Konami has a Silent Hill Transmission set for Feb. 12 at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET, and the renewed attention makes this a good moment to figure out where to actually start with a franchise that stretches back nearly three decades.
Roughly 18 Silent Hill games have come out since the series debuted in 1999, according to IGN, and not all of them were built to be played in order. This guide lays out a practical Silent Hill games play order for newcomers, based on which entries are directly connected and which work fine as standalone stories.
Why Play Order Matters In Silent Hill
The first four Silent Hill games were developed by Team Silent between 1999 and 2004, according to IGN, and those four are generally treated as the series’ major canon. Later entries, including several spinoffs, were handed to different studios across Japan and North America. Each game tells a mostly standalone story, but the lore threads together through recurring characters and small details like memos and posters scattered through the environments.
That structure means some games are tightly linked, some only gesture at each other’s lore, and others barely interact with the rest of the series at all. Knowing which category a game falls into before you start saves a lot of confusion about why characters or references don’t line up.
Start With Silent Hill Origins
For players who want the clearest sense of how the original story builds, IGN recommends starting with Silent Hill Origins. It’s a prequel that directly connects to the original Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 as part of what’s known as the Alessa Gillespie arc. The game is set around the late 1970s by its own internal logic and follows a truck driver named Travis.
Origins also marks the point where some of the series’ inconsistencies begin. Despite its direct tie to the mainline games, its place in canon is still debated among fans, according to IGN. The “Good” ending from Origins sets up the character of Cheryl, who becomes central to the next game in the order.
Move To The Original Silent Hill
After Origins, the natural next step is the 1999 original. A mysterious car crash leads protagonist Harry Mason to the town in the late 1980s as he searches for his missing young daughter, Cheryl, the same character whose groundwork gets laid in Origins. This is the game that established the series’ template, and it’s the clearest entry point into the mainline story for anyone wanting to understand the lore from its roots.
Play Silent Hill 2 Next, Remake Included
Silent Hill 2 follows protagonist James Sunderland as he travels to Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his dead wife telling him he can find her there. The game introduced Pyramid Head, now one of the series’ most recognizable figures, and expanded the town’s lore while adding new characters and plotlines.
Its own timeline is a bit messy. Art director Masahiro Ito has referenced the game taking place in the late 1970s, but documents in later entries place it about a decade after the original, which lines up with a 1990s setting, according to IGN. Unlike some other entries, Silent Hill 2 doesn’t have a single canon ending that directly sets up future events, so newcomers don’t need to stress over chasing a specific outcome to stay “on track” with the story.
Players deciding how to experience it have an easy call to make. Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2, confirmed in June 2025 as a separate project detail noted by GameSpot, is a faithful recreation with quality-of-life improvements for modern consoles, according to IGN. It’s a reasonable way to play the game today without hunting down original hardware.
Where Silent Hill F Fits
Silent Hill f is a different kind of entry entirely. It takes place in the town of Ebisugaoka in the 1960s, the first time the series has been set in Japan, and follows a teenage protagonist named Hinako. Its characters, locations and version of the Otherworld are entirely distinct from the American Silent Hill games, with only loose connections to the broader lore revealed through in-game memos and documents.
Because of that separation, Silent Hill f doesn’t need to be slotted into the Origins-to-Silent Hill 2 order at all. Newcomers can treat it as a standalone starting point if the setting or protagonist appeals more than the classic American small-town horror of the earlier games.
Konami’s Renewed Push For The Series
The timing of this guide lines up with Konami’s broader effort to revive the franchise. The company has specifically called out Silent Hill: Townfall, a co-production between Annapurna Interactive and No Code Studios first announced in 2022, as part of the Feb. 12 Transmission, according to GameSpot. Bloober Team is also working on a remake of the original Silent Hill, a project that follows the studio’s Silent Hill 2 remake, which was both a critical and commercial success. Series producer Motoi Okamoto has said that Konami deliberately rolled out three separate announcements during the franchise’s first Transmission in 2022 specifically to show fans how serious the company was about bringing Silent Hill back, according to GameSpot.
What’s Next For The Series
With Townfall still in development and a Silent Hill remake from Bloober Team already confirmed, the franchise has more new material heading toward players than it has in years. The Feb. 12 Transmission is set to offer updates on those projects, giving newcomers working through this play order a reason to keep an eye on the series’ next moves.
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