Silver Pines Is the Silent Hill Metroidvania Mash-Up I Never Knew I Needed

This is an IGN opinion piece from Tristan Ogilvie, who plays survival horror games like it's his job (because a lot of the time, it very much is).

While there’s certainly been a number of horror-themed metroidvanias released in recent years, from the savage executions of the Blasphemous series to the brilliant shapeshifting reverse-horror of Carrion, until now I’ve never experienced one that 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 becomes an increasingly larger one as new tools are uncovered and new paths are unlocked in typical metroidvania fashion. I’m only about five hours into what is apparently a 12-hour story, but ever since I picked up this mystery-soaked adventure I’ve found it harder to put down than a family pet.

I’m admittedly a fairly easy mark here given that survival horror and metroidvanias are two of my personal favourite genres. It’s not a total shock to discover that I enjoy them when paired together. I also like beer and burgers, never more so than when I’m gripping one in each hand. However, taking the restricted inventory management and intentionally clumsy combat of classic survival horror and splicing them together with the sidescrolling viewpoint and exploration of a 2.5D metroidvania could easily have resulted in a mutation uglier than anything that’s ever emerged from an Umbrella Corporation lab. In the capable hands of developer Wych Elm Games, though, this unlikely coupling has turned out to be every bit as energising as the result of 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 induced by emptying your pockets of ammo reserves and never really knowing how close you have an enemy to death. You can’t get from one floor of a building to the next without solving elaborate strings of puzzles, like the repair of broken-down machinery and the correct alignment of combination locks. Then there’s the healthy variety of enemy types to contend with as you explore, 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 with.

Meanwhile Silver Pines’ slowly expanding suite of exploration tools doesn’t rely on typical powered-up double-jumps and unlockable grappling hooks in order to open up new paths to explore. Rather, it’s grounded in a way that feels far more appropriate to the Anytown, USA setting. The box cutter you just picked up in an office can be wielded as a melee weapon, but it can also be used to slash through the plastic sheets masking construction areas, opening up new rooms to ransack for clues to the whereabouts of Eddie Velvet, the missing singer you’re in search of. The sledgehammer can crush through weakened sections of concrete walls, the sewer key can lift manholes and access the surprisingly expansive tunnels below street level, and the pistol can be used to shoot padlocks off gates or the coverings from air vents to scramble up into.

Everything just feels so 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 your game. Sure, a similar mechanic was used in Silent Hill: Townfall just last month, but Silver Pines takes it a step further by demanding you actually feed in one of your precious few coins in order to make a call, money that could otherwise be used to purchase vital medkits or ammo from a vending machine. If you’re fresh out, you can even rummage around in the coin return slot for some uncollected spare change.

I also love how deliberate every action is in Silver Pines. From slowly chambering each individual round in your revolver while trying not to panic at the shadowy stalkers stumbling towards you, to pausing to wait for a pot of coffee to percolate in a police station break room in order to gulp down a piping hot increase to your stamina bar, almost everything you do in Silver Pines feels methodical. Silver Pines isn’t ever afraid to take that extra bit of time, whether it’s to painfully prolong the seconds of pure panic or to allow a rare moment of peace to be properly savoured.

In fact, at times I’ve gone beyond merely slowing down in Silver Pines; I’ve actually stopped completely and left the main character idling just to take a moment to absorb the incredible amount of atmosphere that’s been soaked into every frame. It may be viewed at a distance rather than over your character’s shoulder or in first-person, but Silver Pines still manages to draw you into its gloomy ghost town with an ominous ambience that’s every bit as engrossing as the most large-budgeted of survival horror standouts. It even has in-game serials that run on the televisions you pass in motel rooms and abandoned apartments, much like Alan Wake. The fact that this is the debut release for Wych Elm Games, apparently with a core development team of just five people, is honestly pretty remarkable.

As I said at the top, I’ve still got a long way to go with my investigation into Silver Pines so it’s too soon to pass judgment on it. However, if it manages to keep building on its incredible opening hours, then Silver Pines could well turn out to be one of my favourite games of 2026 – and that’s saying something in a year of gaming that’s arguably produced more must-play gems than any other in this console generation.

Now the only thing we need is a catchy portmanteau for what I hope becomes a well-populated new subgenre of metroidvanias. Er… Survivalvania? Look 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.