![]() Starring as it does a terrified teen, The Short Message features no combat. ![]() ![]() Anita’s relationships with Maya and with her other friend Amelie play out through smartphone chat messages filled with anxiety and uncertainty, a portrait of teenage angst.Īnd then, Anita’s smartphone screen and speakers crackle with distortion – and in a Silent Hill game, we know what that means. The apartment building is dark and dilapidated, and Anita’s search for Maya leads her through creepy hallways lined with thousands of sticky notes with scrawled slurs that reflect her low self-esteem: “Loser”, “creep”, “weirdo”, “ugly”.įlashbacks and cutscenes jarringly juxtapose CG animation with live-action footage, reality with hellish visions, serenity with shocking scenes of self-harm. High-school student Anita arrives at Villa in search of her friend Maya, a Japanese teen who is a talented graffiti artist with a large following on social media – which stokes envy and self-doubt in Anita’s heart. Plans to renovate the apartment building were thwarted first by the financial crisis and then the Covid-19 pandemic the building now lies in ruins, and has become a popular suicide spot. The game is set in an abandoned apartment building known as Villa, in the fictional city of Kettenstadt in modern-day Germany. But while the story itself is interesting, its themes are what make The Short Message fascinating to play. The game’s story is linear, and its central mystery unfolds with some twists you may see coming and some you won’t. The game does a good job at raising expectations for upcoming games, while its use of a teenage protagonist and its gorgeous monster design feel fresh. The game makes effective use of its themes of suicide, self-harm, bullying and isolation to create a feeling of genuine dread, bringing the central themes of early games in the series entries into a modern perspective, while offering a sensitive portrayal of its subject matter that never feels exploitative or crude. This compact two-hour first-person game centres on teenage protagonist Anita as she searches for her missing friend Maya in a spooky abandoned building. ![]() This article is a mix of both of our impressions. I (Daniel) played the full game from start to finish ahead of its surprise release, along with my IGN Japan colleague Koji Fukuyama, and both of us found a lot to enjoy – and even more to ponder. Silent Hill: The Short Message is a brand new game in the storied psychological horror series Silent Hill, announced and released today as a free download for PlayStation 5. ![]()
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