Silent Hill f release date, trailers, gameplay, and latest news

When is the Silent Hill f release date? Since the release of the first game in 1999, Keiichiro Toyama's dark psychological horror series has garnered legions of fans, fast becoming one of the most important franchises in gaming history. Ignoring the poorly received mobile game The Short Message, interactive TV show Ascension, and the remake of Silent Hill 2, there hasn't been a new Silent Hill game proper since Downpour in 2012. It's been even longer since a really good one.

That looks set to change with Silent Hill f, a fully fledged, mainline Silent Hill game, but one that exists separately from the well-known worlds of James Sunderland and Heather/Cheryl Mason. Instead of being set in Silent Hill, the psychological prison that descends on the aforementioned characters' town is instead found in 1960s Japan as schoolgirl Hinako faces her own demons in the horror game. We can't wait to find out more, so here's everything we know about the Silent Hill f release date.

The Silent Hill f release date is Thursday, September 25, 2025, as announced during a recent PlayStation State of Play. The horror game will be available on PC via Steam and Epic Games, PS5, and Xbox Series.

The release date trailer, shown during the broadcast on June 4, 2025, also gave us a glimpse of more gameplay and story context, which we explore in more detail below.

Team Silent, the Konami-owned development team behind the original trilogy of games, disbanded in 2024, which may be why we have never seen the same quality or love for Silent Hill games since 3. Since then, SH games have been developed by multiple studios, including Bloober Team, Double Helix, and Vatra Games. Silent Hill f marks the first time NeoBards Entertainment has taken the helm, and it is their first original game. However, the team has worked on the likes of Resident Evil Re: Verse, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster.

Trailers

Three Silent Hill f trailers have been released so far. The first teaser trailer was shown during a Silent Hill Transmission back in 2022. Briefly introducing the game's protagonist and Japanese roots, the teaser trailer is a trypophobe's worst nightmare, as red weeds grow from fleshy holes and blossom into something akin to Japanese honeysuckle. Here, we can already see the red, floral imagery that runs through every Silent Hill f trailer so far. This imagery seems to depict a sick, suffocating growth, but rather than using mould or disease, these flowers represent the beauty within terror, a common Japanese horror theme.

Among the most striking things about this first teaser trailer, though, is a scene around the 30-second mark, as an injured Hinako stumbles along, dragging a steel pipe behind her. The sound heard as the pipe scrapes across the floor mimics that of Pyramid Head's knife being dragged behind him, instantly cementing this new world as a part of Silent Hill's history.

Nearly three years later, a longer reveal trailer was shown during another Transmission broadcast in March 2025. Continuing the themes from the teaser trailer, this video shows more overwhelming infestation of flora, but delves deeper into Japanese history and culture. We see shrines, kabuke paintings, and a garden bridge, most often associated with passing from life into death.

The release date trailer, which you can watch at the top of the page, debuted during PlayStation State of Play on June 4, 2025. This trailer gives us more gameplay footage than ever, as well as a look at some of the devastatingly creepy monsters, and further explores the theme of death. It can be no coincidence that Hinako is seemingly killed by a monster at the exact mid point of the trailer, as a stark transition then sees her awaken suddenly in a separate scene.

Gameplay

We have seen a considerable amount of gameplay in the trailers, from Hinako just walking through her hometown, to brutal combat with enemies. From what we've seen so far, this combat looks quintessentially Silent-Hill-esque. Wielding a pipe, Hinako clumsily tackles fast-moving enemies in close combat. These foes, based on posable figures, move unpredictably, and the influence from and parallel to Silent Hill's mannequins is clear.

From the same trailer, we also get a glimpse of item interaction, which feels closer in style to Bloober's 2024 Silent Hill 2 than the older games. Zooming in on a frozen, disjointed schoolgirl, the player can easily see and obtain an item buried under the girl's arm. Gone are the days of a subtle head tilt to alert you to an interactable object.

Silent Hill f story

The twisted psychology of Silent Hill tends to revolve around a person's dark past, specifically one they've tried to or have unknowingly repressed. Throughout the Silent Hill f trailers, there has been a common theme of friends, with the second trailer starting off with a voice over saying, "Do you want to stay with your friends forever? Friends don't last forever. They will betray you, eventually. Just as they say you betrayed them." Hinako seems to be part of a friendship group of four, and the release date trailer introduces us to Sakuko, one of these friends. In this scene, as Hinako walks away, she hears a whispered "you traitor" in Sakuko's voice.

What Hinako has done, or has been perceived to have done by or to her friends, remains a mystery, but is presumably the core reason for her descent into the fog. Presumably, Sakuko will play a big part as she makes recurring appearances in the trailers, seems to be the narrator of these trailers, and appears as a boss in the release date trailer.

What is the f in Silent Hill f

So far, there are a few theories as to what the 'f' in Silent Hill f could mean, with the most likely being the botanical word forme, represented by a lowercase f.

In botany, forme means a mutation of a floral variety. Given the obvious floral imagery in Silent Hill f, and the grotesque mutation of the fog world into the Otherworld, or Dark Shrine, this seems the most obvious meaning.

However, there is also a musical meaning to the letter f. Shown in a very similar lowercase style to that in the Silent Hill f artwork, in music, f stands for forte, or loud. Of course, this is the complete polar opposite of 'silent', and, again, many themes here are opposing: life and death, the real world and the Otherworld, silent and loud. As we discuss below, the Silent Hill f sound effects in these two worlds also differ to represent this duality.

The third, and perhaps least tangible theory, relates again to flora, but this time, its association with disaster and mutation in Japan. Studies have found that some Japanese plant life had mutated from radiation following the Nagasaki bombings of the 1940s, while deformed daisies in Fukushima were, for a while, blamed on the nuclear disaster of 2011.

Silent Hill f soundtrack

While it has been confirmed that monster designer Masahiro Ito is not returning to the franchise, composer and sound designer Akira Yamaoka is working on Silent Hill f, creating the sounds and songs for the fog world, while Kensuke Inage composes the soundscape for the Otherworld, known in Silent Hill f as the 'Dark Shrine'.

As Inage's first time working on a Silent Hill game, and the new Japanese setting, we can expect something a little different from the soundtrack this time around. This is set to provide an incredible and jarring juxtaposition between Yamaoko's classic Silent Hill audio design and the new Dark Shrine. This is already apparent in the trailers we've seen so far, with scratching and squelching replaced by the unsettling sound of a Japanese nohkan flute or similar high-pitched instrument.

Is Masahiro Ito involved in Silent Hill f?

Sadly, Ito himself has confirmed that he has no involvement in Silent Hill f. In a tweet in March 2025, the character designer said, "I don't know anything [about] Silent Hill f because I didn't work on it."

A fan then commented on the thread, asking whether his Sakura Head character from The Short Message would be included as it fits the aesthetic, to which Ito simply replied, "I don't know." Given Ito's work on The Short Message and the aforementioned Sakura Head, it comes as a huge surprise that he is not involved in the new game. After all, Ito has worked on Silent Hill games since the first one and designed none other than the iconic Pyramid Head.

It seems there is no love lost between the artist and the franchise, though, as Ito reposted the release date announcement on X (formerly Twitter).

If you, like us, can't wait for the Silent Hill f release date, distract yourself with some of the other incredible upcoming games being released in the meantime. You should also check out the Silent Hill f system requirements to ensure you'll get the most out of the new PC game when it arrives.