Sam Barlow plans to make a Silent Hill: Shattered Memories-sorta game again

Sam Barlow, the writer and designer of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, has been muttering about plans to make a follow-up of sorts to the 2009 horror game. Not a sequel nor even a game with 'Silent Hill' in the name, but a spiritual successor combining bits of that with lessons he's learned from making other games and a bit of extra oomph. After Shattered Memories, Barlow found fame with voyeuristic FMV games Her Story and Telling Lies. The non-Silent Hill game is still only an idea, mind, one he's still pitching. But maybe?

Barlow let slip in a wee tweet this week:

He clarified that this is not 'Project A███████', the mysterious game which seems like it'll be named Project Ambrosio. So what is it?

"[W]e have a game we're looking to make which is very much 'what was special about [Shattered Memories]?' 'how would you take that further now?'" Barlow told IGN. "Like Outer World's take on Fallout, or Bloodstained's take on Castlevania, etc. So it's not a Konami or branded Silent Hill thing."

I was going to say "Aha! He means Outer Wilds!" but nope, tripped myself up once again. IGN say Barlow added that it'd be a third-person game which also draw upon lessons learned from making Her Story, Telling Lies, and Project A.

Shattered Memories was a reimagining of the first Silent Hill, with a new framing around some familiar places, characters, and story points, the fighting replaced with fleeing, otherworldly rust turned to ice, and a Shyamalanian twist whammed on top. I prefer the original, but Shattered Memories certainly has fans. Any unbranded spiritual successor would probably be better off without jerks like me drawing comparisons like, y'know, the one I just drew. But to be fully clear, this isn't a concrete game Half Mermaid have announced they're definitely making, it's one his studio are looking into doing after their current game.

What is Ambrosio anyway? Dunno! A secret for now. I wouldn't be surprised by voyeurism, though. Barlow's been talking around about it, and last week blogged about scene cuts.

"With Project A███████ we are thinking about cuts," he said. "Especially the really magical ones that follow a story’s arterial connections to leap through space and time. How we might skip from 1968, Italy to 1971, NYC to 1999, Los Angeles. When served up in a movie, a cut can be a wonderful prompt to the imagination. In a game, handing over the power of the cut to the player is to give them a magical power. Teleportation, transmutation, time travel. All the possibilities of the cut."

SMASH CUT TO: Alice making a cup of tea.