Pity poor Murphy Pendleton. He’s just a regular guy trying to find his way through a seriously screwed-up town that might or might not be a reflection of his own psyche. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and he certainly can’t figure out where he is at any given moment. All he — and you as the player — knows is that something isn’t right. And it keeps on raining. Sometimes upside down. And there are a lot of monsters lurking in the wet.

Okay, okay — so Murphy’s no rainbows-and-kittens protagonist himself. He’s a convict (sentenced for what, we don’t yet know) who “lucks out” by having his prison transport upend in sticksville. But his newfound shackles-free existence comes at a cost. He’s gonna have to slice, dice, and shoot his way through the purgatory of Silent Hill to claim any sort of liberation. And, of course, there’s that rain to deal with…

We recently got an extended demo of what Silent Hill: Downpour is cooking up and the forecast isn’t looking so hot for the bedraggled Murphy. Once his bus crashes on the outskirts of Silent Hill, he’s hellbent on finding his way to freedom — but the roads are torn up in the most inconvenient places, forcing him to take some precarious routes into the distant town. Getting there, you’ll have to stumble through a dingy, abandoned gas station/diner that seemingly transforms at will into a twisted version of its real self — a menacing, rust-filled type of Otherworld.

In one scene, you’ll enter the “normal” kitchen area of the diner only to discover that some fool’s left the stovetop gas pipe open, flooding the room with fumes and soon enough, flames. The fire triggers a sprinkler system and things go from bad to worse as the room begins to flood, with the water level getting dangerously close to an exposed, fizzling power box. Sure, the solution to draining the room seems as easy as twisting a few water valves, but the minute you’ve seemingly solved the problem? That’s when the spooks hit the fan and the now-familiar kitchen surroundings give way to a weird, sinister world filled with grimy staircases and darkened doorways leading to areas no sane person would poke their head into.

But to progress, you have to explore those terrible creepy, heebie-jeebies–inducing hallways, and our little detour gives us a glimpse of one of Downpour’s recurring “enemies.” Why the quotation marks? Because this adversary is one you can’t kill; your only recourse is to runlike hell. The Shade is the name of the game’s ominous black, sticky, fog-like menace.

In one area, after navigating a giant room in the Otherworld filled with reverse-flowing waterfalls, portrait-swiveling puzzle solutions, and a decrepit phonograph twisting Andy Williams’ classic “Born Free” into something darker than intended, The Shade suddenly appeared. The dark veil of smoke chased Murphy down a hallway, busting through obstacles in an attempt to snatch him up. If the Shade touches you even just a little, it’s game over — so eluding the fast-moving mass is a matter of life and death.

And these white-knuckle chase segments go far in mixing up Downpour’s pacing; in the more straightforward tussles with enemies, you’ll rely as much on your feet for flight as you will on the makeshift weapons. Early on, Murphy’s able to equip a flashlight, but that won’t let you fend off enemies. You’ll need to pick up stuff like chairs, shovels, and axes or bottles to put some hurt on the game’s creepy-crawlies. Weapons degrade over time, and you’re limited to carrying only one of them at any given moment. So, if you bash a nasty with your bottle, it’ll break and morph into more of a stabby-style instrument of death. If you’re left with no weapon at all, you’ll still be able to whale away with your fists, but don’t count on the damage being that significant. In some instances, you’ll just have to run.

We got to see this in action in one segment where Murphy must make it to the Devil’s Pit tram station. After securing a tram ticket following a long bit of exploration, he’s bombarded by a flock of Screamers — enemies that can jump on your back or emit high-pitched screams to stun you. Taking one out is hard enough, but a whole batch of them? Forget it. In this case, Murphy simply sprinted (though sprinting is only available in finite doses in Downpour; you’re no athlete after all) to the tram station to eventually shake the Screamers off his tail. In the cavern-like Devil’s Pit area of our demo, we got a glimpse of another beast — a human-sized, fleshy, bat-like beast that can scamper up walls and attack from the ceiling. Good thing we had a gun at that point, right? (In addition to one melee weapon, you can also carry a firearm — but they’re much rarer.)

But there’s more to Downpour than simply gunning and outrunning. This game will be the first in the Silent Hill series to incorporate side quests (producer Devin Shatsky tells us there’ll be 15–20 of them in all, ranging from 15 minutes to one-hour long apiece), and while completing them won’t make or break your ability to finish the game, the development team plans on tying plenty of unlockables to your seeing them through. You’ll also meet up with plenty of oddball folks during your travels. While we never actually made it to the town portion of Silent Hill in our demo, we got a chance to swap banter with some kooky characters, including a disturbingly chipper mailman named Howard, a fellow escaped convict who may or may not be beating up a woman, and a former Devil’s Pit tour guide by the name of J.P., who seems a little too keen on visitors.

There’s still plenty of mystery left in Downpour’s macabre bag of tricks, and what we saw piqued our interest in some good ol’ fashioned survival horror. If it can keep scaring the pants off of us all the way through like it did during our demo, then consider our bags packed for a return trip to Silent Hill.