
This is exactly the type of game P.T. popularised 10 years ago. It's like P.T. fired a bow and The Short Message is this doofus standing around in front of the target with his arse out. The arrow goes right through his arse and hits the target, blood and shit be damned. But who cares about all the shit along the way, because the target has been hit. Ok, enough weird metaphors - let's review the game on its own merits.
In The Short Message we play as teenager Anita who has come to an abandoned housing complex to find her missing friend Maya, known online as C.B. (Cherry Blossoms). Her only other friend seems to be Amelie - who we communicate with over Anita's phone throughout. Anita is clearly a very troubled and depressed young woman. She really has seemingly little to live for: she's lonely, bullied, and struggles to find her place in the world. Compounding her problems is that Maya is living the life she wants. Maya's graffiti art makes her internet famous, whereas Anita struggles to get noticed even online. Hey, you're preaching to the converted there Anita.
Already our protagonist is in a dire state at the very start of the game. So it probably doesn't help that the building she has come to is a graffiti-ridden, trash-filled, mess that's known to be a suicide hotspot for young girls. And let me just say, the visual design of the apartment block is absolutely incredible. The last time I saw a game that so expertly captures (the strangely beautiful) urban squalor of its setting was the Condemned games. This place is disgusting, cluttered, run-down, and filthy. Perfect Silent Hill fodder.
The atmosphere is utterly dread-filled as you genuinely cannot see beyond the edge of your phone's flashlight. All the while the building is groaning around you. Long time series composer Akira Yamaoka returns, and the soundtrack ranges from light industrial ambience, to drones of dread, to industrial-Gothic symphonies. None of it reaches the series' peak but it gets the job done and makes wandering The Villa hark back to that very first time exploring the apartments in Silent Hill 2.
The problem with The Short Message is that it is two hours long. It's difficult to tell a compelling, psychological story when the story is travelling with the sort of pace normally associated with the vinegar strokes. The game simply doesn't have time to let the story unfold naturally and has to ham-fistedly shove everything in your face. Anita is constantly over explaining everything that she sees and feels, like one of those really annoying TikTokers. And can you get anything more blatant than the wall of post-it notes with words like 'whore' and 'loser' repeated ad-nauseam?
Look, The Short Message is teenage girl themed horror, so why should we expect subtlety? Teenage girls tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Social media has erased all nuance and subtlety. And bullying is often one of the least subtle and intelligent things out there. Whilst that does make sense, I am going to have to refer you to Silent Hill 3.
In SH3 we play as Heather Mason, who is actually Cheryl from the 1st game but is now in her late teens. Everything in Silent Hill 3 is themed around the sort of horror a teenage girl faces. Most of the areas are normal everyday places that may play a big part in a teenage girl's life: a shopping mall, an underpass, a subway, a hospital. The environment, atmosphere, and enemies all tell stories without anything needed to be said.
The mirror that distorts the room and hurts Heather as she stares into it (read: body dysmorphia). The focus on long, uncomfortable corridors, including some with very traumatised entryways, plays into the fear of giving birth theme. There's also the penis-shaped monsters that ambush Heather in a dark underpass - obviously representing Heather's ever-present rape fears.
The Short Message is filled with symbolism but none of it subtle. It constantly tells you what you should be thinking and feeling. I also kept feeling like it was labouring the same point over and over. Anita has to find Maya. Anita thinks of herself as a piece of shit. Anita is depressed. Anita has no friends. Anita's mother is horrible. There's also a plot point about Maya being bullied because she is descended from a witch and I found this really confusing.
So, The Short Message is set in Germany (more on this later), but Maya and her grandmother are Asian. Not impossible, obviously, but a strange choice. Maya's grandmother was a cunning woman who helped the townsfolk until they turned on her. Then she cursed them which is why the town is now on its knees. And Maya is bullied as a result of this - yet somehow more popular than Anita? Again, it's such a weird needlessly confusing way of presenting the story. It harks back to the first game's messy story.
The only time the game feels remotely clever with its story telling is quite late on when Anita visits an apartment that resembles one she lived in with her abusive mum and baby brother. It's only a few rooms in all - but you constantly go through loops. Each time the apartment gets progressively more abandoned looking, the notes and audio comments from her mum become more deranged and neglectful. All the while Anita grows smaller and smaller until she is reverted back to a weak, defenceless child. The pay-off for this sequence is excellent and will likely chill you.
Another good bit of symbolism is the cherry blossom motif. Maya chooses it as her nickname and the chief subject of her art because it is beautiful in both life and death. Finding Maya's artworks is pretty much the only goal, as Anita believes it will lead her to Maya. The art's use of the beauty of cherry blossoms contrasts with the dreariness of the environment and fits with the beauty in death motif.
I think I see The Short Message as less of a game in its own right and more of a demo of what the Silent Hill franchise is and can be in the future. To that end I think it mostly works but it definitely highlights some potential pitfalls. First, a proper combat system is needed. The only form of danger you face in this game is the chase sequences where the game's sole monster chases you around maze-like environments. These are mostly trial and error, with the last such sequence being utterly miserable.
Secondly, I think that the writing needs to get back to the more subtle approach of the other games. I'm not saying that the old games were entirely subtle - Silent Hill 4 has you crawling through holes that look like your mum's after I'm done with her, for god's sake. But a lot of Silent Hill's story comes through set design, documents, and symbolism. There is some of that here, but mostly the characters are very open about how they feel. It felt like I was playing someone's struggle session.
Finally, I'm not sure how I feel about Silent Hill being set just any old where now. The devs justify this by introducing the concept of the 'Silent Hill Phenomenon'; the idea is that if you're in the right state of mind, then you can just appear in the nightmarish other world by simply willing it into existence. I'm not necessarily opposed to the games being set elsewhere, but where that has happened before there has still been a more concrete connection to the town.
Here it just makes the concept of Silent Hill seem very...petty. "Oh, don't be so depressed or you'll end up in that nightmarish other world again. You know, the one where the monsters are all symbolic of the trauma you felt that time you saw your dad get out of the bath."
Enjoyed this piece? Then check out these other reviews: Silent Hill 1; Silent Hill 2; Silent Hill 3; and Silent Hill 4;
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