Silver Pines is a genuine survival horror, and one most welcome in 2026

Whilst it has a couple of flaws, Silver Pines is one of the best survival horrors in recent memory. Silent Hill best pay attention.

Silver Pines is one of those games that I love in spite of its missteps. It reminds me of Deadly Premonition in that it makes a lot of mistakes in gameplay terms, but the story, world and characters more than make up for it. Between its Twin Peaks-esque world and story, and the classic Silent Hill survival horror vibes, you’ve got a contender for one of the strongest horror games for quite some time.

You play as Red Walker, an investigator sent to find missing musician Eddie Velvet, supposedly holed up in the titular town of Silver Pines during the rainy season of 1993. The Silent Hill and Twin Peaks notes come through early, with Red waking up in a diner seemingly without any memory of arriving there, before immediately grabbing a damn fine cup of coffee. After some minor puzzle solving, he receives a call on a payphone from his employer, filling him in on where to start looking.

Whilst it’s nice to get into the action quickly, the promise of metroidvania style gameplay doesn’t show up until at least an hour in. This isn’t a deal breaker as I’m patient enough, but it’s worth noting that you’ll need to get by the first boss before the world really opens up. It’s a really satisfying world to explore too.

The town of Silver Pines is interesting and feels lived in, in spite of now being near abandoned due to an incoming storm of supposedly catastrophic proportions. A forgotten town in the middle of nowhere with its own roads, underpasses, and back alleys that allow alternative routes to places you’ve visited. Acquiring items allows access to previously inaccessible paths in the usual metroidvania way. A box cutter cuts through tarpaulin, a sledgehammer breaks down crumbling walls, and the usual array of finding new places. 

A really nice feature here is that Red can make use of his polaroid camera anywhere he wants, with the picture you take being added to the map. It’s simple but gives you a quick way to note down a padlock or barricade that you may want to come back to later. It’s wise to do so as even on the standard difficulty, resources are hard to come by so exploration is key to keeping anywhere near stocked up.

Enemies are around and certainly have the Silent Hill vibe to them. Twitching shadow people shamble or rush towards you, insects leap at your face and big monstrosities hurl projectiles your way. A bit negative for Silver Pines here though is that you have to deal with suicidal explosive enemies in the late game which is near unforgivable in my book. They’re especially frustrating here as they practically demand you shoot them from afar with your ever dwindling ammunition supplies, or get exploded and have to spend your equally limited healing items. 

Still, many enemies can be evaded using a pretty effective dodge move. Most enemy attacks are well telegraphed, and once you have the tells down, you can avoid a lot of encounters. Bosses pop up from time to time and have really interesting visual designs. The actual fights are often a little disappointing though, as they tend to have a couple of attacks that you dodge and then counter before running off to the other side of the screen to rinse and repeat. They often feel like they’re there to chew through your supplies to keep you constantly treading the line between having just enough and having nothing at all. 

There is some pretty nice tension here though, as you need to reload in real time using a quick time event. Your inventory doesn’t pause the action, so reloading or healing is an active choice in battle. I quite enjoyed this, as desperately trying to jam rounds into your revolver quickly enough really kept me on my toes. 

So the world and story are great and the combat is fine. What really caught my attention with Silver Pines was the art style. It is beautiful to look at in still images and even more impressive in action. The backgrounds have amazing depth of field effects making the town feel genuinely large, whilst characters look rotoscoped with gorgeous animation and colours that pop off the backgrounds. I’ve played a lot of games, and this is certainly one of the best looking ones I’ve seen in recent times. 

The sound is great too. Monsters have that gross, fleshy sound to them as they twitch and convulse in place, whilst the weapons have a cacophonous boom to them that sells the power of them. That shotgun looks and sounds brutal when you pull the trigger. Then there’s the voice acting which is just excellent throughout. Everything is clear and well enunciated, almost coming across as ASMR style readings. Red regularly narrates his feelings in new areas and every time it comes across as a monologue from a classic film noir or the likes of El Paso, Elsewhere. The production quality on show here is outstanding.

Silver Pines is an excellent survival horror, even though it has some of the less positive trappings of the genre with ropey melee combat and lacklustre boss fights. There’s a world and story that are well worth exploring, and with beautiful visuals to match. If you yearn for the days of genre classics and don’t mind it coming with a little of that jank, then this will be one of the best experiences of the year for you.

Silver Pines is available now on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.