So you’ve played Silent Hill: Townfall. You’ve done the fog, the red filters, the CRTV puzzles, the creeping dread that follows you into the shower. And now you’re sitting in a dark room googling “games like Silent Hill Townfall” like a person who’s never heard of outside. Congratulations. You have excellent taste in psychological misery.
But here’s the thing about indie horror: the good stuff is buried under approximately ten thousand asset-flip Steam pages featuring “cursed VHS” aesthetics and a jump scare every twelve seconds. So I’ve done the miserable work for you. I played the demos, read the reviews, and cross-referenced vibes so you don’t accidentally end up with a recommendation a game that hasn’t been updated since the previous decade. You’re welcome.
1. Silver Pines
This is the obvious one, and I’m putting it first because if I didn’t, someone would email me. Silver Pines is so aggressively Townfall-adjacent that it’s almost suspicious. Both games feature a protagonist investigating a missing person in a fog-choked town, both use a red visual filter to signal the Otherworld (or whatever the not-legally-distinct version is), and both use telephones as save points. The difference is that Silver Pines trades Townfall‘s Scottish island for a cozy Pacific Northwest nightmare and swaps the CRTV for a Polaroid camera that marks your map. It’s the closest you’ll get to Townfall without literally replaying Townfall. Also, there’s a Memento system where you equip a cat collar for stat bonuses. I don’t know why that works, but it does.
Why it’s on this list: It’s the closest spiritual sibling you’ll find. Fog, missing persons, analog saves, and a cat collar that somehow makes everything better.
2. Stories Untold
Developer Screen Burn Interactive made Townfall, and before that, they made Stories Untold—a four-episode anthology that’s basically a masterclass in making a text parser terrifying. It’s not a Townfall clone because Townfall didn’t exist yet. It’s the DNA. If you loved the CRTV puzzle-solving in Townfall, you owe it to yourself to see where that design philosophy came from. It’s shorter, stranger, and at least one episode will make you feel genuinely unwell in a way that no amount of fog can replicate.
Why it’s on this list: Same studio, same obsession with analog technology as a horror delivery mechanism. Also, it’s cheap. Your wallet will forgive you.
3. Observation
Another Screen Burn joint. You play as S.A.M., the AI of a space station, trying to help a stranded astronaut while also maybe being complicit in something horrible. It’s Townfall‘s first-person, technology-mediated horror formula transplanted to orbit. The aesthetic is sterile instead of misty, but the creeping dread of “I am helping and also I might be the problem” is identical. If you liked manipulating the CRTV in Townfall, you’ll like manipulating cameras and systems in Observation. If you didn’t like the CRTV, why are you here?
Why it’s on this list: It proves Screen Burn’s house style—lonely protagonist, inscrutable technology, bad vibes—works in any setting.
4. The Tartarus Key
A first-person puzzle-horror game set in a mansion full of traps and a disembodied voice on the intercom. It’s not Silent Hill in setting, but it shares Townfall‘s rhythm of “explore a hostile space, solve an environmental puzzle, try not to think about what’s behind that door.” The lo-fi PS1 aesthetic is deliberate, not a limitation, and the writing has a dry, mean streak that I respect. If Townfall‘s Scotland was too damp for you, Tartarus Key offers a drier, more architectural kind of misery.
Why it’s on this list: Puzzle-box horror with a cruel streak. Bring a notebook.
5. Signalis
You’ve probably already played Signalis. Everyone has. But if you’re the one person who hasn’t, here’s the pitch: it’s a top-down survival horror game with fixed camera angles, limited inventory, and a story about androids, memory, and cosmic horror that will leave you staring at a wall for twenty minutes after the credits. It’s not Townfall, but it’s the other indie horror game that everyone agreed was actually good. The resource management is tighter than Townfall‘s, the atmosphere is colder, and the ending is more confusing. In a good way.
Why it’s on this list: Because if you like survival horror and haven’t played Signalis, you’re part of the problem.
6. Still Wakes the Deep
If Townfall‘s Scottish island setting was the thing that hooked you—the salt air, the crumbling infrastructure, the sense that the land itself is sick of everyone’s nonsense—Still Wakes the Deep is your next stop. You’re trapped on an oil rig in the North Sea, everything is falling apart, and there’s something on board that you absolutely do not want to meet. It’s first-person, it’s story-driven, and it has no traditional combat, which means your survival strategy is the same as your Townfall strategy: hide, run, and quietly panic .
The difference is that Still Wakes the Deep trades Townfall‘s foggy streets for claustrophobic metal corridors, and its Scottishness is less “quaint fishing village” and more “everyone here has a accent so thick you’ll need subtitles.” But the vibe—ordinary people, extraordinary horror, a place that feels lived-in and then violently ruined—is the same.
Why it’s on this list: It’s the indie Scottish horror game that isn’t Townfall. Also, the voice acting is genuinely excellent, which is more than you can say for half the games on this list.
7. Devotion
Red Candle Games’ Devotion is a first-person horror game set in a Taiwanese apartment complex in the 1980s. It’s about a family falling apart, a religious cult, and the ways we hurt the people we love. It’s not foggy. It’s not Scottish. But it shares Townfall‘s commitment to psychological horror over jump scares, and its use of physical space—the apartment, the shrine, the hallway you keep walking down—to tell a story about grief and guilt. If Townfall‘s Otherworld red glow stuck with you, Devotion‘s fluorescent-lit dread will too.
Why it’s on this list: Because psychological horror doesn’t need a monster. Sometimes a family photo is enough.
8. Lost in Vivo
A first-person horror game about a woman searching for her missing dog in a sewer system that is, of course, much more than a sewer system. Lost in Vivo wears its Silent Hill influence on its sleeve—the Otherworld transitions, the melee combat with pipes and crowbars, the sense that the environment is actively hostile to your mental state. It’s jankier than Townfall, but it’s also weirder, and weirdness counts for a lot in indie horror.
Why it’s on this list: It’s the “I found this on itch.io at 2 AM and now I can’t sleep” pick. You’ve been warned.
9. Silver Chains
Okay, this one is divisive. Silver Chains is a first-person horror game set in an abandoned manor, and it’s rough around the edges. The voice acting is uneven, the stealth is basic, and the story is nonsense. But it has atmosphere, and if you’re the kind of person who played Townfall and thought “I wish this were jankier and also set in a house,” this is your game. It’s the indie horror equivalent of a gas station sandwich: not good, but it hits the spot at 3 AM.
Why it’s on this list: Not every recommendation needs to be a masterpiece. Sometimes you just need a foggy hallway and a bad decision.
10. The Convenience Store
Chilla’s Art makes a game every three months, and they’re all about 90 minutes long, and they’re all set in mundane Japanese locations that become terrifying. The Convenience Store is one of their best: you work the night shift, strange things happen, and the horror comes from the accumulation of small wrongnesses rather than a big monster reveal. It’s the opposite of Townfall‘s scale, but it shares the same understanding: fear lives in the details. The hum of a refrigerator. A customer who doesn’t blink. A door that was locked a minute ago.
Why it’s on this list: Because sometimes you don’t need a Scottish island. You just need a bad shift at work.
A Closing Note (Because You Need Closure)
Look, the truth is that nothing is exactly like Townfall. Screen Burn made a specific thing with a specific vibe, and the closest you’ll get is their own back catalog. But the indie horror scene is genuinely overflowing with good stuff, and most of it costs less than a coffee. Silver Pines is the obvious next stop. Signalis is the required reading. And the Chilla’s Art catalog is there when you want to be unsettled in under two hours.
Happy Halloween. Go be scared responsibly.
FAQ:
Is Silver Pines actually like Townfall? Yes. Almost suspiciously so. Red filters, fog, missing persons, telephone saves.
What’s the closest thing to Townfall’s CRTV mechanic? Observation and Stories Untold, both from the same developer.
Are any of these on Game Pass? Signalis was at some point, but check before you commit.
Which one is scariest? Devotion. Not close. Don’t play it with your family in the room.