Key Takeaways
- Silent Hill: Townfall – The Dock House is a prequel comic out now digitally via the 2000 AD Webstore and App, published as part of the milestone 2000 AD Prog 2500 issue.
- It’s written by game director Jon McKellan and illustrated by acclaimed artist David Roach (Nemesis The Warlock), with colors by Emily Roach and letters by Rob Steen.
- The story follows Douglas, a veteran harbormaster on the Scottish island of St. Amelia, who discovers an impossible staircase descending beneath the harbor.
- Physical copies are available in the UK from September 16 and in North America from September 30 via Lunar Distribution.
- Silent Hill: Townfall itself launches on September 24, 2026 on PS5, Steam, and Epic Games Store — just one week away.
- The game is developed by Scottish studio Screen Burn Interactive (formerly No Code) and co-published by Konami and Annapurna Interactive.
- Townfall is a first-person psychological horror set in 1996 Scotland, with five endings, a 10-14 hour runtime, and a CRT pocket TV as a core gameplay device.
If you’re the type of person who reads every scrap of lore before a new game drops, Konami just handed you exactly what you needed. Silent Hill: Townfall – The Dock House is a prequel comic that went live digitally earlier this week, giving fans their first proper look at the world of St. Amelia before stepping into it on September 24. And it’s not just a quick promotional tie-in — it’s written by the game’s own director and lead writer, Jon McKellan, making it as close to canon as it gets.
What Is The Dock House About?
The comic is set in St. Amelia — the remote, fog-draped Scottish island at the centre of Silent Hill: Townfall — and focuses on a character named Douglas, a veteran harbormaster who has spent decades maintaining the island’s dock house. His routine is shattered when he discovers what the official synopsis describes as an “impossible” staircase that dives deep beneath the harbour. What lies at the bottom of it, and what terrifying reality Douglas is forced to confront there, is the story the comic tells.
It’s worth noting — for long-time series fans — that Douglas as a name isn’t new to Silent Hill. Douglas Cartland was a private investigator hired to track down Heather Mason in Silent Hill 3. The harbormaster in The Dock House doesn’t appear to be the same person, but the deliberate use of the name again feels like a nod to the franchise’s history of recurring names and thematic echoes. Lisa appears in the original Silent Hill, and then again as the ghost in Hideo Kojima’s P.T. demo. Silent Hill has always played with that kind of symbolic repetition.
The Dock House is published as part of 2000 AD Prog 2500 — the landmark 2,500th issue of the legendary British anthology comic that launched Judge Dredd and dozens of other iconic series. Having a Silent Hill story land in that milestone issue is a meaningful placement for both parties.
How to Read It
The digital edition is available right now through the 2000 AD Webstore and App. Physical copies hit UK shelves from September 16, with North American distribution through Lunar Distribution starting September 30. If you’re in the US and want to read it before the game launches September 24, the digital route is the obvious call.
McKellan himself described it as “a personal milestone” as a writer, noting his excitement at expanding the world of Townfall through a new short story. The creative team is completed by colorist Emily Roach and letterer Rob Steen — both familiar names to readers of 2000 AD’s ongoing stable of work.
About Silent Hill: Townfall — What You Need to Know Before Launch
With the game less than a week away, it’s worth getting up to speed on exactly what Townfall is and why it has horror fans paying close attention.
The Developer
Screen Burn Interactive — formerly known as No Code — is a Glasgow-based studio whose previous titles include Stories Untold and the BAFTA-winning Observation. Both games are known for their unusual approach to horror storytelling, using unconventional mechanics and technology as narrative devices rather than just gameplay tools. That sensibility maps perfectly onto what Townfall appears to be doing, and Screen Burn’s Scottish roots give the game an authenticity to its setting that would be harder for an outsider studio to achieve.
The Setting and Story
Townfall is set in 1996 in the fictional Scottish island community of St. Amelia. The game’s protagonist, Simon Ordell, is drawn back to the island to “put things right” — and wakes repeatedly in the water beside the docks, with no clear memory of how he got there. St. Amelia appears abandoned, silent beneath heavy fog, but the town is very much not at rest. Simon carries an IV bag, a medical wristband, and a strange device called the CRTV — a portable pocket television that he uses to tune into unstable signals and detect nearby enemies. The fog-covered isolation and an unreliable protagonist suggest thematic similarities to Silent Hill 2, even as the setting and period are completely different.
Gameplay
Townfall is played entirely in first person, which marks a departure from the series’ traditional third-person camera. Screen Burn made this choice deliberately, to lean into the “what you can’t see” dimension of horror and limit the player’s field of view in ways that keep tension consistently high. Combat exists — pipes, planks, and limited conventional weapons — but stealth and evasion are the intended primary tools. A peek mechanic lets Simon lean around corners to assess threats before committing. Narrative puzzles run throughout, structured to reveal details about Simon and the island’s history rather than existing as detached challenges. The expected first playthrough runtime is between 10 and 14 hours, with five endings total — three on a first run and two requiring New Game Plus.
Launch Details
Silent Hill: Townfall launches September 24, 2026 on PS5, Steam, and Epic Games Store. The Deluxe Edition includes a digital artbook, digital soundtrack, and an alternate outfit for Simon, with Deluxe buyers also getting 48-hour early access starting September 22. There’s no Xbox or Switch 2 version announced at this time.
Silent Hill Comics Have a Long History
The Dock House isn’t the first time the series has extended its world through comics. The franchise’s relationship with the medium goes back to 1999, when the very first Silent Hill graphic novel was reportedly completed — though it was never officially published. Subsequent releases did reach players, with most being standalone stories set within Silent Hill’s broader universe. One of the more notable examples was Anne’s Story, which expanded on Silent Hill: Downpour, one of the last entries in the series before the franchise went dormant for most of the 2010s. More recently, Silent Hill f received a manga adaptation with a new ending for the Japanese market, tying into Konami’s renewed push to treat the franchise as a multi-medium property.
With Konami clearly treating Silent Hill as an ongoing annual franchise now — following the strong reception of the Silent Hill 2 Remake and the success of Silent Hill f — the appetite for expanded universe content like The Dock House is only likely to grow. Whether that means more comic collaborations, interactive projects like Silent Hill: Ascension, or other media tie-ins likely depends on how Townfall lands when it releases next week.
Given how much anticipation has built around the game — and how well the series has been received since its revival — September 24 feels like it can’t come fast enough. In the meantime, The Dock House is available digitally right now. If you’re planning to spend this weekend gaming, it’s a solid way to get in the right headspace for what’s coming.
This is one of the genuinely exciting weeks in gaming this year — with Modern Warfare 4 arriving in October, Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance building toward 2027, and GTA 6 looming in November. But right now, St. Amelia is calling — and Douglas just found something beneath the harbour that you probably want to know about before Simon Ordell does.
