Silent Hill: Ascension is a streaming show with the frills of a multiplayer game

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By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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Silent Hill: Ascension has been billed not as a game but, rather, as an interactive streaming series. And now, ahead of the show’s premiere on Halloween night, we finally have some sense of what that means. Developer Genvid Entertainment has just released a new explainer video that, well, explains how Ascension will actually work.

Essentially, the experience sounds like a mix of choice-based games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead and “choose your own adventure” shows like Netflix’s Bandersnatch. (Notably, the team at Genvid consists of a number of ex-Telltale staff.) Each evening, part of the story streams live, and there are various ways that players can interact with the experience. The most basic are quick-time events — called “endurance streams” — where players work together to keep a character safe during a dangerous scenario.

The much bigger feature, though, are plot points where viewers make a choice that will influence the outcome of the story. There are different decisions each day, andAscension features a novel system for how the story will land on specific outcomes. Instead of straight-up voting, players will use an in-game currency called “influence points” that can be spent to sway a decision. The more influence you use, the stronger your sway. Influence points can be earned by participating in various ways, including helping with those deadly QTEs and solving daily puzzles on the Ascension website.

You can watch the show like a typical