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SILENT HILL 2 DEMAKE Has the Most Unexpected Power Couple?! James Sunderland x Alessa Gillespie in a Chaotic Minecraft-Style Indie Horror with OST by an Ex-Depeche Mode Member?!

16 min readAug 28, 2026

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Hey everyone, you’re watching The Bullseye Reviews. Today, I’ve got this tiny, ridiculously bare-bones indie project in my sights. Honestly, when I stumbled across it on Game Jolt, I almost felt bad for the poor thing, so I decided to give it a shot and power through it for the sake of the review. Guess I’m just way too soft-hearted for this brutal-ass world.

Alright, let’s dive into this thing and see what kind of raw material we’re working with.

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Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but this actually looks pretty damn solid for an indie DIY project. We’ve got some nice thick fog, a gloomy lighthouse silhouette chilling on the horizon, and some tiny cube-shaped girl just frozen in the frame. Yeah… Let me take a quick peek at the image filtering settings. There’s basically nothing else to mess with here, so I’m just gonna uncheck everything (for the memes) and move on.

Let’s take a quick look at the help section. And what do we have here? Everything is painfully simple and painfully familiar: key bindings, a local map, and the protagonist’s inventory. The game itself seems to be presenting as some kind of demake of the legendary Silent Hill 2. Now we just gotta see whether it can actually live up to that ridiculously high bar or if it’s just another overhyped bubble waiting to pop.

We’re shown an opening cutscene with some dude in a hat while someone in the background is talking in a straight-up ghost voice. But we don’t have time for all that, because the action kicks off immediately with zero unnecessary buildup. I’ll be real with you — trying to hit these guys without the usual crosshair on screen is no joke. Still, watching blood spray out of them as chunky 3D pixels was absolutely hilarious.

“The Guardian Bird” — outta nowhere, a blue title suddenly takes over the entire screen. Nah, bro, we really do not care about your fancy-ass titles.

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Oh wow, turns out this bird is actually real and is, in fact, a legit threat. Still, taking it down wasn’t exactly rocket science, so props to the devs for at least giving us an easy-ass encounter.

I’m cleaning up all the loot dropped by the fallen cops. Healing drinks and ammo for firearms. Absolute, undeniable classic Silent Hill stuff. Although, if I’m being completely real, this is the weirdest Silent Hill 2 demake imaginable. Why the hell am I running around the neighborhood shooting cops? Birds — I’ll give you that, they at least showed up in the very first game, but cops… Bro, none of this makes a lick of sense.

And then there’s this train… Heather definitely went through the subway in the third game, but there sure as hell wasn’t a train sitting on the tracks in the middle of a smog-choked city. So what exactly are we even supposed to do in this area?

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Okay, let’s quickly check the inventory. Wait! Now this is giving me straight-up Silent Hill 1 vibes. We’ve even got full 3D models of the items.

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And of course, we’ve got a city map. The only problem is that it has absolutely zero labels or names on it — basically, good luck figuring out where the hell you are.

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Awesome, I hit the “Use” button at the ladder, and — BAM! — the game literally transforms into some kind of side-scrolling 2D platformer. Now THIS is what I call a true Silent Hill 2 demake. Talk about innovation. Seriously, jumping across train cars in the middle of absolute pea-soup fog — is this Silent Hill, or am I just hopelessly out of touch with modern gaming trends? At least it adds some variety to the gameplay. It’s definitely better than Bloober Team’s Unreal Engine 5 remake, where you had to stop every five seconds to solve a million of the most boring-ass puzzles imaginable. Massive L for the Polish devs!

Alright, the platforming section is finally over. I think it’s time to keep moving. If I understand this correctly, our ultimate goal is the locomotive. But obviously, an entire army of cops isn’t just gonna let us walk right in. If shootouts with cops at a train station are officially Silent Hill canon now, then I guess I’m just way too old for the 2026 gaming industry.

At least the blood here sprays out of enemies like they’ve got a busted pressure washer inside them. Though, naturally, it’s all in square shapes, strictly following that Minecraft aesthetic. And if you noticed, the bullets here don’t use hitscan — they actually physically fly around me like we just wandered straight into The Matrix. Kinda goofy, not gonna lie.

See that little red cross icon in the corner of the screen? Guys, that’s a straight-up reference to the 2002 PC port of Silent Hill 2. The devs clearly know their old-school shit.

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Oh, hold up, is that an angel? A literal angel in the foggy sky of Silent Hill? Yo, what? Somebody really took Christophe Gans’ movie quote about us judging the angels a little too literally. But seriously, what the hell was that just now, guys? I have completely lost the plot.

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Meanwhile, the train starts moving, and the entire screen gets covered in thick sepia. Are they going for some deep, artsy, arthouse vibe here? Either way, the game gives us a little break from the endless beatdowns so we can actually use our brains and wonder: what the actual hell is going on here? From the very beginning, the only thing I’ve figured out is that we’re playing as a blond dude in a hat who runs around a foggy train station shooting cops, birds from the first game, and flying angels. Uh… I honestly don’t know. I’m just gonna call the protagonist James because that’s what I’m used to, okay?

So, our James Sunderland has straight-up hijacked an entire train, and where is he gonna end up? I’m betting it’s wherever that girl from the main menu is. I’m gonna call her Alessa, because why the hell not? This is a Silent Hill fan game — literally anything goes. There’s no way they just randomly showed us this girl in the menu. We’re absolutely gonna run into her later in the story.

Oh, the sepia filter is finally gone, the train has stopped, and an entire legion of angels has materialized in the sky. I really, really don’t like the way this is looking. The game is basically screaming at me that I’m supposed to fight them, but I’ve got a completely different plan.

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The plan is to get to the car, find the gas can in my inventory, use it, and — voilà — let’s roll.

Ha-ha, never thought I’d be driving a car in Silent Hill. These blue bastards make an absolutely glorious crunching sound under our wheels. Seriously, who the hell thought mixing Silent Hill with Carmageddon was a good idea? Bloober Team probably wouldn’t even see this shit in their nightmares. Grinding these idiots under my tires is way too much fun. Silent Hill has never been this chaotic and actually entertaining.

Alright, let’s get out of this piece of junk — I wanna pick something up off the ground. Doesn’t matter what it is — we just scoop up the loot and hop back behind the wheel.

We drift past these weirdos and turn onto this road. It’s heading downhill for a reason, right? By the way, Christophe Gans’ movie had car chases too, remember? You know, when Cybil Bennett was chasing Rose and Sharon down the highway…

Oh my God, WHAT was that explosion?! Now THAT’S what I call a plot twist! What the hell just happened?! I really hope my James didn’t bite the dust from some bullshit developer jump scare like that. What are you guys even doing? Or do the laws of physics just not apply to indie developers?

What was the point of that explosion anyway? Just so I could admire the city from a bird’s-eye view? Wow, absolutely genius move. I’m speechless. Guess all we can do now is sit through the rest of this cutscene.

Phew, looks like my James is still alive and kicking. Let’s activate the time-slow ability with Left Ctrl. Eat this, angel. Have a taste of my lead-flavored snacks!

What do we have sitting around in the inventory? Oh damn, we’ve actually got grenades. Cute.

And let’s take another quick look at the map. There’s this huge white spot right in front of us now. Well, I’m assuming that’s some massive building. Final boss arena? Guess we’re about to find out.

Moving forward, clearing the path… Holy crap, that’s an actual skyscraper! Well, “skyscraper” might be pushing it — it’s like three stories tall. Let’s toss a grenade at it.

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Ha-ha, now THAT was a solid boom. You definitely didn’t get anything like that in Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Toss another grenade… Yeah, blowing up cops with grenades — that’s the true Silent Hill experience, boys.

Oh, shit, the main door is locked. Guys, this is that same busted-ass gimmick from the shitty Polish remake. God, I hate when developers throw these annoying roadblocks in your face!

Well, thank God the demake devs actually included an alternate route — straight up the stairs. Just like in the first game, remember that moth boss on the rooftop? Let’s climb up and see what kind of fight is waiting for us up there.

Ooooh, a bunch of dudes in vests hanging out on the rooftop — we’re definitely playing Silent Hill, right? Or did I accidentally boot up Mafia or Red Dead Redemption? And just look at that blocky voxel-style smoke.

Oh wow, these dudes are throwing Molotov cocktails at us. Yeah, this party is getting seriously lit! Shit, though, this smoke makes it basically impossible to see what’s happening or where the hell I’m supposed to run.

I’m trying to keep up with the bots and chuck grenades at them, but I can’t really tell if it’s doing anything. On the bright side, I somehow managed to fall straight through the floor. Love me some environmental destruction.

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Listen, if this is the final boss fight, it’s already miles better than that nonsense in the Silent Hill 2 remake with the weird Mary cosplaying as a tarantula. Because some psycho throwing gas bottles at you? That’s actually hardcore. And where the hell were the grenades in Bloober’s game? This indie mess has an entire warehouse full of them!

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Guys, this dude is so damn chunky that I’m willing to bet money he’s actually Eddie Dombrowski. They just redrew him so the devs wouldn’t get sued for copyright infringement. Dude’s so thick-skinned that literally nothing seems to hurt him.

Looks like I’m missing some crucial detail about how to actually take this guy down. Time to GTFO. Yeah, there’s the door I need. But if I remember correctly, it’s locked. Okay, pull out a grenade and blow this damn door straight to hell.

Hmm, some kind of red message just popped up on the screen… And something tells me I can finally finish off the boss now. So let’s head back to our chubby buddy — this time with a pistol in hand — and maybe, just maybe, he’s finally vulnerable to bullets?

Jumping back into this pit right next to him… Holy shit, this guy is smoking like a freight train, Jesus Christ. Alright, now we shoot him, keep blasting until he finally kicks the bucket. Take that, bitch!

Mmm, that beautiful sound of flesh being ripped apart — easily the most satisfying thing you could hear after a party this damn wild.

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HEY, WHAT THE HELL? What is this hallway with blood on the ceiling?

Whoa, and who the hell is this? A girl? Alessa Gillespie? She’s walking straight toward my James… on the ceiling. This is what happens when fan shipping goes too far. Good girls really do lose their minds over this stuff! So what happens next? Are they gonna hug? Ha, that’d be something. Come on, hug it out already.

Aw, come on, she just vanished. As always, it was just a cheap-ass jumpscare. And what the hell is happening again? Explosions? Again? I can see angels flying straight at me.

And I died. Shit! So what now? There’s no way this is the end — the game couldn’t possibly just end on something this dumb. The camera floats above the city, showing off the foggy streets… What’s the point, guys? Where’s the gameplay?

Oh, that’s the lighthouse from the main menu. And there’s that same girl standing there. Alessa, huh. Alessa Gillespie from the first Silent Hill — except rendered in Minecraft block style. And she’s not alone — two angels are floating in the air beside her. So basically, they’re having themselves a whole-ass biblical party.

And then what? A bridge in the fog? Hmm. And cars driving across it… And there’s Alessa again. Teleported, huh? You little witch!

And the text says — “The End? Dream — Surrender.” Oh, guys… A choice just like the pills in The Matrix…

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Holy shit, what is this completely random cartoon logo doing here? What the hell is “Molly’s Adventure ’88 DX”? Alright, let’s hit START…

Hmm, a controls tutorial… Wait, did some kind of mini-game just start?

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Well, damn. No freaking way. This blocky Silent Hill demake literally turns into some kind of cartoon river-swimming simulator at the very end? What kind of fever dream is this? And what are we supposed to do here? Just swim to the right? Developers, you guys are actually insane. I did NOT expect this game to hit me with this kind of genre mashup.

Oh, there’s Alessa again. Now she’s drowning in the river. I guess we’re supposed to save her or something…

“More!” the game commands in the voice of a spoiled little girl. Alright, fine!

Looks like night is falling over the river. This mini-game actually has a day-night cycle? Kinda funny. But as far as I can tell, there’s nothing more interesting going on here. River, fish, rocks, logs… Plus some other boaters coming toward us… For a mini-game, it’s maybe not terrible, but why the hell did the devs shove this into a Silent Hill 2 demake?

By the way, I just wrecked my boat and now I’m literally swimming down the river like a total clown… Welp, starting over. Alright. We swim, swim, and keep swimming forward… But what’s even waiting for us up ahead? Probably rescuing yet another Silent Hill character from the water? Because we’ve already had the pleasure of seeing Alessa — in the menu, in the hallway, at the lighthouse after dying, on the bridge, and even in the river. What’s next?

Not funny at all, I wrecked the damn boat again. Well… Looks like this is the end of the road for me. Let’s press this giant pink button…

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Whoa, what the hell is this? “Dedicated to Alexander Belyaev”… “who freed Ariel”… What the actual hell does Belyaev have to do with anything, and who is Ariel? Is that the Little Mermaid from the Disney cartoon? And what does that butterfly in the background have to do with it? I have absolutely no clue!

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But that’s only half the L. The real fever dream hit when the credits rolled and I went to YouTube, hoping to find any lore about a game with the completely unpronounceable title “1988: The Good Mother — Der Himmel über Boston”. My search actually paid off: I stumbled upon a MV that utterly obliterated my grip on reality with its straight-up unhinged visuals… and the track went crazy too.

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The video opens with a boomer rapping with way too much energy: “Well stop, great God, stop there and listen, listen to the story ‘bout Jezebel…”. Meanwhile, absolute cinema is unfolding: first, some ancient NPC stares out a window looking deep, and the very next second we get a priest spawned in, frozen either on a pier or straight-up on a steamboat deck. Gotta hand it to them, that’s a lowkey hard homage to Judas Priest!

While grandpasaurus is behind the mic spitting bars about how “She got mad at John ’cause he told her ‘bout the gospel, told her servants to boil him in oil”, our guy is already lurking around the corner, catching a sketchy handoff on camera: a gentleman in a black tunic shakes hands with a bearded dude in a fedora. Zero thoughts, head empty, but the aura is off the charts.

The second the singer hits us with insane vocal range, dropping: “Raised his voice, looked down and thundered “John! Go do my will!””, the surrealism goes full goblin mode. The old man starts chasing that exact dude in the tunic (who turns out to be rocking a satchel and pince-nez). In the background, a NPC choir is endlessly spamming like a chant: “You got to go to judgment, stand trial”. What is bro cooking?..

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Next, our main character (no way they’re chasing a random NPC with that much main character energy) strolls casually into a room with authentic, David Lynch-coded red curtains. There, as the track drops “Then they tell me John moved through the power of the gospel, told Jezebel her time was nigh”, he throws bombastic side-eyes through his pince-nez at a chunky dude with sideburns, looking suspiciously like a 1940s propaganda character.

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To the rhythmic “Clapped his hands and death come jumpin’, Jehovah was angry, somebody had to die”, grandpa ops into the room behind his rival and starts beefing with the big guy. We get a close-up of the tunic dude — hat-less now. And suddenly it hits me: bro is literally Tim Robbins as Jacob Singer from Adrian Lyne’s cult classic Jacob’s Ladder! The exact 1990 movie that the Silent Hill devs were notoriously heavily inspired by.

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Meanwhile, the music is getting ominous, turning aggressive, and the visuals are matching the energy. Gramps frantically paces the “red room,” and then — boom! — someone shatters the window, and the action spills onto the street into a raging protest. In the crowd — plot twist — appears a mustache-coded guy who looks identical to Dutch van der Linde from Red Dead Redemption. His pull-up is accompanied by pure unhinged lyrics: “Then Death come knockin’ on Jezebel’s door and said “Come on woman ain’t you ready to go? Of your evil deeds God’s done got tired, you got to go to judgment, stand trial!””. Absolutely unmatched hype.

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Then the whole thing devolves into pure chaos: local Dutch van der Linde starts tweaking on an extra in the crowd, while the camera fixates on the completely unbothered faces of the protesters. Among them lurks a guy who looks suspiciously like the main character from our review today: also chunky, also in a white shirt — just missing a vest, and the hat is from a totally different wardrobe. Honestly, maybe I’m overthinking this whole avant-garde brainrot and reaching too hard, let’s move on.

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The next scene is straight out of a Bruce Lee flick: the same tunic guy who gave me severe Jacob’s Ladder vibes lands a nasty hook right on Dutch’s jaw. The enraged crowd instantly jumps our protagonist — all set to the narration: “Then Death come leapin’ she jumped into Hell, great God Almighty I heard them tell. Nine days she lay in Jerusalem’s streets, her flesh was too filthy for the dogs to eat”. Contextually it hits, but it still leaves me wondering: what does this fever dream even have to do with the game?

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Then the music takes a creepy pause, and the beat-up, pince-nez-less “Jacob” gets a anime-level comeback off his knees to face…

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…a super uncanny guy with a mustache in a blindingly white suit and matching cap. NGL, I’m out of metaphors — no idea who bro is based on. Guessing the director was just trying to drop the final boss on us.

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Curtain call: the same grandpa from the intro re-appears. He’s just wandering around aimlessly while the track goes “Jezebel, mind God’s talking, says he’s tired of your evil ways. You got to go to judgment, stand trial”, then grabs his throat and dramatically dies. Right on cue, the dev credits start rolling. Talk about a cinema tier promo campaign.

I could’ve kept cooking conspiracy theories forever, but the video title and the final boss of copyright, Content ID (shoutout to everyone who “loves” this digital brainrot), instantly set the record straight. Turns out the soundtrack to this fever dream was “Jezebel” by Recoil. And the mastermind behind it is none other than Alan Wilder — the guy who literally built the iconic sound of Depeche Mode. The verdict is simple: the game devs are massive DM stans, which explains this whole avant-garde mess.

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The Bullseye Reviews
The Bullseye Reviews

Written by The Bullseye Reviews

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