Welcome to Silver Pines. You might recognise it, if you’ve visited Twin Peaks or Alan Wake’s Bright Falls. It’s wet, it’s weird, it’s a bit unsettling. It’s also the last-known location of Eddie Velvet, a musician being tracked by private investigator Red Walker—that’s you. But who cares about runaway musicians when there are monsters trying to eat your face?
Ol’ Silver Pines has gone a bit Resident Evil, you see. A storm’s coming, nearly everyone has evacuated the town, and now it’s infested by grisly creatures with breathing problems. They would very much like to kill you.
With limited resources, a tiny inventory, lots of locked doors and a fair share of light puzzles, Silver Pines channels Resi a lot more than its other inspirations. You can even find healing herbs, and combine objects in your inventory.
Developer Wych Elm describes Silver Pines as a “love letter to classic survival horror”, which is also how most survival horror games seem to be described. We are infected with nostalgia. Aside from the more overt references to games like Resi and Silent Hill, it also channels classic survival horror combat, in that it is quite annoying.
Well, initially at least. I’m only able to discuss the first hour, though, and it was enough to make me consider a life of pacifism.
After my first encounter with a shadowy creature—which was, at the time, unkillable—I discovered my first weapon. A puny boxcutter. It is, unsurprisingly, not very good at killing whatever hellspawn have infected Silver Pines. And despite being a tiny blade, Walker wields it like a much slower weapon, constantly leaving himself open to attack.
Even when just faced by a single foe, I’d usually end up critically wounded—and any injuries make Walker, who’s already a sluggish guy, even slower. Faced with a rapidly depleting supply of herbs, I devised another strategy.
I crouched and went for the shins.
This strategy might not be viable for the whole game, but it certainly helped in this first hour. You can just waddle up to oblivious monsters and keep slashing at their shins. And there’s nothing they can do about it. Granted, this is not fun. It takes ages and looks stupid. But I did stop needing to devour herbs.
The good news is that you’ll eventually net yourself some firearms, though expect to be spending most of your time fighting in close range, regardless of your weapon of choice.
It’s a looker, at least, with characters and enemies rendered in an almost rotoscope aesthetic. In motion, it’s quite impressive—and that goes for the fights especially, unless you’re just being a lil’ shin-stabber.
But mostly I just felt a bit bored—even after a single hour. And that’s the problem with love letters. They are by their very nature derivative. I’ve done it all before. And while Capcom was able to revitalise Resident Evil with the bold switch to first-person, I’m not convinced Wych Elm is going to have the same fortune by making it 2D, which feels limiting rather than additive.
At least it’s pretty.
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