Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
David Lynch never directed a video game, but if he did, it might look a lot like Silver Pines. The debut title from Wych Elm Games, this takes notable structural influence from survival horror classics Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but tonally, it masterfully captures the unsettling feel of Twin Peaks.
As private detective Red Walker, you wake up in a diner in Silver Pines, a quintessential slice of small town America, somewhen in the ‘90s. Your head is swimming, your memory hazy. No one is around — a result of the town being evacuated due to the looming threat of a disastrous storm. An incoming call to a phone booth from the enigmatic Mr Jackman reminds you you’re in town to find Eddie Velvet, a musician who may be connected to a missing woman. And so, you set off into the rain-slicked town, hunting for clues among the boarded-up buildings, haunted by surreal visions and ethereal voices – and getting health upgrades from coffee and donuts. See? Twin Peaks in a nutshell.
Although the game plays out in 2D, there’s a fantastic sense of depth and scale to the town, with Walker passing back and forth through planes as you explore. As you do, those two primary gaming influences weigh large. The town is full of bizarrely intricate puzzles in the vein of Resi – think gilded birdcages requiring specifically coloured statues to unlock, or safes with keycodes hidden in artwork scattered around a police station – and the oppressively sinister airs of Silent Hill. While Silver Pines might be abandoned, curious figures still linger; a woman in a motel room who will only speak on the phone, an old man staring at a derelict apartment building, another relentlessly digging a hole. Progress towards finding Eddie Velvet comes slowly, methodically, and – again like Resi – even saving your progress is a luxury, requiring coins to call the mysterious Mr Jackman.
Then there are the remnants — shadowy, pained figures lurking in the empty streets — like the shambling grunts or juddering nurses of Silent Hill. They’re where Silver Pine’s combat comes in, with its tight, tank-like controls, breakable melee weapons, and limited scope of weapons and ammo. Walker is meant to feel vulnerable, often better served by dodging past enemies than wasting bullets or degrading tools, especially since inventory space (another nod to the game’s influences, a strict grid where every item held has to justify its slot) is limited.
Unfortunately, combat is where Silver Pines stumbles. Those tank-like controls, again nodding to classic Resident Evil, translate to 2D well enough to suffice against regular enemies, but fall apart when it comes to boss battles. Walker is simply not reactive enough to deal with these challenging encounters, with his pained, desperate dodge rarely seeming to even register while trying to evade attacks. Attempting to create space, heal, and maybe reload weapons requires a level of responsiveness that the game doesn’t cater for. Oddly, given how strikingly Resi and Silent Hill hang over the title, many of these encounters lack any real emotional or psychological weight to them either – the first is against a sort of demon praying mantis that burrows in and out from the top of the screen, which has no bearing or relation to anything that precedes it.
Wych Elm has crafted a haunting (and likely haunted) world that pulls you ever-deeper into its Lynchian setting, carving its own identity as a slice of gaming strangeness in the process.
Still, the two survival horror titans aren’t the only games you can find strands of DNA from in Silver Pines. There are also hints of the paranormal strangeness of Alan Wake, with Walker able to equip supernatural mementoes to tweak his abilities, or the precise movement of the original Prince of Persia games. Clearly marked progression gates beckoning you back once you have the right tool harken back to Metroid’s approach to exploration, and there are even hints of Another World and Flashback in the game’s use of painstakingly captured rotoscoped animation, and of Disco Elysium in the character portrait art.
Yet Silver Pines emerges as more than a collection of homages. Wych Elm has crafted a haunting (and likely haunted) world that pulls you ever-deeper into its Lynchian setting, carving its own identity as a slice of gaming strangeness in the process. It looks phenomenal, making fantastic use of lighting and a subdued palette to bring the blighted town to life, while the animation is beautifully detailed, down to the flicks of Walker’s raincoat in the wind. The voice cast, including Lies of P’s Chase Brown, Stargate SG1’s Suanne Braun, and Cyberpunk 2077’s Gavin Drea elevate things further, bringing the dwindling population of Silver Pines to life.
Genre-savvy players will likely be able to pull out every one of Silver Pines references, but it reshapes them into such an enjoyable horror-thriller experience that you won’t mind. Tighter boss fights would have been the cherry on top, but this is still a town worth visiting.
