Silver Pines Review: A Rainy, Rotoscoped Horror Town Worth Getting Lost In
For our Halloween Triple Dive, Ryan fought for Silver Pines and came out glad he did: a gorgeous, tense, Resident Evil-style investigation with weak combat and a few nasty surprises.
RyanBy Ryan
For our Halloween Triple Dive, the three of us each took a different spooky game. Josh drew Tenebris Somnia, Ace took Hellraiser: Revival, and Ryan fought for Silver Pines. Josh had been jealous of this one since it launched to strong reviews and people in our community started talking it up, so the pressure was on. Here's how it went.
The Setup
You play Red Walker, an investigator sent to a half-abandoned town to find Eddie Valentine, an old rock star who has gone missing. It's an early-90s setting, the place has been evacuated for reasons nobody will tell you, and it is always, always raining. There's blood on the walls, creatures wandering around, a nearly drained pool, and an old abandoned motel. It's small-town creepy before the game even gets going.
Ryan describes it as a 2D, hand-drawn Metroidvania. (Yes, we trolled Ace for calling it that. Some people are calling it a "horror-vania," so we're just making up terms now.) Silver Pines is really more of a slow, exploration-driven horror game, and it leans on the Resident Evil playbook: limited inventory, locked spaces, and a lot of backtracking.
That Look and That Sound
The thing that caught Ryan off guard is how the game is animated. It uses rotoscoping, where artists trace over live-action footage frame by frame. The result looks real and not real at the same time, a little shadowy, a little like stop-motion, and it messes with your brain in a way that suits the horror. It is, as the developers put it, painstakingly inefficient, and you can see the work.
You are going to like the way this game looks, especially if you like the style.
The audio is just as good. The soundtrack mixes jazzy and bluesy-rock touches, and the voice acting from top to bottom had real emotion, even on the little one-off characters you meet along the way. Ryan liked the soundtrack enough that he plans to download it.
Investigating the Town
The gameplay is mostly environmental detective work. You read notes on walls, dig through drawers, tune radio frequencies to catch repeating number codes, and pay attention to everything around you. Ryan's favorite example: a door with no doorknob, and the knob turns up halfway across town. You can also shoot rusted locks open with your gun.
One neat feature is the camera you get right away. Take a picture of an area you can't get into yet, and it shows up on your map so you can remember to come back once you've found the way in. Ryan said that was very useful for someone who never remembers where anything is.
There was a constant sense of tension, and with the exploration, you don't know where to go.
The horror works because of that tension, and because of the resource squeeze. Ammo, health items, and repairs for your breakable melee weapons are all scarce, and every door could lead to something bad or something a little less bad.
Where It Stumbles
Combat is the weak spot, and Ryan wasn't surprised, since it tends to be with these games. You get a jump, a dodge, a crouch, and basic melee and ranged attacks. The shadowy humanoids mostly run straight at you, and the sequence rarely changes. It's a little clunky, and sometimes it felt more like a hindrance than a fight you wanted. It didn't make the game worse, but it's not why you're here.
The bigger frustration is saving. You pay for saves with the same currency you use for ammo and healing, at old-school phone booths that are few and far between. Ryan hit two crashes that cost him a couple of hours of progress, which really stings when saves cost money. He also got stuck at a boss, injured, with no ammo and no heals, and almost restarted the whole game. He finally found one more spot he'd missed, grabbed two bullets, and beat the boss with perfect play.
There is a difficulty slider, though, and it helps a lot. Drop it to the bottom and Ryan suddenly had 20 coins and could buy whatever he wanted. If the survival pressure sounds like too much, you have an easy way out.
Story and Length
Ryan kept wanting to go back in. The game dangles big goals in front of you, like unlocking the ferry to reach the next section, and you spend your time gathering supplies and opening up the map to get there. It's not a very long game, and Ryan wouldn't change that.
Price
Silver Pines is $24.99. It was showing a bundle price of $22.49 with Tenebris Somnia while we recorded. Ryan thinks that price is right, especially for a game made with this much care. On Steam it has a very high rating from about 1,800 English reviews, and almost 4,000 overall.
The VGP Take
Silver Pines is for people who like spooky, moody games, who don't mind a little backtracking, and who care more about atmosphere and exploration than combat. It looks and sounds amazing, the tension never lets up, and the story keeps you moving. Just save your coins wisely, and maybe turn that difficulty slider down if you don't want to get stuck.
I'm glad I fought for it. I would have fought even harder if I had known how good it was going to be.