Since the cancellation of Silent Hills, the psychological horror franchise has essentially been on hold. But that certainly hasn't discouraged fan rumors from popping up to offer speculation on what the future of the series might look like.
While the first four games in the series were developed by Team Silent, an internal development team in Konami, the subsequent games were developed by various game studios to equally varying degrees of success. One of the biggest questions revolving around the series is whether or not a reboot is in the works, and if so, who would be creating it?
10 Frictional Games
Famous as the indie developer geniuses behind modern psychological and survival horror classics, Amnesia, Penumbra, and Soma, this company has a knack for crafting unsettling settings with an emphasis on exploration over action. Scenery and ambiance are critical elements of the Silent Hill series, with many die-hard fans noting the ever-present fog and nightmare environments as the most important elements of the games. It will take a studio with an eye for dream-like atmospheres to impress Silent Hill devotees.
9 Red Barrels
The development studio that created the Outlast horror series, Red Barrels is notorious for scaring the pants off players. Rather than giving players an assortment of high-powered guns and weapons to fight back with, Outlast forces players to run and hide, encouraging more of a stealth approach, albeit with high stakes. Considering criticism towards recent horror games targets the overabundance of action sequences, gun shooting, and explosions rather than genuinely scary gameplay, Silent Hill fans may want to consider Red Barrels as a potential studio.
8 Capcom
While it is probably unlikely that Capcom will pick up the Silent Hill franchise any time in the foreseeable future, the studio has found a string of successes with their own successful entries for Resident Evil. Capcom listened to fans wanting a new style for the survival horror series and absolutely delivered with their recent releases, including reboots of the second and third games.
With the hype for Resident Evil Village only heating up, many Silent Hill fans are wondering when they will get their day in the sun.
7 Kojima Productions
Oh, what could have been. Once upon a time, Kojima Productions was slated to develop the next Silent Hill game, titled Silent Hills. The only tangible product of the project was the release of P.T. The game was more or less a demo of Silent Hills, featuring a terrifying ghost woman in a haunted house. While just a taste of the larger project, the game is still considered a crown jewel in the realm of psychological horror for many fans. Taking into account the turbulent history between Kojima Productions and Silent Hill, a second shot at the reboot may never come, but stranger things have certainly happened.
6 Tango Gameworks
Tango Gameworks is known as the development studio behind The Evil Within series, which is something of a spiritual successor to Silent Hill in its own right considering the dreamy atmosphere, terrifying bosses, and substantial lack of ammo. The Evil Within games are excellent at pacing the tension of horror throughout the story, and keeping the shooting fun while still incorporating survival elements into the gameplay. The enemy design is intricately grotesque too, and much like Silent Hill, based on character traits and beliefs that manifest themselves into creepy monsters.
5 Bloober Team
By their name alone, Bloober Team may not sound like a horror game developing machine, but they have achieved a string of successful psychological thrillers, including recently released horror darling The Medium. Bloober Team has a knack for crafting detailed stories with atypical storytelling and gameplay. Puzzles are also a key part of their horror games, something that many Silent Hill games prioritize. A Silent Hill game under Bloober Team would certainly be a memorable experience that's off the beaten path from previous games.
4 Supermassive Games
Known for their interactive video games, Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive Games is keenly adept at making creepy stories feel real. While it would be a change-up in gameplay, Silent Hill has dabbled in interactive stories and point-and-click gameplay before in a few of its older spinoff games. Finding a balance between story and gameplay is monumental when it comes to psychological horror games, any potential development studio involved will have to nail the harmony between both.
3 Turtle Rock Studios
The minds behind the Left 4 Dead series have found much success in the horror genre, thanks in part to their ability to make cooperative online gameplay exceptionally fun. Silent Hill might be known as a solo venture into the nightmare dreamscape of madness, but cooperative games are huge right now and the combination between story-based horror and online play is largely unchartered territory for major titles.
Turtle Rock Studios will be releasing Back 4 Blood, the spiritual successor for Left 4 Dead, later this year.
2 4A Games
First-person perspectives have been used more and more frequently for horror games in recent years, typically as a means of engrossing players in the adrenaline rush of fear. Few games understand this better than the Metro series, which combines survival horror elements with first-person shooter mechanics in a macabre nuclear fallout zone full of mutants. Other horror series such as Outlast and Resident Evil have had much success in the first-person horror category, there is no reason Silent Hill can't as well.
1 GSC Game World
Silent Hill is a goliath in the psychological horror field of video games, and any reboots of the series will have to adhere to truly scaring players. Thankfully, that is something the developers at GSC Game World excel at with their S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. In terms of terrifying locations and demonic creatures, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is masterful at building tension and surprising players with horrifying monsters around every corner. The survival aspects of the games cannot be overlooked either, pitting players against overpowered enemies with little to no ammunition or weapons. Whoever is in charge of the next Silent Hill entry will have a challenge cut out for them, but anxious fans are more than ready to play whatever game comes their way.