For some most famously perhaps there are faceless, buxom nurses lurking in the rust-encrusted corridors.
For others, flames tower around them, leeching the air of all light and hope.
For Anita, sticky notes daubed with crude insults are layered like feathers on every surface.
It’s kind of beautiful in a dark, melancholic, effed-up way.
I didn’t feel that way halfway through, mind.
The Short Message’s, well, message, isn’t subtle.
So off to the abandoned apartment building Anita goes, with nowt but her phone for company.
As if she’s never seen a horror movie before.
Mechanically, it’s a little rough, too.
I do, however, take great, great umbrage with The Short Message’s chase sequences.
Yes, I appreciate it symbolises Anita running from her past.
Yes, I understand why the walls are plastered with post-its and photos.
Three-quarters of the way in, someone changed the rules and didn’t even bother to tell me.
We never get toexploreit.
Instead, all you ever do is run mindlessly through it, desperately trying to get out.
And the game loops, of course.
That, too, is a delightful metaphor that makes more sense the more you play.
Other times, it will be shockingly obvious that things are different now… and rarely for the better.
The trouble, though, is that truncated run time.
Maybe that’s why Anita’s story made so much more sense after a second playthrough.
But even with that infuriating chase sequence, I’m very glad it exists.
A copy of Silent Hill: The Short Message was independently sourced for review by Eurogamer.
