The latest take on the storied, not to mention turbulent, horror series Silent Hill is almost here, and it’s about as weird and messy as you likely expect. Silent Hill Ascension, a free interactive streaming series from Genvid Entertainment, is set to launch tonight, on Halloween, and air daily for the next 16 weeks as viewers watch along and determine the fate of the characters amid a dizzying flurry of puzzles, quick-time events, microtransactions, and season passes.
To begin with, viewers can tune in to Silent Hill Ascension every night at 9 p.m. ET on apps that can be downloaded on either the iOS App Store or from Google Play, as well as on the show’s site, Ascension.com. Though the show is free to watch, the key point of Silent Hill Ascension is having fans of the series weigh in on decisions throughout the events of every episode, which is coincidentally where everything gets much muddier.
Viewers are expected to tune in and use what Genvid is calling Influence Points to affect the trajectory of the cast of Silent Hill Ascension, who the studio notes is diverse and global—even though Silent Hill is supposed to be a single location. These characters are being plagued by the monsters of Silent Hill, while also dealing with the series staple themes of trauma and guilt. This is about as Silent Hill as it gets, though. Players (or viewers, I don’t know at this point anymore) don’t need to actually watch the show live to affect the outcome, as decisions are seemingly posted well in advance for folks to spend Influence Points on. Watching live does seem to have the benefit of seeing how the scene plays out, as well as interacting with the chat, who can potentially rally others to their cause until the moment of truth happens and is then canonized forever. These moments are then broken out as on-demand videos for later watching or rewatching.
Influence Points, since I’m sure you were already wondering, can be bought from a store, because of course Silent Hill Ascension has a store. Genvid wants to seemingly make sure it isn’t pay-to-win though, so there are means of scoring Influence Points for free, like tackling daily puzzles that net lore and/or IP. The “best” way to get IP, according to Genvid themself, is to buy the season pass for $20, which gets you extra puzzles as well as steady unlocks of just straight IP to dole out, so that line of thinking seems a little counter-intuitive.
As if all of that was not already more than enough, Silent Hill Ascension allows viewers to customize a character and shoehorn them into the events of the show permanently. Every day, the audience can spend—you guessed it—IP to enter a cameo contest, where they can pick to be an extra, a guest star, or have a starring role in the show.
Silent Hill has been a somewhat dormant series for a while now, but clearly Konami knows there’s interest in it enough to bring it back in order to make Silent Hill Ascension, as well as the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake. However, if Ascension is any indication of Konami’s intentions for the series, I will spend any amount of IP to plead with them to leave it alone indefinitely.