After months of speculation, leaks, and all-around confusion, the future of the Silent Hill (opens in new tab) series has grown even more bewildering thanks to something called Silent Hill: The Short Message, which was recently rated by South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee.
The rating has since been removed but was noted by Gematsu (opens in new tab), which said that the publisher on the project was listed as Uniana, the publisher of multiple other Konami games in Korea. The rating did not include any mention of platforms, however.
What makes the rating noteworthy is that it’s the latest in a long and frankly baffling string of Silent Hilll rumors and leaks that still haven’t added up to anything. A rumor of two new Silent Hill games first surfaced in January 2020 (opens in new tab), but a few months later Konami shot it down (opens in new tab); fans then convinced themselves that the Silent Hill-like horror game Abandoned was in fact a new Silent Hill (opens in new tab), despite developer Blue Box Studios repeatedly insisting that it is not.
More recently, it was rumored that Layers of Fear studio Bloober Team had joined up with Konami to remake Silent Hill 2 (opens in new tab). Amidst all of that, Guillermo Del Toro managed to slip in a good zing (opens in new tab) at the 2021 Game Awards.
Despite the lack of anything concrete, the sheer persistence of the rumor makes it believable that something’s brewing, and the obvious demand for a new Silent Hill makes it seem inevitable. The is also the first time the name “The Short Message” has appeared online prior to this rating. For now, there’s no sign of Silent Hill: The Short Message on other ratings websites, including the ESRB, PEGI, and the Australian Classification Board, so we’ll wait to see what happens next—in the hopes of speeding things along, I’ve reached out to Konami for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
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