Silver Pines is a survival horror metroidvania that blends Silent Hill’s fear with Resident Evil’s inventory management, all in a 2.5D sidescrolling package. After five hours with the game, an early hands-on preview calls it “harder to put down than a family pet.” Here’s why this debut from a five-person studio is worth your attention.
Horror-themed metroidvanias have multiplied in recent years, from the savage executions of the Blasphemous series to the brilliant shapeshifting reverse-horror of Carrion — but none has so expertly adapted proper survival horror mechanics into the genre. Silver Pines takes the fear and foreboding of Silent Hill and Resident Evil and flattens it into a 2.5D setting that begins as a small town but grows steadily larger as new tools are uncovered and new paths unlocked in typical metroidvania fashion. Five hours into what is apparently a 12-hour story, this mystery-soaked adventure has proven “harder to put down than a family pet.”
The premise is an easy sell on paper: survival horror and metroidvanias are two beloved genres, and mixing them should work about as well as a beer with a burger. Even so, splicing the restricted inventory management and intentionally clumsy combat of classic survival horror together with the sidescrolling viewpoint and exploration of a 2.5D metroidvania could easily have resulted in a mutation uglier than anything that’s emerged from an Umbrella Corporation lab. In the capable hands of developer Wych Elm Games, though, this unlikely coupling turns out to be every bit as energising as combining a green herb with a red one.
Just because its presentation has been crushed down into a 2.5D plane doesn’t mean that Silver Pines’ survival horror has sacrificed any of its gameplay depth.
Boss fights are present and accounted for, right down to the panic of emptying your pockets of ammo reserves and never really knowing how close an enemy is to death. You can’t get from one floor of a building to the next without solving elaborate strings of puzzles, from repairing broken-down machinery to dialing in the correct alignment of combination locks. Then there’s a healthy variety of enemy types to contend with while exploring, from ghouls that pursue you menacingly on all fours to Hitchcockian hordes of crows that swarm down from the trees, along with a slowly expanding arsenal of shotguns and rifles to combat them.
Meanwhile, Silver Pines’ slowly expanding suite of exploration tools doesn’t rely on typical powered-up double jumps and unlockable grappling hooks to open new paths. Rather, it’s grounded in a way that feels far more appropriate to the Anytown, USA setting. The box cutter picked up in an office doubles as a melee weapon, but it can also slash through the plastic sheets masking construction areas, opening new rooms to ransack for clues to the whereabouts of Eddie Velvet, the missing singer you’re searching for. The sledgehammer crushes weakened sections of concrete wall, the sewer key lifts manholes to access the surprisingly expansive tunnels below street level, and the pistol shoots padlocks off gates or coverings from air vents to scramble up into.
Everything feels well thought out, right down to manually punching in numbers on the metallic keypads of the payphones dotted around the map in order to save the game. A similar mechanic was used in Silent Hill: Townfall, but Silver Pines takes it a step further by demanding you feed in one of your precious few coins to make a call — money that could otherwise buy vital medkits or ammo from a vending machine. Run short and you can even rummage around in the coin return slot for uncollected spare change.
Every action is similarly deliberate. From slowly chambering each individual round in your revolver while trying not to panic at shadowy stalkers stumbling towards you, to pausing for a pot of coffee to percolate in a police station break room in order to gulp down a piping hot increase to the stamina bar, almost everything in Silver Pines feels methodical. The game is never afraid to take that extra bit of time, whether to painfully prolong the seconds of pure panic or to allow a rare moment of peace to be properly savoured.
At times the pace slows to a complete stop, with the main character left idling while the incredible amount of atmosphere soaked into every frame sinks in. It may be viewed at a distance rather than over the character’s shoulder or in first person, but Silver Pines still draws you into its gloomy ghost town with an ominous ambience every bit as engrossing as the most large-budgeted survival horror standouts. It even has in-game serials running on televisions in motel rooms and abandoned apartments, much like Alan Wake. For a debut release from Wych Elm Games, apparently built by a core team of just five people, it’s honestly pretty remarkable.
There’s still a long way to go before the full investigation into Silver Pines is complete, so it’s too soon to pass judgment. But if it keeps building on its incredible opening hours, Silver Pines could well turn out to be one of the best games of 2026 — saying something in a year that has arguably produced more must-play gems than any other in this console generation.
Now the only thing missing is a catchy portmanteau for what could become a well-populated new subgenre of metroidvanias. Survivalvania? It’s not great, but it will have to do for now.
Silver Pines is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and contains no affiliate links. Impressions are based on an early build and the final game may differ.
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