Silver Pines is a horror mystery that blends 2D survival horror, metroidvania-style exploration and a mood that owes a great deal to David Lynch. I played as Red Walker, a private detective sent to a small, isolated town to track down Eddie Velvet, a guitarist who’s vanished without a trace. The debut game from Wych Elm, published by Team17, launches this Thursday, 8 October, and it gripped me from start to finish thanks to its atmosphere, its town and its mystery. The combat, though, falls well short of everything else, and its deliberately slow pace won’t suit everyone.
At a glance
Silver Pines launches on 8 October on PC, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and Switch, priced at €24.99 on Steam.
Its atmosphere, art direction and the exploration of the town are its biggest strengths.
The combat, basic and imprecise, is its main weakness, alongside a lack of enemy variety.
Something’s not right in the town of Silver Pines
You arrive in Silver Pines as Red Walker, on Eddie Velvet’s trail, and it doesn’t take long to realise something’s off. The locals are strange and wary, and every one of them seems to be hiding something. It’s exactly the kind of town where you knock on a door and wonder what’s waiting behind it, and critics had already praised that atmosphere in the first Silver Pines reviews we rounded up.
The story drip-feeds its information, and that’s entirely deliberate. I constantly wanted to work out what had really happened to Eddie, to Alice and to Red himself. Every answer opens a fresh question, and the game is very good at judging what to show you and what to hold back for later.
I particularly loved how the setting does the storytelling. You piece the plot together from notes, objects, locations and the way the town itself changes as you go. Nobody spells it all out for you: it’s up to you to fit the fragments together, and it’s genuinely satisfying when one finally clicks into place.
The town itself changes, too. As the investigation unfolds, Silver Pines transforms bit by bit, and those changes are as much a part of the story as the documents you find. They tell you something if you take the time to look, and they give you a proper reason to revisit places you thought you already knew inside out.
Atmosphere is the game’s greatest strength
For me, atmosphere is one of Silver Pines’ huge strengths. The town is dark, macabre and strange, and you’re never quite free of the feeling that something’s wrong. That lingering unease is where the game’s real power lies.
The art direction plays a big part. The painted, rotoscoped style, the washed-out colours and the little flashes of neon give the game a look all of its own. You’d recognise a screenshot of Silver Pines at a glance, and few indie games can say the same.
The soundtrack and sound effects follow the same approach. They’re mostly there to build unease and suspicion, and the game saves its scares for when they really count. The upshot is that you end up suspicious of everyone, just as Red is wary of locals who all seem to know more than they’re letting on. If horror that leans on atmosphere is your thing, our Silent Hill: Townfall review, where atmosphere wins over combat, should appeal too.
Exploring Silver Pines is a real pleasure
I adored exploring the town. The map is large and interconnected, packed with routes to unlock, secrets and areas you can come back to later. You hit a locked door, you make a mental note, and hours later you’re back with the right item. That back and forth is one of the game’s great pleasures.
And exploring really pays off. You’ll find upgrades, inventory expansions, items that open up new possibilities and extra pieces of the story. Every detour has a good chance of rewarding you with something, which makes you want to search every corner of the town before moving on.
The map system works very well, too. It helps you remember the places worth revisiting once you’ve picked up new equipment, which saves a lot of aimless wandering. For another indie game built around exploration, our Well Dweller review makes a useful comparison.
A word of warning about the label, mind you. Silver Pines borrows the metroidvania’s interconnected exploration, backtracking and non-linear progression, but it sits far closer to Resident Evil-style survival horror. If you’re expecting precise platforming and traversal powers to unlock, you’re in the wrong game.
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Silver Pines lands An 87 on opencritic, but critics all flag its combat
Puzzles and resources: every choice matters
On the puzzle front, things are well thought out on the whole, and the game rewards attention to detail. Some answers are sitting right there in the documents and clues you pick up along the way. Read everything you find, because that’s often where the solution is hiding.
Resource management carries real weight. Ammo, healing items, inventory space and money are all scarce enough to make you think before every decision. You hesitate over a medkit, you hold on to your bullets, you make choices. Even money is part of the equation, and it’s scarce enough that every purchase deserves a second thought. It’s old-school survival horror in the best possible sense.
Pacing follows the same spirit, deliberately slow and heavy. It does a great job of ramping up the tension, but I can completely see it frustrating players used to faster, more action-driven games that keep pushing them forward. Silver Pines asks for your patience, and it pays you back for it.
Combat is where Silver Pines stumbles
The combat system is probably the game’s main weakness. Fights are fairly basic, melee weapons lack precision, and the hitboxes, the areas where a blow is supposed to land, can feel downright approximate at times. You swing, you think you’ve connected, and you haven’t.
Enemy variety is thin as well. Some encounters, the boss fights especially, felt rather repetitive next to how rich the rest of the adventure is. It’s all the more frustrating because everything else in the game is so carefully crafted.
That said, I found it interesting that the game puts survival and avoidance first. You’re forever weighing up whether a fight is really worth what it’ll cost you in resources, and more often than not, the smartest move is to slip past. Combat becomes a matter of calculation: you fight when you’ve no other option, or when what you stand to gain is worth the bullets and healing items you’ll burn through. It’s a design choice that holds up, and it fits the spirit of the game nicely. Critics picked up on the same flaw in their early reviews, too.
Multiple endings that pull you back in
Silver Pines has several endings, and its story stays deliberately mysterious. The upshot is that I wanted to dive straight back in to understand the things I’d missed first time round. Each new run lets you slot in more pieces, read certain documents in a different light and see where the story’s other paths lead. Few games make you this keen to start again the moment the credits roll.
As for the practicalities, the game costs €24.99 on the Silver Pines Steam page, where pre-orders were showing €22.49 with the launch discount. It’s also out on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and Switch.
My verdict on Silver Pines
All told, Silver Pines is a particularly accomplished experience for fans of old-school survival horror. Its atmosphere, exploration and mystery carried me all the way to the end. Its deliberately stiff gameplay will divide players. Settle into its rhythm, though, and you’ve found one of the finest horror surprises of the autumn.
If you love Resident Evil-style survival horror, investigations that take their time and a properly Lynchian atmosphere, Silver Pines is very much for you. If you’re mainly after action and snappy fights, it’s worth knowing from the outset that this is where it shines least.
| What we like | What we like a lot less |
|---|---|
| A dark, strange, Lynch-inspired atmosphere that keeps you permanently uneasy | Basic combat, with imprecise melee weapons and approximate hitboxes |
| Painted, rotoscoped art direction with washed-out colours and touches of neon | Little enemy variety and repetitive boss fights |
| A large, interconnected town full of secrets and routes to unlock | |
| A story told through its setting, revealed a little at a time | |
| Puzzles that reward close attention to the documents | |
| Resource management that makes you weigh up every decision | |
| Multiple endings that make you want to go back | |
| What might make you buy itAn atmosphere, exploration and mystery that old-school survival horror fans will love | What might put you offA slow pace and deliberately stiff gameplay, far removed from a fast action game |
Upcoming dates, releases, DLC and major updates, are all in our calendar.