Silver Pines is a great survival horror throwback with an unexpected Metroidvania twist, but it makes me glad the genre’s moved on
By Image credit: Wych Elm Games/Team 17
It’s those bloody typewriters all over again. Developer Wych Elm Games’ Silver Pines is fantastic in a whole bunch of ways, from its woozy small-town ambience to its mix of taut survival horror and exploratory Metroidvania. But from the very first moment I saw its save system, its please-insert-coin phone box demands, I knew our relationship was going to be a fractious one.
Silver Pines begins, however, in the gloom of a 1950s diner; lights off, windows boarded, as the titular town awaits an oncoming storm. You are private investigator Red Walker, but your jittery demeanour and Valium drawl suggests you’re equally oblivious to the whos, whats, and whys of it all. Out in the parking lot, a phone box rings; there’s cryptic talk of a missing musician and a motel room. Then, the scene set, it’s onward into the heart of the town.
Silver Pines dabbles in neo-noir and psychological horror, but its debt to David Lynch – Twin Peaks in particular – is unmistakable. If the 50s diner opener wasn’t enough of a tip-off, it’s not long before the town’s cast of beautifully rotoscoped oddballs begin making themselves known; enigmatic conversations unfurling in awkward non-sequiters. Then later: as Red passes through a suspicious door, reality seems to bend entirely, taking him to a dingy nightclub bar somewhere out of time. There’s no talking giant, but we do get a song.
Here’s a moody look at Silver Pines.Watch on YouTube
Twin Peaks’ iconography has been borrowed and repackaged so much in the 36 years since its landmark arrival, it’s hard to pay it homage without ringing the creative death knell. So it’s testament to Silver Pines that, for all its hat-tips, it still manages to find a mood that feels like its own. Granted, its one that exists at the intersection David Lynch and Silent Hill (itself indebted to Twin Peaks) but the town’s ambience – a kind of dishevelled melancholy – is an affecting one. Its world, built from layers upon layers of strikingly painterly 2D artwork,
