Preceded by a trailer released October 17, 2023, Silent Hill: Ascension released this Halloween on iOS and Android to similar negative reception.
The psychological horror franchise Silent Hill has been, well, silent for over ten years with the last mainline entry, Downpour, releasing in 2012 while the last shreds of the series seemed to die once P.T. was canceled after its debut in 2014. To everyone’s surprise, Konami announced multiple Silent Hill projects in October 2022, including a remake of the fan-favorite Silent Hill 2 developed by Bloober Team, Silent Hill f, the next mainline entry with little information known, and Silent Hill: Ascension.
Silent Hill: Ascension is a bizarre mix between Silent Hill canon and players choosing the story. Unlike other choose-your-own-adventure horror games like Until Dawn, Ascension players are basically being thrown against each other to vote for their decisions. Players have 24 hours after a 15-minute episode launches to influence the characters’ choices. To further influence, players must earn “influence points,” which can be earned through solving the old-fashioned way of solving puzzles…or by buying the battle pass.
The $20 “Founder’s Pack” gives buyers “over 100 tiers of rewards and Influence Points plus additional exclusive cosmetics.” and can be spent over the runtime of Ascension, which is supposedly six months. Unsurprisingly, fans are unhappy about this decision in what was supposed to be the big return of a cult classic.
On top of the “Founder’s Pack” issue, the site where Ascension can be played simply was not ready for the amount of users. As Genvid CEO Jacob Navok explained to Kotaku: “We’re thrilled by the response and far exceeded expectations. We saw 1M pre-registrations before we turned the streaming app live and significantly more concurrent users than we forecasted. The flip side to such unexpected volume is several systems were strained or unavailable for periods of time but our team has been working to fix the problems and scale.”
Unfortunately, it might be too late to regain the trust of fans. From inadequate servers to paying money for virtual points, those who have been looking forward to the return of Silent Hill are leaving more concerned for not just the future of the remake and mainline entry, but the franchise as a whole.
Silent Hill: Ascension is available to play on iOS and Android through the official site.