Silent Hill: Townfall's stutter is patched, and the enemy everyone hates is next

Screen Burn has pushed a patch for Silent Hill: Townfall on PC, and used the moment to promise a second one aimed at the part of the game players have complained about loudest.

What shipped

Patch 1.3.1 went out on September 30 on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Its one listed change is a bug fix: reduced gameplay stuttering caused by shader precompilation issues. The studio asks players to check the version number in the bottom right of the main menu, which should read v1.4.153829. Further performance work is described as still in progress.

The Weight is getting rebalanced

The more interesting part came alongside it. The Weight is a large enemy that bookends the game, appearing in one major sequence around the middle and another near the end, and the stealth encounters built around it have drawn consistent criticism - unclear enemy behaviour paired with instant kills when you are spotted. VGC's own review called those sections the game's main downside.

Screen Burn's response, posted to X on September 30, was short: we've heard you on struggles with The Weight, the studio wrote, with gameplay balancing on its way ASAP. No date, no detail on what changes, and no word on whether the console versions get the performance fix too.

A rough first week

Townfall launched on September 24 to a more modest start than its recent stablemates - it peaked around 8,000 concurrent players on Steam on launch day, well short of Silent Hill f and the Silent Hill 2 remake - and spent its opening days fielding complaints about motion sickness traced to its default field of view, head bob and motion blur settings. A studio that is patching performance in week one and promising encounter rebalancing in week two is at least moving quickly.