Silent Hill: Townfall and The Lost Wild: SGF Play Days Previews

At Summer Game Fest Play Days, Annapurna Interactive held two theater showcases, showing off two of their upcoming releases, both of which are survival-horror titles. In some very comfy and immersive theaters, RPGamer was treated to an early sneak peek at Silent Hill: Townfall, being developed by Screenburn Interactive, and The Lost Wild, being developed by Great Ape Games.

Silent Hill: Townfall

Simon cross-references an image received through a signal against his environment, finding a match.

As a standalone spin-off in the Silent Hill series, Townfall immediately stood out for its remarkable setting, taking place in a Scottish seaside town known as St. Amelia. The town looked fantastic, drenched in heavy fog in typical Silent Hill style. There appeared to be a lot of attention to environmental detail, with the shops, streets, and various elements of the town, down to the items, all seeming quite authentic. One example of this included a Scottish pre-paid electric card, which was needed to solve a puzzle. Townfall centers on Simon Ordell, who wakes up in St. Amelia despite having no relationship to it; nevertheless, as he explores the town, he finds strange references to himself and sets out to discover how he’s connected to this place. While not much was revealed about the story, there’s a real, palpable sense of unease and a good air of mystery that seems to promise an unsettling, spooky adventure.

Using a first-person perspective, the gameplay centers on a handheld CRTV scanner that Simon uses to see through walls to spot enemies or tune in to odd frequencies that reveal more about the lore of St. Amelia. Beyond helping to more firmly establish the 1996 setting, it made the town feel more claustrophobic and threatening. The broadcasts Simon received created a strong sense of unease, and spotting the flailing, aggressive enemies created some scary anticipation, especially given the general weakness of combat. While Simon can fight enemies, they’re quite strong, fast, and aggressive, and he depends entirely on simple items strewn about the environment, like planks or pipes, so it’s generally better to hide, run, or use the environment. All in all, Townfall seemed like a promising survival-horror experience, largely due to its setting and environmental design.

The Lost Wild

The environmental design is stunning.

Like a lot of young kids growing up, I was infatuated with dinosaurs, and The Lost Wild is all about dinosaurs, but from a slightly different perspective than most might expect. Rather than portraying dinosaurs as villains or monsters, The Lost Wild presents them as what they were in reality long ago: animals. The approach this game takes is quite interesting: players are not meant to fight or kill dinosaurs; rather, the goal is to evade, adapt, and ultimately survive. The use of observation and caution was evident in the gameplay shown, where players have to use every small tool littered about to distract the dinosaurs and manipulate their predatory instincts; something as small as a coffee cup shattered against a tree could be the difference between life and death.

The dinosaurs in the presentation appeared to have well-designed AI, and even when the player died, there was appreciable variation between runs, showing that, just like real animals, the dinosaurs’ behavior isn’t always predictable. Story-wise, The Lost Wild centers around Saskia, a woman who wakes up from a car crash to find herself on a mysterious island with scattered, abandoned, and derelict research facilities and, of course, plenty of dinosaurs about. As she evades the dinosaurs, she has to discover how she ended up here, why there are even dinosaurs to begin with, and why the island has been left abandoned. There’s a solid, compelling sense of mystery, and the research facilities are well-designed, overgrown with vegetation, and do a good job at building unease, with the loudspeakers announcing odd messages in Japanese. The Lost Wild seems poised to offer an interesting take on dinosaurs while also being a nail-biting survival-horror experience to boot.