This space is here for you to stop, take a break, and check-in. Off-topic discussion is allowed and encouraged.

Here you can talk about what's going on in your life, post a random thought, or just leave some encouragement for a stranger. Whatever's on your mind.

It's a new week. Be good to each other. Be good to yourself.

I really enjoyed Townfall, and since I recently started dabbling in video essays, I got inspired to make one about the game's story but told from the perspective of one of the island's occupants.

Figured I'd share it here and see what you all think :) Hope you enjoy!

While a lot of this game is a love letter to 90s tech, perhaps none makes me feel more like an old person than seeing these things.

I had dozens of them, mostly full of Dragon Ball Z fan fiction and shady NES roms I downloaded from the library computers.

How's everybody feeling?

Just some house cleaning stuff cause people were asking me.

- There was some light brigading going on this week and the last because of the things, so that's why votes are initially hidden on new posts for a little while. Didn't want people to think they were getting downvoted immediately for completely innocuous comments. I know where it's coming from. Y'all are cool.

- Custom flairs! I think I broke this at some point. Should be unbroken now. Try it and see. I made it so you can just have it say whatever you want. Please do not make me regret that.

- Someone asked if tier lists posts were cool. I'll leave that up to you guys. If you think some good discussion could come from it (and not just "I can't believe you put Ascension in S+ you ghoul), then we'll open that can of worms. My instinct is that people would just flood the sub for a few days and tire themselves out.

- As always, I'm open to suggestions about how to make this place better. We have good people, so that's the hard part already taken care of. But even if it's something like "hey let's change the sub banner", let me know. Not getting rid of Smug Harry, though. Sorry, Smug Harry is a load bearing part of the experience.

Okay thanks.

This might be the most cursed thing I've seen in a while, but Guy Cihi, who voiced James in the original SH2, just released this where he and the voice actor for Eddie swap roles and play the parts of James and Maria during the iconic prison scene. Hilarity ensues.

This space is here for you to stop, take a break, and check-in. Off-topic discussion is allowed and encouraged.

Here you can talk about what's going on in your life, post a random thought, or just leave some encouragement for a stranger. Whatever's on your mind.

It's a new week. Be good to each other. Be good to yourself.

Just beat it last night and I really enjoyed the game, been waiting to see some story discussions personally

Loved the atmosphere the puzzles the story and the emphasis on stealth personally

So if you know anything about ghosts in Silent Hill, they aren’t transparent, nor are they friendly (with the exception of Ernest Baldwin). They leave behind gross substances on the wall and tend to be very aggressive and very much physical.

This is exactly what make M.R. James’ ghost stories very unique. Almost all of his ghosts are described as rotting corpse, physical, and dangerous. A good ghost story in his collection to show this is “Lost Hearts”, “Martin’s Close”, and “A Warning to The Curious.”

Of course, if you want a story from M.R. James that acted as somewhat of a prototype to Silent Hill (and to an extent the Backrooms), the story “Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance” is a perfect one as it not only have a ghost with a burnt face, but the maze itself kept shifting constantly and looked hellish as if it’s the Otherworld.

I’m talking about the cult.

They’re even calling the game slop now, and their critiques always boil down to: this game isn’t literally set in the fictional town of silent hill, and doesn’t have the cult from the first game.

Silent Hill has always worked best as a surrealist anthology series about trauma. These “critiques” are missing the woods for the trees because they want a handheld explanation of why things are weird and surrealist; it’s a cult doing all of this!

It’s genuinely the least interesting part of the series, and you’re missing excellent story telling because you’re so hyper focused on gods and cults. SHf has a maniacal story, stellar exploration, and gives you good reason to replay it to get to the bottom of the mess, but some people act like it’s the worst game in the series because it doesn’t take place in Maine, and has “dark souls combat,” another critique that makes no sense - this tells me you’ve never played dark souls, and it’s just weird aping for the combat systems of 20 year old games that are definitely products of their time that had dreadful combat.

Townfall looks great, and the friends I have that already played it are really enjoying it. I’m just really disappointed that that sub is back to its chorus of negativity because of the most ridiculous reasons imaginable.

This space is here for you to stop, take a break, and check-in. Off-topic discussion is allowed and encouraged.

Here you can talk about what's going on in your life, post a random thought, or just leave some encouragement for a stranger. Whatever's on your mind.

It's a new week. Be good to each other. Be good to yourself.

I thought I would share this considering the theme of Silent Chill, and hope the one self-promo is okay. This is one of my relaxing playthroughs of the Silent Hill games. I replace all the in-game audio with soothing sounds from each environment within the game and speak softly over the whole thing like a let’s play kind of thing. I have ones for 2, 3 and 2 remake as well (if you don’t like f), but I had to split this one into multiple parts because it’s a longer game. I like it to be several hours long with no ads so people can just put headphones in and drift off and not worry about changing the video or anything.

Someone said my voice is creepy in it so I’d love to know if you feel that way. I was trying to reach this soft high register I did when I made my ones for 2 and 3 a few years ago, but I got my tonsils out and aged a few years and noticed my voice is generally way deeper than it used to be. I won’t get mad if you kindly agree that I sound like a serial killer. It’s important feedback.

This space is here for you to stop, take a break, and check-in. Off-topic discussion is allowed and encouraged.

Here you can talk about what's going on in your life, post a random thought, or just leave some encouragement for a stranger. Whatever's on your mind.

It's a new week. Be good to each other. Be good to yourself.

This space is here for you to stop, take a break, and check-in. Off-topic discussion is allowed and encouraged.

Here you can talk about what's going on in your life, post a random thought, or just leave some encouragement for a stranger. Whatever's on your mind.

It's a new week. Be good to each other. Be good to yourself.

Here are my points:

1- Many independent psychological horror games are heavily influenced by Resident Evil or Silent Hill; the issue is that this influence often leads to a point where they bring absolutely nothing new to the table. In fact, you could argue that if you simply changed the title, they would be virtually indistinguishable from the major franchises. This is a problem that has persisted since the PlayStation 2 era, when those two franchises became so popular that everyone wanted to emulate them. In recent years I've noticed that several developers, instead of trying to do something unique, have the mindset of distancing themselves as much as possible from the main franchises to try to avoid comparisons, and yet there are some that are very heavily compared simply because, well, there are narrative and word-building elements that are simply undeniable.

I think it was a brilliant move for Konami to give certain studios the chance to use their own existing story concepts under the *Silent Hill* banner. Not only are there countless people who would love to work on this franchise, but this approach also spares creators—who might be too deeply attached to their original vision to alter it without ruining the narrative—from having to deal with comparisons to the series that inspired them; after all, the project is now officially part of that very franchise.

2- Silent Hill was always an extremely experimental game. In fact, the games that you could say come closest to what people usually categorize as the true Silent Hill experience are usually due to the fact that the developers had to do fan service to try to appeal to the audiences they already had. For example, the third game was not going to have absolutely anything to do with the cult from the first one, but due to the mixed reception of Silent Hill 2, Team Silent had to redesign the story. Same happend with SH4.

Not to mention, I'm almost 100% convinced that if Hideo Kojima's game had been released, people would still be complaining.

3- Honestly—and this is mostly a personal take—I don't like seeing so many elements from the franchise repeated in later games. Sure, they’re classics and they look incredible, but sooner or later, I know I’m going to get tired of the visual aesthetic. It’s not because the style is bad—in fact, it’s the main reason people still hold the original trilogy in such high regard—but because, at a certain point, it starts to feel predictable; you know exactly what to expect. And if you don't know what to expect, your standards are already so high that nothing else can really measure up. From my perspective, the solution is simple: don't try to replicate it. Offer something new—something different. That’s essentially what Silent Hill 2 did: Alessa’s monsters had nothing to do with James’s or Angela’s, yet they still became iconic.

Now, I don't want to be misunderstood; this isn't directly justifying some of the decisions being made regarding the franchise as a whole—especially that sort of interactive game where you had to pay to make a choice (which was simply silly), or Short Message, which honestly left me quite disappointed.