Fear will take you.
"Seeking a connection with others is a sign of weakness."
-to adult me
Silent Hill: The Short Message is a Psychological Horror video game in the Silent Hill series, released for free on PlayStation 5 in January 2024. It's the second installment of the series revival started in 2023 preceded by Silent Hill: Ascension.
In Kettenstadt, Germany, depressed teenager Anita finds herself trapped within an abandoned apartment complex that has garnered a reputation as a popular spot for graffiti artists, as well as being an unfortunately commonly chosen spot for young adults to commit suicide.
Upon receiving a mysterious message from her friend Maya, however, Anita spirals into a deep walk through her own psyche to unravel why she's stuck in the complex, and hopefully find a way out.
you cant leave til you find tropes
- Abusive Parents: After her husband left her, Anita's mother became a truly vile person. She became neglectful at best, outright dangerous at worst to her children, trapping her children in the closet, and, when her infant son dies from this neglect, putting his body into a refrigerator. She also claims her own mother was this as well.
- all lowercase letters: Everyone texts this way.
- Ambiguously Bi: Maya canonically falls in love with a boy who breaks her heart, but it's easy to read her as being in love with Amelie too: She seems smitten when Amelie and Anita come to her studio, and in her last letter she writes that she'd like to run away with Amelie and adds that there are people who will always "fear" and "hate" anyone different, like she's hinting that their potential relationship might face homophobia from others.
- Ambiguously Gay: Anita's obsession and subsequent Yandere tendencies towards hording her relationship with Amelie become extremely possessive and romantic. That being said, her sexuality is never explicitly stated.
- Bittersweet Ending: Anita finally remembers what happened and come to accept her past mistakes and her traumatic family history, but resolves to do better for the sake of those she loves. The game ends with Anita and Amerie making plans for the next day.
- Bottle Episode: The Short Message is designed as something of a proof-of-concept "taster" project, more similar in spirit to PT than any other mainline title. This game is short and can be finished in an hour or two, takes place within one (admittedly varied) location, and only has one monster, opting to be its own standalone Psychological Horror story with only tangential thematic connection to the rest of Silent Hill (namely the use of environmental symbolism to represent intense trauma).
- Central Theme: Suicide.
- Anita commits suicide twice, but thanks to the time loop, she survives both times.
- Maya committed suicide six months prior to the events of the game.
- Several news articles highlight an increasingly higher rate of depression and suicides brought on by the world's collective isolation following the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Zig-zagged. Anita's cell phone works perfectly fine, and she exchanges text messages with Amelie throughout the game and even checks social media at one point. On the other hand, she apparently never thinks to use it to call for help or even tell anyone about her current situation, and the most utility she gets out of it is using it as a flashlight.
- Content Warnings: The game begins with a content warning, describing the subject matter that the game deals with and urging those who may not be in the right mindset to contact professionals. The same content warning repeats twice during the game itself, and then is displayed a fourth time just before the credits.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Sakura Head to Pyramid Head. The latter is a muscular and downright terrifying monster that looks human, save for the large metal pyramid over his head and wields a giant sword. He's slow and lumbering, but he's also nigh-invincible. His appearance remains mostly the same between games and exists for the sole purpose of punishing the protagonist's for their overwhelming guilt after committing some sort of sin in the past. Sakura Head is more or less his Distaff Counterpart in that she's female and slender with sakura flowers for a head with barbed wire wrapped around her body as well as metal spikes for hands and feet. She's incredibly fast and can catch Anita if she's too slow, and will impale her if she catches her. Like Pyramid Head, Sakura Head is punishing Anita for her guilt, though she doesn't manifest in the Otherworld until the third and final loop.
- Creepy Doll: Several baby dolls can be found scattered throughout the complex as Anita explores. They represent her brother, who ended up being killed by her abusive mother.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Anita's brother was locked in a closet until he died.
- Dark World: The Otherworld makes a grand return in this entry. Anita's otherworld takes the form of a dark, abandoned school building with the walls lined with thousands of sticky notes, all scrawled with hateful messages directed toward her. In the final stretch of the game, the original Otherworld makes its return, as well, with rusty, industrial, blood-soaked metal making up the walls, floors, and ceilings.
- Dialog During Gameplay: Anita sometimes speaks aloud during not just cutscenes but gameplay as well. She remarks on things she read previously, freaks out at the sight of the Cherry Blossom, and has multiple things to say every time she dies depending on number of deaths and how far the player got in the story at that point in time.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Maya. She committed suicide after being bullied relentlessly at school, as well as being lashed out at by Anita.
- Anita commits suicide, twice, but thanks to the time loop in play, she ends up surviving.
- Dying Town: The town of Kettenstadt is a dying town with very few people left. In fact, Anita, Maya, and Amelie all plan on leaving someday because of it.
- Environmental Narrative Game: Largely the game's genre, except for the chase sequences. Most of what you're doing is walking around and examining things, with only one puzzle to solve.
- Escape from the Crazy Place: Anita's ultimate goal once she realizes that something is very, very wrong with the place. In the end, she succeeds.
- Evil Is Visceral: The enemy Anita encounters in the final Otherworld sequence is noticeably more fleshy-looking and decrepit than the one that came before it.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: This is easily the most unique entry in the series barring Silent Hills, as it breaks several series traditions.
- This is the first game in the series to take place in another country altogether. Message takes place in Germany.
- The entire game is in first-person, in stark contrast to the various other entries in the franchise that play in third-person.
- This is the second game where there’s no combat after Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Anita has no way of defending herself against the creatures she faces whatsoever, leaving her only able to run from them. In every other entry, the player characters would at least gain a melee weapon.
- Foul Flower: The genuine monster of the game — officially dubbed "Sakura Head" — is a Humanoid Abomination that ostensibly resembles a human girl (at least having human legs), but whose entire top half is engulfed with Cherry Blossoms and barb wire that are practically exploding out of its jacket as it walks. It's completely unstoppable, and if it catches you, lights out.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Anita became jealous of Maya because she seemed to have everything she didn't; better looking, popular, and artistic talent better than hers. Not to mention more followers on social media, something Anita mentions often. And it only got worse after Amelie and Maya met for the first time and instantly became friends, which led to Anita to think Maya stole Amelie from her.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Anita has been going through the cycle of waking up, reliving her nightmarish past, and committing suicide for six months by the time the player takes control.
- Heel Realization: The whole plot is Anita facing the horrible thing she did to Maya, which caused the teen artist to commit suicide, and facing her abusive past which helped shaped her negative world view. She does both and is able to free herself from the nightmare, Silent Hill.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Both Amelie and Anita are bespectacled young teens with long, brunette hair, but out of the two, Anita's bangs hides her face more and she's a depressed wallflower. Amelie, in comparison, has her bangs back and actively tries to contact Anita throughout the game.
- In Name Only: The game does not take place in Silent Hill, nor is it connected to the rest of the series in any way (besides visual motifs) apart from the brief mention of "the Silent Hill phenomenon" (which is said to be a hallucination rather than the actual supernatural phenomenon of the Otherworld seen in other games, though that's just what one psychologist thinks).
- Marionette Motion: In grand series tradition, the creatures that follow Anita around have incredibly jittery, twitchy animations for their movements.
- Mind Screw: Anita's journey through the complex has her suddenly reviving after death, being surrounded by her horrific past in disorienting ways, and has her receiving messages from a dead person.
- Mythology Gag:
- The final Otherworld sequence features a transition nearly identical to the transitions seen in both the original Silent Hill film and Silent Hill: Homecoming.
- Anita forgetting about her playing a role in the death of Maya, even if it was unintentional, is similar to reveals in Silent Hill 2 and Homecoming.
- The looping nature of Anita's plight is similar to Silent Hills' P.T. demo. As is the moment where Anita is looping through her decayed childhood home.
- During the final chase sequence, the door in the photograph on your phone is chained up in a similar way to Henry's apartment from Silent Hill 4: The Room.
- The Reveal: In the end, Maya did notice Anita and even drew her similar to how she drew Amelie, with the ending showing the final art project was both girls linking together to show their close friendship. Something Maya also noticed, proving she was never out to take Amelie away from Anita.
- Room Full of Crazy: Several hallways are covered from ceiling to floor with sticky-notes of various insults and vague threats, including "FREAK!", "LOSER!", and "you will NEVER leave", among others.
- Self-Harm: Anita has scars on her wrist from cutting into herself with a razor. In-game, we see her begin to do it again before cutting to the aftermath.
- Spooky Painting: As a hub for graffiti artists, the apartment complex already has a variety of creepy pictures on its walls, some of which can lead to a jumpscare upon opening a door.
- Title Drop: Later in the game, a news article delves into "the Silent Hill effect", a phenomenon in which people believe themselves to be seeing horrific things in foggy weather around the world that appears to be purely psychological in nature. At least, according to one psychologist.
- Yandere: Anita led a cyberbullying campaign against Maya, which to her surprise was so successful, it translated to Maya being bullied at their high school. After Maya committed suicide in the infamous abandoned apartment building, Anita's descent into Silent Hill began not long after, six months prior to the events in the game. All because she was jealous of Maya befriending her best friend Amelie, who she believed belonged only to her.
- You Wake Up in a Room: The game begins with Anita waking up in the abandoned complex, alone and in a small room. After she commits suicide, she does it again.
