Silent Hill The Short Message (Project Sakura) - All Information about the secret Silent Hill game

In the previous articles, we analyzed all information about five new Silent Hill projects, which were recently announced by Konami:

>> All About SH2 Remake <<

>> Silent Hill F - Trailer Analysis <<

>> Return to Silent Hill <<

>> SH Ascension and Townfall <<

But besides this, there is also a secret sixth project.

It's called "Silent Hill: The Short Message".

In this article, I will analyze everything that is currently known about this game.

The Secret Silent Hill Project

"Silent Hill: The Short Message" is a psychological horror game with first-person adventure gameplay.

The main character is a young girl, Anita. She goes to an abandoned apartment complex called "The Villa" to find out what happened to her friend named Maya. But suddenly, Anita discovers that a terrible monster lives in the building.

Apparently, the game will be heavily tied to the themes of suicide, depression, and self-harm.

There were some rumors that Konami initially planned to release this game in 2021 for the PlayStation 5. But something did not go according to plan - and as a result, the project has not even been officially announced.

Prototype Version Screenshots

Several screenshots from the game were leaked online:

On one of the screenshots, you can see a file with some story information from the game in Japanese language. This is a letter from child welfare officials to a woman named Krista Newman. It says that officials want to take away her two children.

Masahiro Ito's Participation

Famous monster designer Masahiro Ito is most likely involved in the project.

Concept art from the game has leaked online, signed with his name:

In 2018, Masahiro Ito also mentioned on Twitter that he would like to make a new horror game that would use the theme of "cherry blossom trees":

And we can see a similar idea in the design of the monster from Silent Hill: The Short Message.

New Pyramid Head?

A strange monster appears in the game - a girl whose upper half of the body was overgrown with sakura flowers.

Most likely, this monster will serve as an unkillable pursuer - much like Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2.

Even the design of this creature is somewhat similar to the Pyramid Head - it has a human body and a weird-shaped head.

I guess we can call this monster SakuraHead :)

Leaked Information about the Story

In November 2023, a funny incident occurred.

The Australian organization "Australian Classification Board" (which gives age ratings to games) published its annual report - and there was a lot of information about "Silent Hill: The Short Message".

On page 67 of the report, several scenes from the game are described, and important details of the story are told.

The report was quickly deleted from the official website, but I managed to save a copy of it. Here is this page about the game:

Please note that there are some SPOILERS in this Australian report. So decide for yourself whether you want to read it or not.

But the very fact of the appearance of such a document indicates that the game has not been canceled, and work on it is still underway.

Connection with Silent Hill F

Interestingly enough, "Silent Hill: The Short Message" and "Silent Hill F" share a common motif of flowers.

In the SHF trailer, we saw a Japanese schoolgirl's body covered in strange flowers. And here we meet a monster girl whose body is overgrown with sakura flowers.

In 2022, an internal presentation was leaked in which it was mentioned that Konami was preparing two interconnected projects: "Silent Hill 5” and "a playable teaser for SH5 in the style of P.T.”

Therefore, it is possible that "Short Message" could be a playable teaser for SHF. And that, in turn, could become the fifth installment of the Silent Hill series (if it doesn't get canceled somewhere in the middle of development).

Update 2024:

Announcement and Release

On 31th January 2024, Konami finally announced "Silent Hill: The Short Message" - and immediately released the game right on the day of the announcement.

The game is currently only available on the Sony PlayStation 5 console. It can be downloaded for free from the Playstation Store.

As expected, "The Short Message" is a short horror adventure game with a first-person perspective. And in many ways, it is similar to the "playable teaser" P.T.

The participation of Masahiro Ito as a designer was also confirmed.

The game's story was written by Kiichi Kanou, a Japanese scenario writer who previously worked on additional story arcs for the console versions of "Higurashi no Naku koro ni".

And Akira Yamaoka became the composer for this project.