Silver Pines review: X-Files fans will love this spooky 2D game ...Middle East

Silver Pines is a taut survival horror stretched onto the bones of a Metroidvania. And despite its clear inspirations, it's more than the sum of its parts. It's actually a love letter to art itself.

That opener sounds bold, but when you see the mix of art styles blend with a minimal but dread-setting soundtrack, plus an unfurling mystery of a town that's not quite right, you’ll no doubt be as hooked as we were.

Opening in an empty diner that’ll have Twin Peaks and X-Files fans excited, a strange voice on a pay phone quickly gets you up to speed and launches you into an investigation to find Eddie Velvet – an infamous musician with more than an air of mystery around him.

Here's the catch: the town of Silver Pines is currently in the middle of evacuating thanks to an incoming storm, with only a handful of people left around to help you gain information and find your way through.

The art style confidently plays into the feeling of unease and uncertainty around the town and what remains of its occupiers, blending 3D and 2D graphics to create character models that are stark shapes and colours, forming the resemblance of a human figure. Yet when you interact with these figures you’ll be greeted with character portraits echoing the style of artists like Dave McKean, these ethereal and dark explosions of colour that make characters feel off, uncanny and unsettling, seemingly mere moments from melting into demons and monsters.

This is fitting, as you’ll encounter creepy creatures aplenty as you unravel clues and hunt down the truth about Eddie Velvet. Seeming to transcend the limits of the game, the screen will warp and hum as your near the creatures, with this disturbance being gentle at first before getting worse the closer you get, almost pulsing as if you’re sitting too close to an old TV.

Thankfully, you’re equipped to handle some action here and there, thanks to melee weapons like a boxcutter. They’ll dish some damage, until they break, needing you to do a quick repair with some duct tape or similar.

When you find a quiet moment, repairs bring up a spinning dial, giving you a sweet spot to press the action button that will allow you to wrap up your errand that bit faster – this comes in handy when you’re in a particularly tense bind.

Reloading weapons works much the same way, with each gun giving you a little window to see its ammo go into the barrel – it’s a cool touch, and aside from adding a bit more fear to busy encounters, it makes those shotgun blasts feel that tad more satisfying when you pull them off.

If you really dig into your role as a detective, you’ll uncover mementos on the road. Weird and sometimes gruesome, these keepsakes can be equipped for buffs to your gameplay experience. Things like extra melee damage with weaker weapons, or more stamina to dodge a few more times – which can always help in a pinch.

As you’d expect, you’ll do a fair amount of back tracking through Silver Pines, weather it’s to unlock secret areas or find key puzzle items.

Thankfully, for those of us with slightly less sharp mind palaces, you can take a Polaroid picture at any point which will get added to your map. Not just an inventive quality-of-life addition, it becomes an important part in solving some of the game's bigger puzzles – if you’re not manually making notes yourself on a notepad.

Chasing down a musician, Silver Pines delivers some beautiful melodies in its quiet moments, as well as the more cinematic ones – not content to just build tension on your journey, there’s some enthralling sounds in some of the safe rooms and in-between moments that had us pausing to soak in.

When trailers first dropped for Silver Pines it was easy to make comparisons to Alan Wake and Silent Hill, influences that are still very obviously baked into the DNA of the game.

I’d go so far as to say Remedy in general have had some big influence on the team, from how it handles transitions to other worlds and the almost Max Payne-esque delivery of lines and character panels.

But despite its many nods to survival horror classics, from the item management of Resident Evil to puzzles that wouldn’t be out of place in a Silent Hill entry, it’d be a disservice to the team behind Silver Pines to purely lean on those comparisons in this review. This is a great game in its own right - it all comes together to make something that feels fresh and engrossing.

Silver Pines takes a swing at melding a detective mystery with Metroid level design and survival horror elements... and, thankfully, the developers totally stick the landing.

Silver Pines launches on 8 October for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2. We reviewed on Switch 2.

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