Is Silver Pines Worth It? Critics vs Players

Evidence-based review · scores read on 13 October 2026, 09:10 UTC

Yes, Silver Pines is worth it if you like classic survival horror with puzzles and backtracking: top critics average 87 on OpenCritic and 94.8% of 1,439 Steam reviews are positive. That gives Wych Elm Games' debut our evidence-based score of 8.9 (Great), with boss fights, sparse guidance and paid save points as the recurring complaints.

This review is a synthesis, not a playthrough. It is built on OpenCritic, Metacritic and Steam data read on 13 October 2026, five critic reviews read in full, the developer's Steam announcements and our own count of 1,430 Steam user reviews. AFK Journal has not played the game, and the score comes from a public formula explained below.

What is Silver Pines?

Silver Pines is a 2.5D survival horror Metroidvania from Wych Elm Games, announced by Team17 in October 2025. You play Red Walker, a private investigator hired to find Eddie Velvet, a musician who vanished from a motel in a half-abandoned American town. The Steam store page promises locked doors, hidden paths, puzzles, bosses and a limited inventory in which every bullet and bottle of medicine matters.

It arrived with more attention than most debuts: the developer said in September that it had passed 300,000 wishlists across all platforms, and reviews went live on 6 October, two days before launch. Critics keep reaching for the same three reference points: Twin Peaks for the mood, Silent Hill for the town and classic Resident Evil for the item juggling.

What do critics agree on?

The look and sound carry it. Every review we read singles out the presentation. GamesRadar+ (4.5/5) praises the painterly visuals and the ambient jukebox and radio music that break up exploration. GamingBolt (8/10) highlights the rotoscoped character animation, filmed from real performers, and TheSixthAxis (9/10) describes a monochrome palette punctuated by red, a nod to Silent Hill 2 and Twin Peaks.

It makes you work like a detective. Puzzles are built from numbers on paintings, notes and signs rather than abstract riddles. Pocket Tactics (8/10) says the game's greatest strength is trusting you to solve its mysteries without holding your hand, while GamingBolt cites an early lock that uses apartment numbers instead of digits. GamesRadar+ recommends using Red Walker's in-game camera to photograph clues.

Resource management is old-school in the right way. GamesRadar+ describes combining items, upgrading guns so they take less space and using storage boxes, in the Resident Evil tradition. Insider Gaming (8/10) adds Mementos, equippable trinkets with buffs and debuffs, and praises the voice acting and audio cues.

Where do critics split?

The spread is narrow: on OpenCritic's list the scores we found run from 80 to 95, and 94% of critics recommend it. The disagreements are about combat and structure rather than quality.

Combat. Insider Gaming was surprised by how much fighting matters and calls Walker a capable combatant with revolvers, shotguns and rifles. Pocket Tactics found it unforgiving outside the story-focused Relaxed difficulty, with scarce ammunition pushing you towards breakable melee weapons, and calls the boss fights tedious time sinks with little variety. GamingBolt was rarely challenged over about 15 hours but says enemy designs rarely stand out.

Guidance. The lack of signposting is the main structural split. Pocket Tactics spent much of its time retracing steps for a single missing detail and says that will frustrate some players, though it makes discoveries feel earned. GamingBolt notes that objectives are fairly linear and it is not always clear which walls hide passages. TheSixthAxis, by contrast, praises a map that tracks locked doors and unsolved puzzles.

Perspective. Insider Gaming's 8 comes with an honest caveat: the reviewer is not a Metroidvania fan and would have preferred a first- or third-person game. If 2D exploration is not your thing either, weigh that review more heavily than the 9s.

Story and saving. GamingBolt likes the mystery but says the story never quite reaches a third gear, while GamesRadar+ found it powerfully gripping from start to finish. Pocket Tactics warns that the save system asks for the same patience as the exploration: saving means spending in-game currency at payphones, a classic survival horror friction that some Steam players also dislike.

What do Steam players say about Silver Pines?

Players are even warmer than critics. On 13 October 2026, 1,364 of 1,439 Steam reviews were positive (94.8%, Very Positive). In our read of 1,430 of them, English-language reviews were 97.2% positive and Simplified Chinese reviews, the second-largest group, 88.2%. Steam already filters off-topic review bombs out of its score, and the game is five days old, so the total and the recent figure are the same thing for now.

Only 19 of the 680 English reviews we read were negative, so treat the following as tendencies rather than statistics. Seven mention combat or controls (delayed movement, clunky handling), four mention boss fights and four complain about saving: there is no autosave, and saves cost money. A few report softlocks or a corrupted save. Positive reviews most often mention atmosphere, art, sound or music (268 of 661) and the story (160). Median playtime was 2.0 hours for negative reviews and 8.9 hours for positive ones.

Reddit interest is steady for a $25 debut. The r/Games review thread posted on 6 October had 391 upvotes and 100 comments by 13 October.

How does it run, and on which platforms?

Silver Pines launched on 8 October 2026 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch, as Gematsu reported in June. The developer's pricing announcement sets it at $24.99, £21.99 or €24.99 on Steam and consoles, with a $31.99 Deluxe Edition that adds the artbook and soundtrack, and a 10% launch discount on Steam. It shared its launch day with Jonathan Blow's puzzle game, which we cover in our Order of the Sinking Star review.

On PC, Wych Elm released Hotfix 1 on 9 October to address performance problems some players reported: it adds a DirectX 11 launch option, recommended especially on Steam Deck, fixes several softlocks and stops enemies blocking the Union Apartments elevator. The game had been Steam Deck Verified before launch. On Switch 2, Pocket Tactics found the default aiming, with both sticks able to aim like a twin-stick shooter, odd and in need of getting used to.

How we got to 8.9

Our formula weights critics at 70% and players at 30%. The critic input is OpenCritic's Top Critic Average divided by 10; the player input is Steam's percentage of positive reviews divided by 10, used only with at least 500 reviews. We allow a correction of up to 0.5 only for problems documented by two or more independent sources.

We applied no correction. The PC performance complaints come mainly from players and were addressed by a hotfix within a day, and the boss fights and paid saves are design choices that critics already weigh in their scores. At 8.94 the game sits just below our Essential band, which starts at 9.0.

Should you buy Silver Pines?

• Buy it if you like classic Resident Evil or Silent Hill item management, enjoy writing down codes and do not mind backtracking. Critics put a first run at about 10 to 15 hours for $24.99.
• Consider the Relaxed difficulty if you are here for the Twin Peaks mood and the mystery: Pocket Tactics says combat is unforgiving unless you pick that story-focused mode.
• Skip it or wait if you want constant direction, autosaves or great boss fights, or if 2D exploration has never clicked for you.

If you want more horror this October, our Hellraiser: Revival review covers a gorier shooter that critics liked far less than players, and our Silent Hill: Townfall review covers the series Silver Pines borrows from. For a supernatural mystery in 3D, see our CONTROL Resonant review. Everything we publish on the game lands on the Silver Pines hub.