Silver Pines review: this inky horror debut is one of the year’s most original games

Playing Silver Pines feels like stepping into an animated horror graphic novel. There’s a little Jock in the scratchy ink, a bit of Frank Miller in the contrast, and in the darker creature silhouettes and corners of town you fear to explore, just a bloody splash of Mike Mignola.

The art sells the game. It’s genuinely unsettling in places, and the town feels fully formed, slowly unfolding its secrets with the same teasing paranoia as Silent Hill. That’s quite the debut for Wych Elm, a five-person studio spread across Sweden and Norway, clearly passionate about its inspirations; Twin Peaks' dark Americana mingles with X-Files investigations as much as Konami’s classic.

You play private investigator Red Walker, sent to a half-abandoned, half-forgotten town in the middle of nowhere to find missing musician Eddie Velvet. The trail takes you from the Miner Diner to the Crimson Bear Motel and Rodney’s General Store, and the case quickly turns into something much stranger.

That Silent Hill comparison is apt: Silver Pines is the Metroidvania Silent Hill no one saw coming, and the combination works beautifully. The side-scrolling design feels layered and dense. As you stroll in trepidation through Silver Pines’ dimly lit streets, the challenges ahead are teased in the distance: a crumbling Town Hall, an illuminated cable car, and the oppressive bulk of Mt. Siah Kopa, which you just know you’ll need to climb to get to the bottom of the town’s secrets.

A town full of wrong turns

Those secrets unfurl in the same way. Find and use a cog to get the sewer sluice gate working on the docks, which in turn opens new sewer tunnels and more puzzle routes. Hunt down a set of bells scattered across town to mend that mysteriously musical cable car (a real Resident Evil hangover). You can also veer off the path to free a cat locked in a cage under the Pet Clinic, meet some cryptic residents, or stop to stroke the horse randomly plodding outside the Quiet Hour Cafe.

Behind the weirdness is the familiar back-and-forth of a Metroidvania. A found torch lights up dark rooms, a sledgehammer smashes through cracked walls, a box cutter slices open tarps to new rooms, and the shotgun blasts apart wooden barricades. Your guns open up the map as much as they kill things, because rusted padlocks, boards and vent grilles are all there to be blasted. Each new tool and solved puzzle opens up another corner of town, and uncovers stories that play on your mind, gnaw at you and demand you explore more.

The map does much of the heavy lifting in Silver Pines. Snap a photo of a locked door or odd object, and the game pins it to the map, so when you return with the right tool, you know exactly where to go. The Polaroids are a lifesaver for backtracking, but the map also has logic, and areas are memorable enough that you’ll often have an ‘ah-ha’ moment and race to put the solution into practice.

The story arrives in pieces, found in drawers, pinned to notice boards and on hushed, crackling phone lines to strangers who tease leads. These notes and documents are scattered everywhere; some help solve puzzles, but many just add to the world-building, like conversations that stick in your head for an hour before you find out why they mattered. Everything hinges memorably, making puzzle-solving feel earned rather than pulled from thin air; it took me far too long for the playing-card symbol puzzle to click, but once it did, I had a proper ‘ah-ha’ moment.

In fact, the puzzles generally are more logical than some of the game’s inspirations. They lean towards Resident Evil’s item management, lock gizmos and code-breaking rather than Silent Hill’s more surreal ideas. If you’re stumped, a solution is always hiding in plain sight, whether it’s a clue in a pinned newspaper clipping, a number on a framed baseball jersey, or something glimpsed through a smudged shop window.

You handle keypads and doors by hand, so you tap the digits yourself and watch the key slide in and turn. Even the Crimson Bear Motel’s gate code changes with every save, so you don't have to look it up.

When the town fights back

Combat can be a little awkward at times. Manually wrapping a bandage to heal takes longer than you’d like when a dark, ghostly dog thing is pouncing at you. Generally, though, it’s snappy and surprisingly aggressive for a side-scrolling indie. The shotgun you prise out of a locker at the Crimson Bear Motel rips apart enemies and scenery, and later variants get more powerful, sending papers and debris fluttering satisfyingly with every shot.

Survival horror means managing everything. Your inventory is a tight grid, and Hip Bags hidden around town add extra slots. Guns take up space, ammo is scarce, and weapons wear down as you use them. You mix herbs and empty bottles into tonics, and melee swings drain stamina, which you can restore with coffee from the filter jugs dotted around town. You can also equip Mementoes for perks like extra stamina and faster reloads, letting you tailor your approach to combat.

Upgrades make an actual difference, too. The rifle's scoped sight extends how far you can pan the screen, so you spot enemies sooner, and life gets a bit easier.

The little things matter

Small design choices and attention to detail lift Silver Pines from a Metroidvania Silent Hill to something of its own. You save at payphones, drop in a coin, and call Mr Jackman. A lone I Want to Believe poster in an office made me smile, a TV show that eerily plays episodes of a paranoia show as you pass, and the misty decay of the town’s worn Americana just gets under the skin. In all of this, and in the puzzles and map design, Silver Pines captures the weirdness of Twin Peaks and the mystery of The X-Files.

On Switch 2, it’s an engrossing couch game. The side-scrolling format suits picking it up for an hour at a time, and the art direction gives you plenty to look at even when a puzzle has you stumped and frustrated. I never wished it were a bigger 3D horror game, because those restrictions are part of why Silver Pines works so well.

My complaints are small. One is the mid-fight healing, and the game can’t escape the genre's trappings: the back-and-forth wandering and nosing around every corner of the map to find that one tool, for me, a crank and then a sledgehammer, that finally opens the route you need to progress. And sometimes, that blocked path you hoped would lead somewhere just offers yet another roll of tape or minimal reward.

But these are small, probably very personal frustrations for what is one of the year’s most interesting games, and with three endings to chase and different difficulties that make a difference, there’s a reason to go back and explore Silver Pines more. Plus, it’s an engrossing Switch 2 sofa must-play.