How to Play the Silent Hill Games in Order

Silent Hill has been a fixture of horror gaming for nearly three decades, and the foggy town of its nightmares shows no signs of fading. The series spans dozens of games, spinoffs, remakes, and mobile titles, and figuring out where to start is a genuine problem for newcomers. The franchise began in 1999 with Silent Hill, and it has sprawled outward ever since, with some games touching the main timeline and others wandering off entirely on their own. Here is how the games line up, and why the order matters.

The Count

There are approximately 18 Silent Hill games in total, depending on how you count. Four of them — the original Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and Silent Hill 4 — were made by Team Silent between 1999 and 2004. After that, the series split off into spinoffs and standalone releases, with studios across Japan and North America doing the work.

Konami also put out four mobile games: The Orphan trilogy and Silent Hill: The Escape. These sit in a murkier part of the lore, and the timeline below ignores them for simplicity. We also leave out the Play Novel, which reimagines the first game, and Silent Hill: Ascension, an interactive streaming series. That leaves a core group of games to sort through.

The Order

The games do not line up chronologically in the order Konami released them. The timeline starts with one of the most recent entries, and it loops back to the very beginning. Here is how the major canon games stack up:

That ordering puts the series in a strange position. The first game you might pick up is actually the most recent entry, Silent Hill ƒ, which takes place in a Japanese town called Ebisugaoka in the 1960s. From there, the story moves backward through time, passing through the late 70s, late 80s, late 90s, and into the present day.

The Exceptions

Not every game fits neatly into that line. Silent Hill: Origins is a prequel that came out later than the games it precedes, yet it directly connects to the original Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 through the character of Alessa Gillespie. It is also the game whose “Good” ending leads directly into the original Silent Hill, which means Cheryl’s story begins there.

The story follows the truck driver Travis after a crash brings him to Silent Hill. There, he slowly discovers the cult-driven secrets of the town while reckoning with his own traumatic childhood.

The game is debated in its place as canon, and its loose connections to the American version of Silent Hill come through memos and documents rather than a shared world.

The Spinoffs

Some games are entirely their own thing. Silent Hill: The Arcade is a particular oddity — it is a spinoff that focuses on action shooter mechanics rather than the psychological horror that defines the series. It takes place around the same time as Silent Hill 2, but it is generally its own story.

The mobile games The Orphan trilogy and Silent Hill: The Escape are also excluded from the main timeline. They have some lore value, but they complicate the picture rather than clarifying it.

Where to Start

The question of where to start depends on what kind of player you are. If you want a taste of the series on modern consoles, Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake is a faithful recreation with some quality-of-life improvements. It is a solid place to enter the lore, though it does not connect directly to the earlier games.

If you are interested in the lore itself, the logical starting point is the original Silent Hill. That game introduced the foggy town, the Otherworld, and the cult-driven secrets of Silent Hill. It is also the easiest entry point, assuming you can track down a working PS1 copy.

Unless you still have a PS1 and can somehow get your hands on an original copy (very cool, if so), your best bet here is looking for emulation guides.

Alternatively, you could start at the beginning of the timeline with Silent Hill ƒ, which introduces a distinct version of the Otherworld and a teenage protagonist named Hinako. That game also features a unique approach to save states and endings, with writing from Ryukishi07.

The games are a tangled web, and the best way to approach them is to pick the one that interests you most. The timeline is a tool, not a mandate. If you want to see how the story builds, start at the beginning. If you want to jump into the middle of the action, the remake is waiting.

Source material: “How to Play the Silent Hill Games in Order,” IGN.

Bloober Team · game lore · horror games · Konami · Silent Hill