As a free download by Konami, it was a nice gesture for reviving the Silent Hill franchise, especially considering the last thing they did was take away P.T. which despite the fact that it advertised a cancelled project, didn't sit well with fans who wanted to access and preserve that experience. So undoubtedly, The Short Message was a way to make up for that and generate goodwill in the run up to the Silent Hill Revival. On this note, I think it works as a freebie.
It is also evident that The Short Message was used as more of a test and exploration of ideas for Konami rather than a fully fleshed out title. It plays with a lot of things that are untraditional for a SH title. The most obvious is the use of FMV cutscenes. The last time live-footage was used that I can recall was the occasional shots of hands in the Attract Video for Silent Hill 4. It is clear that the team was also seeing what the PS5 hardware could do and making use of the fast loading by quickly putting you back at the start of the escape sequences to try try again. Okamoto stated in the production commentary videos that this was an R & D project, and within that they were trying new things like seeing if they could apply the SH franchise to some more contemporary topics and audiences. Most notably being the draconian COVID lockdowns which led to a lot of worldwide suicides, isolation and the feeling of being trapped within indoor spaces, with the only escape being connecting with others through the internet's online world.
The focus is largely from a female perspective this time and a female lead, the last time being Silent Hill 3. The other two supporting characters are also young girls who are friends with each other. But despite being friends, there is also jealousy and misunderstanding. There is also the lead character's mother who is a central figure.
The only male characters mentioned are in the background and more distant from the story.
Anita - Had a brother who died as a child of neglect. Her father divorced her mother who was now seeing another man who she couldn't connect with and after awhile didn't seem to want to be around either.
Amelie - Had a father, who likely owned the abandoned building property this is set in leading to financial struggles, and also wasn't comfortable being around her brother for unspecified reasons that could either be read as sibling hatred or incestuous feelings.
Maya - Sketched an unnamed boy she liked, but it seems due to bullying they never got to be together or he left her. I don't recall any mention of her parents.
So there are themes of male abandonment, bullying and social problems, as well as economic issues. Amelie worries about not being able to afford college. Anita's single mother was having trouble making ends meet which is why she was desperate to find a new partner. Maya's bullying seems to be connected to the economic downfall of the German town, as she is apparently descended or ethnically associated with a Japanese witch who was said to be credited with an economic boom for the town in the 1930s, but who died in 1947, leading to an economic collapse. There seems to be an allusion to World War II here, as Japan and Germany were allied, and the allusion to a fire destroying the town's factories, and the witch later jumping to her death.
More financial investment from abroad was coming in, some from Japan and China, but future market drops continued to prevent development, and over and over we see a cycle of hope for a boom and better times followed inevitably by a bust. The local people feel the area is cursed, and that anger is directed at the Japanese associations, the first being the witch, and then inevitably, Maya as a subconscious outlet for their problems. Maya herself, becomes enamored with transformation and death, leading to her suicide in like manner, jumping from a place renowned as a suicide spot. Anita likewise goes through the same motions during the game.
In terms of story, this title is more unsubtle in it's presentation. Themes are presented in a very surface level way, that can come off as hammy and heavy handed, especially at the beginning, but overall, the story started to grow more on me as I went further along even if it did continue to play everything on the nose. But as a short free experience, it was worth the playthrough.
In terms of gameplay, however, it can be frustrating. The most relevant portions being the maze chase sequences. Comparisons can be drawn to Shattered Memories, and there are even little directional hints of lighting cues and direction to follow. However, there is an element of bad design here that frustrates the experience in a way Shattered memories never did.
Thematically, you can see what they were going for with concern to the narrative. The feeling of being trapped with no way out and the claustrophobia of the walls closing in that reflects what depressed people experience who are on the verge of serious suicidal thoughts. In that regard, the visual and level design is VERY effective!
Game-design wise, this makes it harder to take note of your surroundings in order to know where the loop is to escape the monster and keep track of your surroundings and mentally note which direction you are going, especially if you're being chased. Obstacles that slow you down are hard to note. And the most frustrating part was the final chase where you are expected to collect an unknown number of photographs from an unknown number of locations in a close walled maze where everything looks like everything else. You do not have a map. You do not know what your objectives are. There is no time to even examine or comprehend the collectibles. You are forced to solve a puzzle whose rules you do not know, nor see, while being closely chased behind.
Shattered Memories chase sequences were better designed. Spaces were more open and not samey, so you could keep track of where you were going. You could look behind you to gauge the distance of your pursuers. And if you were expected to solve a puzzle in the middle of a chase sequence, you were in a "safe" area for awhile to figure out what you were supposed to do. Also, you were in a sense always moving forward, the only loops were you using the wrong door, otherwise you never had to backtrack if you were taking the right door. The looping was a sign you were going the wrong way and had to figure out which visual cues were the correct door, which was simple to figure out as you were running thanks to visual design.
I could only get past the first 2 chase sequences in the Short Message. The latter 3, I had to resort to using a guide map from online. So even the PS5's quick loading didn't alleviate the repeated playthroughs until it got too frustrating. I'll admit that I also personally aren't very good at doing hectic or stealthy things from a first-person view and much more prefer a 3rd person camera perspective.
Perhaps the idea was to deliberately make this game's chase sequences and mazes more obtuse in a bid to inspire the same online collaboration with others that P.T. did, but I don't think that works here. P.T. was a puzzle people had to figure out. You weren't being chased, and had plenty of time to examine and think about things while wandering the hallway, so there was no frustration. Whereas, with the final chase here, any significance of the photographs, it's locations, or even what Anita said when she found them, was entirely lost on me as I was immediately on the run again.
Speaking of P.T., there were some coincidences about the Short Message that stood out to me. I say 'coincidences' because given this game was developed by Hexadrive, it is doubtful they ever collaborated with Kojima or his team while they were at Konami. It could be that these ideas were commonly conceived, or merely that they took inspiration from studying P.T. and used as homage, or were advised to incorporate some of it in at Konami's behest. I have no idea, but here they are:
The similarity between Lisa and the Sakura monster. As we play through the game, we discover that the Sakura monster chasing Anita is her mother.
Lisa in P.T. gives off a pregnant appearance, and there are illusions to this with the bloodstains on her dress from her pelvis.
There is the fact that both P.T. and The Short Message have babies that died and are even found screaming inside bloody shaking fridges.
Everybody's favorite paper bag also makes an appearance!
Okay, that last one is a stretch...
But I liked the jump scare!There are inspired moments in the game like that. My other favorite one being when the camera or room scales to put you at a lower height during the part when Anita was a child.
Graphically and art-wise, the game has some impressive and some not so impressive stuff. Most impressive are the Otherworld transformations when the chase sequence begins. Lighting in general is good in both the foggy and the otherworld. World assets are alright in general. The poorest criticism I can make is of Anita's character model. Particularly her glasses, where I can't tell if she actually has lenses in them or not.
I don't think I've ever seen a girl putting her hair behind her glasses in front of her eyes... wouldn't that just be annoying?
At least here it looks like there is actual glass on her glasses. Maybe this is more evident on a 4K display? I'm still rocking a 1080p TV.
Her hair physics also need a lot of work. particularly where gravity is concerned. But this is a common problem for a lot of games, where if a character with long hair is bending forward, the hair doesn't cascade to the ground, but tilts with the head entirely, or not enough hair strands hang down.
Facial mo-cap, character acting and Voice work also isn't anything great. Just serviceable.
The Short Message as a whole is a mixed bag. Strongly appealing on the graphics and visual design front, a good enough retention of the Silent hill brand in that area.
Story-wise it's presentation is too overt and cliche in many ways. A few things don't click with me, such as people bullying Maya in school by calling her art terrible, when she's clearly competent at it. It would've been better to not lay it on so thick and instead call her unaccomplished or mediocre. If the bullying was in more subtle social ways like how girls normally do it in cliques, it'd have helped. Anita looking at her phone and bemoaning lack of followers online and comparing herself to Maya could've been done wordlessly. Text conversations between Anita and Amelie could've been more naturally written and less... robotically pandering... and careful...? It was as if Konami was really worried about the themes of suicide in the game and lawyers were brought in to make the dialogue more straightforward. So the more stilted and obviously gentle it is, the better it is not to potentially trigger anyone. Perhaps because this is a free download so more people would try it, and the fact they were looking to cater to new younger contemporary audiences played a role in this consideration, hence all the warning screens.
From a Silent Hill lore perspective, it makes sense to see if we can expand outside of the town to even foreign locales. The witchcraft angle was one way to do it if not a full-on cult. This part is deliberately vague and that's okay.
I don't like how there is now an official academic label for this now blatantly as 'The Silent Hill Phenomenon' which implies that a good number of people are actually studying and publishing what is better left as an occult mystery that is only of fringe interest, and I believe it's better for the franchise to remain that way where ties back to Silent Hill are much looser. A better way to tie this in would be a casual mention of Silent Hill in some paper, rather than naming an entire study explicitly after the town which implies a good number of people in the field are knowledgeable about it enough to have it named that way and know what it is referencing. This is a bad idea imo.
On the gameplay front. Exploration in the corridors and rooms is so-so. P.T. was better as discoverability was a bit harder, granted you only had one corridor. There is no combat and that's fine. The escape sequences as I detailed above aren't very good to play. So that was the strongest criticism I have to make about it.
In terms of other presentation, I don't dig the disparity between the game graphics and FMV. The Japanese girl is clearly not speaking English. It would've made more sense if she was speaking German, and they subtitled that. Or if she wasn't speaking with her mouth at all. You just see video of her doing stuff and it's simply her voice-over. I think the team was attempting to try a stylistic presentation similar to Remedy's with Alan Wake and Control. In this regard, I don't think it turned out as well here.
In terms of monster design, Ito made another fine one here. Even if it won't be as memorable as any of the other games, I can't fault it. It's thematically fitting, and creepy enough to look as it lumbers towards you in the few moments before you turn around and start running again.
As for music and sound design. It was overall okay. No complaints. But nothing to praise either.
In the end, I did have a good enough time with it. it certainly won't rank up there with the best of the series, and it certainly isn't going to be a phenomenon like P.T. But as a free goodwill gesture, and an R&D project, I think The Short Message manages to cross the finish line into a decent title that's worth the playthrough. And I look forward to more things to come!
