Silver Pines Review - Survival Horror Chaos Meets Metroidvania Madness
Silver Pines
10/8/2026
PC/Xbox/PS/Switch
Wych Elm/Team17
In my restless dreams, I see that town. Sorry, I’m confusing my spooky video games again. Today, we’re visiting a slightly less fog-filled place that has more rain than anything else, known as Silver Pines. You’re not HARRY at all. Instead, you are a clean-shaven private investigator, Red Walker, tasked by a mysterious voice to track down the elusive Eddie Vedder, whoops, I mean, Eddie Velvet, in the Pacific Northwest town of Silver Pines, which has recently been evacuated due to a catastrophic event of some kind. Your reasons for tracking down Velvet? Well, that wouldn’t be much fun if I told you now, would it?
Silver Pines is a 2D survival horror game with light Metroidvania elements that immediately draws you in with its unique, almost rotoscoped visuals and thematic callbacks to pre-existing media like Twin Peaks, or one of my favorites, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. The atmosphere is suffocatingly moody and evocative. The game animates beautifully, features fantastic lighting, is drenched in wet dread, and offers a stunning variety of richly detailed environments to explore, all of which feel deeply connected to one another, making the town of Silver Pines feel all the more believable. From its haunting creature designs, eerie character portrait arts, and chilling locales, Silver Pines is a visual stunner.
The game’s audio is also used in a variety of successful ways. While exploring, you’ll hear buzzing birds, mysterious voices that might have you looking over your shoulder, howling winds, and other subtle offerings. This is backed by a sparse soundtrack that creeps in during the game’s few moments of reprieve, sometimes offering low, stirring strings, or even heavy metal tracks via the many radio channels you’ll discover. Yes, there’s quite the variety here, but truly, the sound engineers behind Silver Pines have done an exquisite job of further bringing this world to life. I should also tip my hat to the many voice performances, which are all well-performed, particularly the gruff audiobook narrator-like sounds spewing from Red Walker’s vocal cords.
Of course, great visuals and audio can only get you so far, so let’s dive into the rest of Silver Pines. You’ll begin your investigation by selecting one of four difficulty settings, with the recommended being “Survival Horror Mode,” the third most challenging option. These options can thankfully be toggled at any time during gameplay if the going gets tough or the tough want to get going. Fair warning: Survival Horror will put up a hefty challenge, offering limited resources, tougher enemies, and beyond; it is not for those of you less experienced with the genre.
Fans of classic survival horror games should expect many of the tried-and-true staples, including a basic inventory system, where you’ll store key items. One thing that is a bit different, however, is the inclusion of a camera which you’ll acquire early on. This is not a weapon as is the case in, say, the Fatal Frame series, but it can be used to take photos of puzzles or areas you’ll need to come back to at some point. It’s a cool way to store important information without having to rely solely on memory, or take a photo with your cell phone (we’ve all done it, don’t lie).
Reading billboards and notes across the town can unlock more visibility on the map, which itself does a decent job of showing you your next destination and areas that are currently inaccessible, as well as key points of interest like storage boxes, phones, and vending machines. At least as well as any other survival horror game. The map will be covered in red points of interest the further you progress and explore. Interacting with particularly important objects will sometimes zoom in your perspective, allowing you to solve puzzles and open locks. This isn’t to say you won’t do a bit of wandering and bumbling despite the game’s best efforts, but more on that a bit later.
Walker can sprint with the left bumper if you’re looking to speed things up a bit, though he’s still a bit pokey even while running. I guess they don’t call him Walker for nothing! He also has a wimpy little jump if you’re looking to catch some air, though he might need a pair of Reebok pumps because he’s a bit gravitationally challenged at the moment. You can also crouch by clicking in the left stick and even climb walls by pushing the left stick upward or pushing the “Y” button, which is… fine, sometimes. Same goes for navigating staircases, where you’ll need to tilt the stick towards your intended trajectory. The idea was clearly to add a bit of dimension to what is a 2D game by design, but the way the game was programmed doesn’t always lend itself well to the few times you’ll need to “platform” if you want to call it that, or climb.
Players will need to manage their stamina, which is expended by dodging enemy attacks and obstacles, though thankfully not drained when jogging, yeah… I’ll call it a jog. You can increase your stamina by drinking a damn fine cup of coffee, even if it requires brewing up a cup of joe in a less-than-desirable locale. With the game being 2D, sometimes objects will be in your way. Eventually, certain weapons will also allow you to bust down suspicious walls, opening new paths and leading to upgrades similar to what you might see in a traditional Metroidvania game.
A nice, stylish spin on saving are phone booths, which are used to save your progress, but you’ll need to cough up a coin and punch in a number to do so. If you're as old as me, you’ll remember having to use one of these bad boys. The phone can also be used to contact other characters, further fleshing out the story and progressing the game. Hell, sometimes Walker will even offer fun updates to the mysterious voice that is steering him along this journey.
Much like Resident Evil, you’ll also be collecting herbs, fungi, and other plant life, which can be combined together as long as you have a bottle to put them in. Of course, there are other chemicals to mix with those herbs that can make them even more potent, such as items that add additional stamina to your concoction. Two herbs fill the bottle, but also take up two spaces in your limited inventory, which can thankfully be expanded upon later in the gameplay through collectibles. Think: Resident Evil 4 in how you’ll sometimes need to plan carefully between saves. These bottles can also be thrown and used as ranged weapons in a pinch. Items can be cycled through using the d-pad for quick use, which works halfway decently. Hitting down on the d-pad will allow you to use the selected item, a nice design choice that cuts down on time spent bumbling through a clunky inventory like so many games of the past.
For a town that has been evacuated, you can sense the people that have passed through and lived their lives in Silver Pines. Memos from the denizens of this town will give you important information about solving puzzles and progressing in the game. Many of these puzzles are your standard “enter the right combination to open a door” or find the right key to, well, open a door, though occasionally something a bit more clever arises, such as needing to carefully align a license plate to crack a code. Don’t expect anything too brain-bending here, however, with the game going back to the well a few too many times in puzzle familiarity.
Despite some ho-hum, standard-ass survival horror puzzles, I enjoyed reading scattered notes and viewing random TV segments found on random monitors within Silver Pines’ many buildings, which broadcast snippets of the time period, early 90s based on context clues. These television segments are super nostalgic, harkening back to everything from Twin Peaks to the X-Files and even reminding me a bit of Alan Wake, where you can essentially watch the plot of an entire show unfold if you want to stand around long enough.
In classic survival horror fashion, you’ll eventually encounter a storage box, which can be used to stow away items currently clogging your inventory that might come in handy later in the game. You’re not going to believe the innovation here, but you’ll also obtain a flashlight with limited battery life, so you’ll need to make sure you use your light sparingly or be ready to get your wallet out and cough up some change to purchase extra batteries (and coins are not always easy to come by). Or you could find them in the environment, but much like other resources here, I wouldn't count on it. The flashlight is sometimes essential to exploring new areas of the game.
Early on, you’ll collect your first weapon, which is a box cutter for melee attacks that drains a bit of stamina but helps keep you safe from mysterious attackers. Your box cutter can also be used to interact with environmental objects like cloth, which can be cut through. If you’re looking for a bit more durability in your weapon, some basic duct tape will help keep things together. Applying duct tape involves completing a QTE of sorts where you need to push the right input at the right time based on an on-screen indicator. I’d strongly recommend using your duct tape reinforcement as weapons can break, rendering them unusable until fixed and leaving you defenseless and scrambling to hit enemies with whatever is available. In my case, this was a soda. Not ideal. Much of the early combat is more defensive than offensive, with your best option being dodging past enemies and running for your life. Another strategy you can use is just…closing the door behind you. Some enemies will respect your boundaries while others will follow you right through from room to room, tormenting you as if they’ve never heard of personal space, and it's just as annoying as it sounds.
If you do still decide to take your enemies head-on (and you’ll eventually have to), it’s mostly a matter of taking turns bobbing and weaving to the side and then striking when using a melee weapon. Pretty rudimentary, but effective nonetheless. These enemies don’t exactly have what I would call complex patterns to follow. Inevitably, combat will start to feel a bit more forced. For example, when interacting with certain points of interest or waiting for a key to turn in a lock, I was often rudely interrupted by an enemy in a rather tight corridor and forced to do battle.
Other times, you’ll want to purge the world of enemies for the sake of comfortable exploration, with Walker even having to crouch for some low blows when dealing with somewhat more obnoxious, jumpy enemies like shadowy beetles or the game’s equivalent to a hellhound. (I still hate hitting any kind of dog in a game.) Holding down the right trigger button will beef up your attacks for a more powerful strike, which is handy for winding up against our hop-happy friends.
But about those guns, which are aimed by holding down the left trigger and using the left stick to adjust the trajectory of your shot. The gunplay is solid, feeling rather impactful. Each weapon has a satisfying kickback, and enemies are designed in a way where shooting at their various body parts isn’t too much of an issue. Shotguns pack a heck of a wallop, but there are also handguns which can be upgraded and even a nail gun at some point. Guns can also be used on rusted locks to blast them off. Insert Resident Evil reference here. Even better, sometimes your environment can be used as a weapon, such as blasting a bullet into an explosive tank to take down multiple foes at once.
Combat is at its worst when you’re dropped into a boss battle. There aren’t a ton of these sections, and at the least, you are given fair warning when they are coming, with the screen glowing red outside of their “lair,” but the limited stamina, bullets, and needing to swap between weapons on the fly made these forced encounters more annoying than challenging, particularly in the “survival horror difficulty mode.” They aren’t game-breaking by any means, but these bosses did feel like they were mostly there for the sake of it, as their patterns aren’t all that more exciting than a standard encounter, though they are certainly far more spongy and come with plenty of reinforcements. For the most part, they pop up, attack, maybe shoot out some spikes or minions, vanish for a while, and then pop up somewhere else on the screen where you can bash them for a limited time before they do it all again. Kinda lame.
One might argue that Silver Pines is a bit hand-holdy in its approach at first. The game is constantly reminding you where to go next and which objects should be placed where. Some will find this helpful, but those who like to f-around and find out for themselves might be a little bit disappointed that they won’t have the opportunity to do so in the first 4 or so hours of this 12-15 hour campaign. Don’t worry though, because the difficulty ramps up over time, with enemies persistently dogging you and supplies hard to come by. Even I, a seasoned survival horror fan, found myself tempted to drop the difficulty down by the time I reached the police station. If I was just able to find more bullets, or at least additional money to buy bullets in my travels, this would have been far less of an issue, but the sparse resources left me with little choice if I was going to get this review done in time. Hey, that’s fair, this is a survival horror game after all, and many of you out there will welcome the “grit your teeth” tension of it all.
Eventually, you will discover Mementos, such as a ceramic bear, polaroid, and smooth glass shard. These items offer perks such as increased stamina while active, though you’ll have to be selective with which ones suit your playstyle best. Memento vessel fragments, acquired from shooting down a bird-like ceramic item, can also be found. The mementos do add a bit of a light RPG mechanic to the game in how they can alter your stats. Some of them, such as stamina boosts, feel VERY important; others don’t seem to move the needle much at all, so this element ends up being a bit of a mixed bag.
Traversing the world of Silver Pines in general is an enticingly intriguing experience, with plenty of nooks and crannies to explore and items to collect, though this too wasn’t without its frustrations. There were a few points along the way where I was hopelessly and completely stuck on where to go next. Particularly in the Market Street section, there was an unclearly marked area that could be jumped or swum across to progress that I thought was completely blocked due to flooding, and well, not even realizing I could swim at all. After all, pretty much every flooded area up to that point that I had TRIED to pass led to me drowning almost instantly and being washed back ashore. This had me retracing my steps over and over again, banging my head against dead end after dead end. When reaching out to the developer for direction, the team did mention that this was a point of confusion for other reviewers as well and that they would work on adding some more direction to situations such as these, even if they were relatively rare. Hopefully, this sticking point will be addressed by the time you get your detective’s cap on, you're welcome for that 40 minutes or so of life you would have lost.
In fairness, you do EVENTUALLY get the ability to swim longer distances like I mentioned earlier with mementos, but this takes a good deal of time. Overall, I found the sections where the game was more focused on being a survival horror game as opposed to a more open, explorative Metroidvania far more successful. Chasing after bells randomly scattered across town, for example, wasn’t quite as thrilling as the mysterious opening areas that were relatively straightforward, smooth, satisfying, and streamlined. Sadly, the last half of the game is more open and exploration-based, not the game’s strongest suit.
There were a few glitches that muddied the waters of Silver Pines, including some instances of stick drift when interacting with vending machines and other key points, enemies that somehow followed me through doorways and got stuck with me in the threshold, as well as Walker teleporting halfway through a locked door and up the wall when attempting to unlock a new area. There were a couple of crashes that seemed related to my capture software, so most of you won’t have this issue, but they were brutal if you are planning to grab footage of this game for yourself. Doing so would randomly tank my entire PC, though again, not really going to be an issue for most players. This could potentially be attributed to the game’s film grain setting, which does warn that it can cause issues when capturing or recording.
When it comes to the overall narrative, while it's all a bit intentionally generic, the writing is mostly fun. The script is clearly meant to evoke nostalgia, and there are some interesting characters to meet along the way, like a dude taking a dump that wants some privacy, or a flirty lady trapped within her hotel walls that would like to meet up for a drink. Learning about the town of Silver Pines through notes and set pieces is neat, as its many buildings are drenched in history worth reading into. Maybe things don’t wrap up 100 percent neatly, and it's certainly not a deep think-piece, but what’s here is pretty good, and without spoiling too much, you do have reasons to take part in a second playthrough if you're still craving more.
As far as options and accessibility are concerned, not much here. There are some basic toggle features, hints can be turned off if you REALLY want to challenge yourself, aim sensitivity, you know, the usual. Minigames and QTE sections that occur when reloading your gun can be turned off entirely, camera sway can be turned off, and as far as graphics are concerned, you have a few basic presets as you would expect, though this isn’t a game that’s too taxing on hardware. The game ran well on PC for the most part outside of those few mentioned bugs and the occasional framerate hit.
Silver Pines is a game that will successfully draw in fans of classic survival horror and unsettling detective tales of all types. If you’re hungry for the moody, supernatural side of the 90s and nostalgic for some gameplay where you REALLY need to think about using that last bullet, then Silver Pines is going to be the perfect experience for you, as long as you don’t mind a little aimless wandering and frustration along the way. The things Silver Pines does right, it does VERY right, but the things it does wrong remind me of some of the pitfalls of early survival horror titles. But it’s still an intriguing world to explore with plenty of fun to be had, an easy recommendation that I am awarding the Silver Genie Lamp of Approval. Hey, it matches the title!
PROS
Great visual style and audio design
Combat is good fun for the most part
Story is suitably campy and nostalgic
The map is quite functional
CONS
Not always clear you can take a certain required path
Bosses didn’t feel all that necessary
Some odd climbing and jumping in spots
Occasional oddity and glitch
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