Silent Hill: The Escape

Silent Hill: The Escape is an entry in the survival horror video game series Silent Hill for mobile phones.

Silent Hill: The Escape
Developer(s)Konami
Publisher(s)Konami
SeriesSilent Hill
Platform(s)FOMA, iOS
Release
  • JP: December 19, 2007 (FOMA)[1]
  • WW: January 22, 2009 (iPhone)[2]
Genre(s)Survival horror

Series

The Silent Hill series is a horror media franchise centered on survival gothic. This game is for mobile devices. Its gameplay uses gesture technology, a method of controlling the actions in the game via image feedback from the mobile device's camera.[3]

History

Silent Hill: The Escape was created by Keiichiro Toyama in 2007. It was developed and published by Konami. After graduating from Tokyo Zokei University, he became a graphic designer and character designer and then became a director, writer, and background designer when he created the Silent Hill series. According to Jason Schreier, an argument and problems with Konami, brought the series to an end.[4]

Game information

Unlike the other games in the Silent Hill series, this game is a first-person shooter game. The game objective is for the player to make their way through ten levels by finding the key and opening the locked door at the end of each level. The player must slide their fingers to move the character in a first person perspective and tap the screen to shoot enemies (such as Evil Nurses and possessed Wheelchairs as well as a monster similar to the Butcher and Pyramid Head). The player can tilt the device to change the camera perspective. This is also used while reloading the player's revolver, as you must align it correctly in order to reload.

Background

Genre

The Silent Hill series is an example of a survival horror game, matching that genre as well as Gothic fiction. Horror video games use Gothic themes throughout. Inorder to realize this gothic theme, this series relies on dramatic cinematic sequences, like cut scenes, and photo-realistic aesthetics. According to Kirkland in "Gothic videogames, survival horror, and the Silent Hill series", the psychoanalytic significance of cut scenes, puzzle objects, monster design, player exploration and game space, all contribute to the Silent Hill series as exemplifying Gothic themes evident in survival horror. According to Kirkland, designing the graphics to make the walls look rank and rotten and floors rusty show that Gothic is relevant for expanding horror elements.[5] With Gothic games, protagonists are haunted by mysterious secrets from the past. This structure suits videogames where players piece together embedded narrative fragments with "both the story to be discovered, and the story of their discovery".[5] With the game centered around the town of Silent Hill, the series has typical Gothic tales regarding religious cults, repressed memories, uncanny doppelgangers, murder, betrayal, and according to Kirkland, incest. These stories offer characters for the audience to play. The only thing that connects these characters and narratives is the relationship with the town of Silent Hill. The shared setting allows the audience to analyze how the different titles and themes may relate together and form theories about it as a fandom.

Game format

The main goal is to survive the monster who tries to trap the player. Perron from his chapter "Gamers' Terrifying Exploration of Silent Hill" in Silent Hill: The Terror Engine[6] describes the video game as an "aesthetic of repetition" because the gamer has to understand how to cope with the game world and its inhabitants. With these games, the emotions created by survival horror are focused on the initial learning sequence. Even with the emotions of terror and horror thrown in, the player is expected to learn the patter of the initial motive of the game to understand where to go. Horror survival games are much different than survival-based games. According to Krzywinska,[7] horror survival games interfere with player performance by taking away the power to see what is coming and remove the player's ability to remain focused. As mentioned by Perron in Silent Hill: "The Terror Engine, the gameplay of Silent Hill is typical of the survival horror genre. While facing a threat, you have to discover ways to get to places while roads are blocked, locate keys to unlock doors, find items to get those keys, and solve puzzles to know how to get those items or keys and how to move on from there to the next level. When it comes to the format of how the player would be scared, they provide jump scares, or in this case first person facing the monster. When it comes to the horror scenes, the perspective is shot that way that makes you feel as if you were in the situation the character is in."

Characters

Each character is unlocked after beating the game with the previous character.

Human: an unidentified person who does not remember how they got there, the human is seen with a neutral facial expression and is usually a male.

Alien: A grey alien investigating the cause of the abnormalities in the town of Silent Hill.

Mira: The Shibia Inu

Robbie the Rabbit: Only appears in the tutorial level of the game. [8]

Monsters

Bubble Head Nurses

Wheelchair ghosts

Frog-like monsters

Ceiling monsters

Flying insects

Hooded monsters

References
  1. McWherter, Michael (19 December 2007). "Sexy Undead Nurse Shooting Finally Comes To Mobile Phones". kotaku.com. Archived from the original on 16 October 2012.
  2. "Silent Hill and DanceDanceRevolution Now Available on the Apple App Store" (Press release). IGN. January 22, 2009. Archived from the original on March 20, 2012. Retrieved 2010-10-22.
  3. "Silent Hill: The Escape". Silent Hill Memories. n.d.
  4. Schreir, Jason (27 April 2015). "It's Official: Silent Hills Is Canceled". Kotaku. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
  5. Kirkland, Ewan (2012). ""Gothic videogames, survival horror, and the Silent Hill series."". 14 (2): 106+. Retrieved 8 December 2021. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Perron, Bernard (2012). Silent Hill: The Terror Engine. University of Michigan Press. pp. 95–125. JSTOR j.ctv65swb6.8. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
  7. Krzywinska, Tanya (2015). "Gaming Horror's Horror: Representation, Regulation, and Affect in Survival Horror Videogames". Journal of Visual Culture. 14 (3): 293–297. doi:10.1177/1470412915607924. S2CID 192498825.
  8. Kurland, Daniel (5 August 2020). "Every Silent Hill Game, Ranked According to Metacritic". Gamerant.
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