The Australian Classification Board (ACB) has seemingly revealed significant plot details and spoilers for an upcoming, yet-to-be-announced Silent Hill game titled The Short Message. The existence of the game was first revealed by the South Korean ratings board in September 2022, although this listing only contained light details.
The ACB listing, housed within a wider report about significant ratings decisions in 2022 and 2023, and spotted by VGC, contains a breakdown of the game’s imagery and themes, as well as an MA15+ rating based on its depictions of suicide, and horror violence.
Per the listing, the game is described as: “An exploration‑based psychological horror game in which players control characters in an apartment building called The Villa in modern‑day Germany.” Its main protagonist is a young woman named Anita, who explores The Villa in search of clues to uncover “what has happened to her friend.”
Read: A mystery Silent Hill game has been rated in Korea
Along the way, she finds a bloody bathtub environment, and experiences a flashback cutscene where a voice screams “This is all your fault! Bad things happen because of YOU!” Anita reportedly has scars on her wrists, and it’s implied that her friend Maya committed suicide during or prior to the events of the game.
“The player character, in a distressed state of mind, speculates that she will never compare to Maya,” the ACB listing reads. “Echoes of her mother’s abusive tirades are heard in the background as Anita prepares to jump and says, ‘Maybe I can be like her… Here goes…’ In a first‑person shot, her feet are seen near the edge of the ledge before, in a third‑person shot, she steps off and begins to fall.”
“In the Board’s opinion, depictions of suicide and self‑harm within the game occur in the broader context of discourse exploring issues revolving around mental health which encourages players to seek help or offer support to those in need. As such, the impact of the depictions does not exceed strong in impact and can be accommodated within the MA 15+ classification.”
Notably, the events detailed in the ACB listing seem to align with imagery shared in May 2022 of an alleged Silent Hill game featuring a young woman as the main protagonist. These images featured bloody hallways filled with Post-it notes, and a young woman covered in harmful words – suggesting themes of bullying and self-harm.
After these images were posted, Konami began taking them down via copyright warnings, suggesting their legitimacy. At this stage, it would be fair to assume they relate to The Short Message, a new Silent Hill spin-off game likely to be revealed shortly.
While the game is yet to be officially confirmed, and it was notably left out of recent Konami announcements about future games in the series, there are now ample clues to suggest The Short Message is a real game. Whether it will release in future or not remains a stubborn mystery.
