This isn't a step-by-step. There are long ones out there that tell you every door to open, and if you use one of those the first time through, you'll get to the end and not have been scared once. This is how I'd tell a friend to get through each part, and a nudge on each puzzle in case you're truly stuck. It names places and people. It doesn't tell you how anything ends.

Three rules for the whole game: read every note, check the map every time you pick something up, and when the radio starts hissing, decide right away whether you're fighting or walking around it.

After the opening, Harry ends up in a small café with a police officer named Cybil Bennett, who is from the next town over and knows about as much as you do. She gives you a handgun and goes for help. Search the café before you leave. You'll get the things you need here, the flashlight, the map and the radio, and you'll find out what the radio does almost right away.

Outside, a lot of the streets are blocked off: broken roads, fences, cars in the way. Your map shows where you can't go, which tells you where you can. The game is quietly steering you toward the school.

Hints: When a note mentions a place, go look at that place. When you find a key, the map will mark the door it opens. Don't fight the dogs if you can walk away from them. You'll need those bullets later.

Midwich Elementary. Find the school's map as early as you can. Maps in this game are usually up on a wall somewhere, so look at the walls. This is where Silent Hill stops being a foggy town and becomes something else, and you'll know the moment it happens.

Hint, the clock tower: The door to the clock tower takes two medallions. Your job in the school is to find them both.

Hint, the piano: There's a poem nearby. Read it twice. Some of the piano keys don't make any sound when you press them, and the poem tells you which ones, and in what order. Write the poem down if you have to. I did.

Hint, when things change: The school you've already explored and the school after the change are laid out the same way. If you mapped it in your head the first time, it pays off now.

The boss: Save at the last notebook before you go anywhere you haven't been near the end. Keep moving, keep your distance and keep shooting. It's bigger than you, but it isn't faster than you.

Back in town you'll find a church, and a woman inside named Dahlia Gillespie who talks in riddles. She gives you something. Keep it. Then the hospital, Alchemilla, where you meet its director, Dr. Kaufmann, who is not happy to see you, and later a nurse named Lisa. Remember everyone you meet in this part. All of them matter.

Hint, the four plates: When the hospital changes, you'll need four plates for one door. They're named for characters from Alice in Wonderland, and the poem near the door tells you the order. If you've read the book, you're halfway there.

Tip: Check your health constantly here. This part has the most things that can hurt you in the least amount of light.

Ahead of you are an antique shop, the sewers under town, and the lakeside resort part of Silent Hill: a bar, a motel, shops, a lighthouse out on the water.

Hint, the antique shop: If a room seems smaller than it should be, look at the furniture.

Hint, the sewers: They're long and dark and everything looks the same. Check the map at every ladder. If you're going in circles, you probably are.

Important: In the resort area, Kaufmann turns up again, and if you're thorough, he leaves a trail you can follow. Whether you follow it changes your ending. The endings page explains, behind a spoiler warning. If you don't want to know, at least promise me you'll look in every building in this part of town.

The amusement park first. What happens there is the biggest choice in the game, and you won't get a second chance at it. If you want the better endings, read the endings page before you get here.

Then the last part, which everybody online calls Nowhere. It's put together out of pieces of every place you've been. There are a lot of locked doors and a lot of strange names on them, and the puzzles here are the hardest in the game.

Hint, Nowhere: Every door's name or symbol means something. Write them down as you go, along with every item you pick up. When you're stuck, match the two lists.

Before the end: Fill up on health, carry every Ampoule you've been saving, and make a separate save you never write over. You'll want it, because you'll want to come back and do this again.