Silver Pines Review: Twin Peaks Horror Meets Metroidvania

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Silver Pines is a survival horror metroidvania that plays like a lost 1990s horror game filtered through a small-town TV mystery. This Silver Pines review covers Wych Elm's debut, published by Team17 on October 8, 2026, for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and Switch 2. It's slow and stiff in places, and it knows exactly what it wants to be from the first screen.

You play Red Walker, a private investigator who rides a ferry into a half-abandoned town in the pines to find a missing musician named Eddie Velvet. The case turns ugly fast. What follows is a 2.5D side-scroller where ammo is scarce, and most locked doors turn out to be promises the game keeps hours later.

I picked it up, played it, and have seen the credits once. Below, you'll find my take on the town and its story, the exploration and puzzles, the combat, and whether it belongs on your list.

Silver Pines Review Summary

• Silver Pines is the strongest horror debut I've played in a long time, carried by its town and its puzzles.

• Rotoscoped characters over painted photo backdrops give it a look I haven't seen in another horror game.

• Payphone saves cost a coin, so every save is a decision.

• The in-game camera pins photos to your map, and it's the best note-taking tool I've had for Silver Pines puzzles.

• Silver Pines combat is the weak spot: melee weapons break fast, there's no cr,osshair and the bosses repeat themselves.

• Backtracking is heavy until fast travel opens up after a couple of small puzzles.

• The PC version ran clean for me, and the game is Steam Deck Verified.

Silver Pines Nails The Lynchian Small Town

The town got under my skin within the first hour. Silver Pines sits wrapped in forest, with a diner, a motel, the Sheriff's Office, the Union Apartments, the Town Hall, and a bar where Eddie used to play. The whole place feels like everyone walked out mid-sentence. I caught myself lingering in empty rooms, reading what people left behind.

Most of that comes from the art. Wych Elm filmed live footage and drew over it frame by frame, so Red's trench coat swings like heavy cloth and every townsperson moves with an odd, human weight. The backdrops are photo textures painted over by hand, with 2D sprites set inside a 3D scene to give each street real depth. The result looks like a faded photograph you can walk through.

Red's case leans hard on its influences. Wych Elm has named 1990s film and TV such as Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Jacob's Ladder, and 8mm as its tonal inspirations. The play draws on the first three Resident Evil games and Silent Hill. You can feel every one of them, from the greasy-spoon diner to the abandoned TVs that keep playing a fictional series called Terminal Drive. The plot is happy to leave some questions hanging. I liked that.

Sound carries the rest. The score stays low and uneasy, and the quiet between tracks did more to my nerves than any jump scare. Most of the voice cast sells the noir mood, and only one minor townsperson read lines flat enough to pull me out for a second. Full voice acting is English only, with subtitles and interface text in ten languages.

Silver Pines Exploration Rewards Patience

Exploration runs on tools and clues. Early on you find a flashlight for the pitch-black rooms and a crowbar for boarded doorways, and later tools open more of the town in classic metroidvania fashion. Red has a basic jump and climbs fences and roofs, and the gating comes from tools and weapons. Map fragments pinned to telephone poles and notice boards fill in each district, and red crosses mark the doors you can't open yet.

Red's camera is the smartest idea in the game. You find it in the trunk of Red's car, frame a shot with a movable box and the photo pins itself to the map where you took it. Storage is limited, so I kept deleting old shots and only keeping keypads, paintings, and the strange signs that felt like they mattered. A Steam player going by AyerRex suggested keeping screenshots or written notes for the puzzles, and the camera turned that advice into a habit I never had to leave the game for.

Silver Pines puzzles are proudly old-school. One safe code hides in the numbers on a painting. A puzzle at the Sheriff's Office has you cross-reference a written statement, a manual, and a set of artwork. The cable car won't run until you find a set of bells hidden in areas with their own puzzles. Nothing pauses as you work, so entering a code with a monster shuffling closer is its own kind of horror. I got stuck twice, and both times the answer was already sitting in my photos.

Payphones around town act as save points, and each save costs a coin you drop in before dialing your client. Coins turn up in bags and cash registers, and the same money buys ammo and healing supplies, so every save competes with a box of bullets. Load a save, and Red is already mid-call with his client. You can also dial numbers you spot around town, 911 included.

All of this costs you in backtracking. Guidance gets thin after the opening, and for a long stretch I crossed the same streets on foot more times than I wanted. Fast travel does arrive after a couple of small puzzles, but it only runs between fixed points on the map, so plan your errands around those stops.

Silver Pines Combat Stays Scarce And Stiff

Silver Pines combat is the part I'd change. Your guns (handguns, a shotgun and a hunting rifle) never break. Melee weapons do, and fast. My first boxcutter lasted about as long as one bad hallway, and duct tape and repair kits only stretch it so far when ammo is already rare.

Aiming has no crosshair, reloading is manual and slow, and your only defense on that flat 2D plane is a dodge. Menus run in real time too, so swapping weapons or mixing a heal in a fight is a gamble. A few hits landed on me from farther away than they looked, and on the busiest screens that felt unfair.

Healing comes from first aid kits, drinks and herbs you mix into empty bottles, and I was always short on bottles. Inventory is slot-based, with hidden hip bags that add space and storage containers for everything else. Mementos are collectible objects with passive effects such as less damage taken or more stamina, and you can only equip a few at once. Enemies drop nothing, so I ran past most of them. The roster of shambling humanoids and leaping bug-like pests stays thin, and by the late game I knew every matchup by heart.

Bosses announce themselves in a red haze, and that's the most exciting part of them. They're variations on the same twisted idea, and each one soaks up enough damage to drag the fight out. I beat the first one with a broken boxcutter, and my pistol didn't seem to do much better. A Relaxed setting softens the fights for story players, and harder settings above the default exist for anyone who wants the full squeeze.

Is Silver Pines Worth Buying Right Now?

Yes, if you grew up on 1990s survival horror and still miss it. Silver Pines is for players who like reading notes and spending a coin on a save they might regret. Loved the slow dread of classic Silent Hill and the resource math of early Resident Evil? This is the closest thing to both I've played in ages.

Silver Pines launched in solid condition. The PC version ran smoothly on my RTX 4080, which sits far above the recommended tier on the Steam page (a GTX 770 or Radeon R9 380), and I had no crashes across long sessions. It's also Steam Deck Verified. At full price I'd still buy it, and on any sale it's an easy call.

Wait if combat is what you play horror for. The fights are stiff, and the backtracking before fast travel will test anyone who hates retracing steps. Those players can hold off and see whether a future patch touches melee durability.

FAQs About Silver Pines

Final Words

The payphone will stay with me longest. Dropping a coin and hearing Red report in made saving feel like part of the case. The whole game runs on that kind of confidence, from the camera to the TV show nobody in town seems to be watching.

Combat never caught up with the rest, and I doubt a patch will fix the bosses. Melee durability is the easier fix, and it's the first patch note I'll look for. Weapons that last a few more swings would take most of the sting out of the early hours.

If you start it, take photos of everything and save more often than your coin purse would like. The town rewards the player who pays attention.

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