These are the scary moments in Konami’s brief yet eerie Silent Hill: The Short Message.
HIGHLIGHTS
- The haunting wail of a baby and the beheaded baby doll create the mood for the whole Silent Hill: The Short Message.
- There’s something really unsettling about the visual approach of the restroom in the game, which is reminiscent of the notorious one in P.T.
- Players are made to feel afraid by the bone-chilling encounter with the sakura-covered monster, which moves quickly and has bizarre motions.
Although the story and length of Silent Hill: The Short Message are constrained, there are plenty of terrifying moments that will send chills down some players’ spines. The Short Message establishes the tone for the franchise’s future, including anything from subtle ambient horrors to an overtly nervous creature in the players’ line of sight.
The brief playable experience’s creepiest moments are revealed in the sections below. The piece considers the unsettling atmosphere of a scene, the content’s potential for distress, and the players’ potential for utter terror from the images. It follows that this compilation might not be suitable for those who are easily alarmed.
The Infant’s Cry
A Terrifying Baby Doll
One effective approach to evoke anxiety in players of horror games is to incorporate the sound of a wailing infant into the scene’s bleak and abandoned atmosphere. This is also the case when Anita finds a toy baby on one of the shelves in the opening moments of Silent Hill: The Short Message. The item seems to be a simple, unharmed figurine at first sight.
But later in the first chapter, when Anita returns to the same room, she is greeted by the unsettling wail of a newborn. The baby doll’s head is now lying in a pool of blood after being severed. their effectively establishes the eerie mood for the duration of their brief encounter.
A Familiar-Looking Bathroom
P.T. Through And Through
Fans of the Silent Hill series, let alone horror game enthusiasts, have not overlooked the effect of Kojima’s P.T. A significant section of the crowd must have quickly picked up on some important visual cues to P.T. when Silent Hill: The Short Message was introduced at the State of Play. The experience of Silent Hill: The Short Message retains part of the general atmosphere, even if it is not exactly duplicated.
Anita’s visit to an unwelcoming restroom in the opening chapter is one of the scenes that really sets the tone for this story. This bathroom’s visual view is eerily similar to that of P.T.’s iconic one, complete with bloodied bathtub, cockroaches crawling all over the wall, and an untidy mirror.
Menacing Cardboard Cutouts
Brown Bags For Heads
Players will learn morsels of information about Anita’s difficult history and the social pressures she faces on a daily basis as they continue to follow her journey. The need to demand attention on social media is one of the playable experience’s themes. To put it mildly, the visual interpretation of this theme aspect is horrifying, even if the societal critique isn’t very subtle.
Anita turns around after reflecting on one of her close friend Maya’s artworks, only to see a cluster of eerie cutouts of schoolboys with brown paper bags covering their heads. It’s abrupt, has emotional weight, and in this context, it’s just plain unsettling.
The Spiraling Path
When The Surreal Bleeds In
First and foremost, Silent Hill has always been an atmospheric horror show. The series truly stands out among horror games because of its use of conventional, everyday living scenes set against a strange horror backdrop. With all of the vibrant animations and emotional sound effects that go along with it, the setting in Silent Hill: The Short Message is a genuine, breathing entity. As Anita learns more details about her relationship with Maya and Amelie, players will ultimately find their way to the high school she once attended in one of the scenes in chapter 2 of the game.
She eventually finds a spiral pathway that is visually confusing and painted in an unsettling shade of crimson. This Remedy-style surreal horror scene builds tension faster than before and provides players even more motivation to keep going in order to discover more resolution.
Cherry Blossom Aka Sakura Head
The Monster That Doesn’t Stop
Of course, the confrontation with the monster—a stunningly bizarre, fast-moving, terrifyingly animated creature draped in sakura flowers—is the most spine-tingling aspect of the whole ordeal. The player experiences three encounters with the monster, the last of which is arguably the most difficult, although the horrors start as soon as Anita sees it for the first time. The first interaction occurs in the first chapter of The Short Message, when Anita’s smartphone starts acting strangely for no apparent reason.
The previously mentioned “Cherry Blossom” monster is there, front and center in the player’s perspective as she passes through the door and enters a spooky series of winding hallways. Before the player’s instant fight-or-flight response, which in this case is primarily simply flight, sets in. It’s a mini-game similar to cat and mouse, but with a much scarier cat that moves in a horrific way and carries a sharp blade. The terrifying goal of the monster to hunt and viciously attack Anita makes the image unwatchable for more than a second.