A bit wack, but with some interesting ideas. The problem is, every person who's taken a stab at Silent Hill since Team Silent was disbanded has struggled to understand that Silent Hill 2 was the only entry that was meant to be psychological horror where one person's internal perception transforms the environment.

What happened to the cult mystery aspect? Like, yes, there are some interesting spins here on the formula introduced in Silent Hill 2, but it's getting incredibly old. This is a franchise that could support an entire album's worth of different tracks, it could have so much more going on, and instead they just keep doing variations on the same theme that was so thoroughly explored back in 2001 that it's beating a dead horse that has been buried for over twenty years at this point.

The game itself is passable first person horror fare. Comparisons to P.T. seem a little apt, but there's nothing obscure about the puzzling in this game. It really feels more like a vaguely Silent Hill-themed Outlast spinoff or something, with maybe a dash of a story that brings to mind stuff like Life Is Strange (but absolutely nothing like that in the way of delivery, so don't get your hopes up). Playing a repetitive chase scene as the only gameplay that isn't easily boiled down to just looking around for things in the environment... well, it's just not all that fun, unfortunately. Props for releasing this as a free title anyway. You will play through this once and that's all you'll ever want out of it.

Here's hoping Konami finally greenlights Silent Hills given that they seem to be turning over a new leaf when it comes to outsourcing their intellectual property to other companies. This is an, unfortunately, pale imitation. Perhaps the most pale of them all.

really doesn't do silent hill justice a whole lot and i honestly wouldn't even think it was part of the franchise if they didn't weirdly mention the "silent hill phenomenon" in the middle of it. didn't even take place in silent hill.
the bullying parts of the story really just seemed kind of cringey to me and felt like an older generation's understanding of how teenagers talked and i ended up feeling a lot of second-hand embarrassment.
that last weird chase sequence was also annoying as shit and took me forever to finish because i kept getting lost and didn't initially know i was supposed to interact with shit, i ended up needing to look up everything i was looking for.
the enemy's design is cool though, as expected (the name is dumb though.. sakura head? really? just call her cherry blossom so it aligns with the story. but it was a fan decision so whatever)

Пропустив эту игру, ничего не потеряете. Silent Hill: The Short Message — проходной проект с плохо рассказанной историей и скучным растянутым геймплеем. Визуал, звуки, дизайн монстра за авторством самого Масахиро Ито достойны похвалы. Более того, игра бесплатная. Но этого всё же недостаточно.

Геймплей пытается повторить P.T., но при этом страшных моментов и интересных решений нет. Все появления монстра заранее предсказываются самой игрой, что лишает эффекта внезапности. Сами побеги от монстра однообразны, а под конец вовсе придётся пять минут подряд без перерыва бежать от него и ещё попутно пытаться собрать необходимые предметы. По сути, нам нужно просто ходить, собирать записки и бегать в эпизодах погони.

Задумка истории неплохая, но рассказно всё так наивно и нелепо, что переживать героям вообще не появляется желания. Всё больше выглядит как нытьё и попытка вызвать эмоции на пустом месте. Слишком прямолинейно и притянуто за уши.

Как итог, проект не впечатлит не только фаната серии, но и новичка.

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Far from being a Silent Hill this is a horror game in the wake of Outlast and company that tries to talk about complex issues, but it is really pure soporific. Pretty bad.

De Silent Hill tiene poco, es un juego de terror a la estela de Outlast y compañía que intenta hablar de temas complejos, pero realmente es puro sopor. Bastante malucho.

Not sure why this even exists. The Short Message has got some good concepts in here. The bullying, social media, and child abuse concepts are interesting premises. I like the cherry blossom imagery, I like the phone being used so often, and I like the modern teenage girl dynamic. But…It just kind of sloppy nothingness. It’s all poorly developed and ham-fisted.

For every time I’m appreciating the subtext and atmosphere, a cutscene would play bashing my head in with an explanation. For every wonderfully creative scene like the shrinking in the original apartment scene, there’s an obnoxious on the nose one. For every time I am appreciating the music and designs, they’ll rip me out of it with a chase sequence.

It somehow doesn’t feel like Silent Hill but doesn’t even feel like an indie game either. I think this COULD have been a cool way to bring Silent Hill back, but it doesn’t commit to the franchise at all, and it doesn’t do enough to establish itself as something different. It’s like they made this game about running away from a monster (which feels too far off from the series’ identity), and then threw in a mental health backstory to justify the use of the IP.

The writing is bland and the gameplay unoriginal. But it’s not boring or bad, and I can appreciate what it’s going for. Give it a go if you like Silent Hill, but don’t expect anything you like from previous entries.