There are so many metroidvanias out there now that sometimes it feels like if you've played one of them, you've played them all. Don't get me wrong, the formula we get from the genre nowadays is solid, from the overall structure to the atmosphere and tone. Give me a dark, dank, weird metroidvania, and I'll have a hard time putting it down once I get rolling. However, that doesn't change the fact that I am constantly on the lookout for one that offers something different that I can clearly point to and say, "I've never experienced anything like that before, and I want more of it." Well, my latest trek through Steam has graciously allowed me to stumble upon a metroidvania that I think fits that bill perfectly, and I'm here to recommend it after playing through its demo.
Silver Pines is, quite honestly, something far from what I expected. Going into its demo on Steam, I knew I was getting a survival horror metroidvania, but I wasn't expecting it to lean quite so heavily into the former or to be as creative as it is with the latter. There are shades of Alan Wake here, especially in the strange small-town mystery at the center of it all, and plenty of Resident Evil in how carefully I had to manage what little the game was willing to give me. But Silver Pines doesn't just feel like those games squeezed into a metroidvania. Rather, it takes some of the things I've done hundreds of times in the genre before and finds surprisingly immersive ways to make them feel different, all while being far more punishing than its gorgeous presentation initially led me to believe.
One of the first things that really impressed me about Silver Pines was its camera, which I initially assumed would just be there for the occasional puzzle or story beat. Instead, I could use it to take pictures of locations and then pin those photos directly to the map, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I wish more metroidvanias did something like this. I'm used to putting markers on maps to remind myself there was a locked door somewhere or an item I couldn't reach yet, but taking an actual photograph of what stopped me and attaching it to that location made the whole process feel much more natural. It also fits Red Walker being a private investigator, rather than feeling like a video game system that exists purely because the genre says there needs to be one.
I enjoyed the puzzles for a similar reason. A lot of my time with the demo involved finding something I couldn't do anything with yet, moving on, and eventually stumbling across whatever I needed to make progress there. That's obviously nothing new for a metroidvania, but Silver Pines does a great job of making those moments feel like I'm actually connecting the dots rather than just waiting until I get the double jump or some other traversal ability. At one point, I even found myself taking part in a BB-gun shooting gallery to get what I needed, which is exactly the sort of weird little detour that reminds me of something I might stumble into in Alan Wake or an older Resident Evil game.
There were plenty of other moments when I found myself poking around somewhere just because I had a feeling there had to be something there, and more often than not, Silver Pines rewarded me for it. However, the funny thing about exploring in this game is that I was rarely comfortable doing it, because the survival horror side of the experience is constantly breathing down your neck. Ammo isn't something I ever felt like I had enough of, healing items were even worse during my playthrough, and I spent a surprisingly large chunk of the early demo walking around with so little health that one hit would kill me.
I'm used to putting markers on maps to remind myself there was a locked door somewhere or an item I couldn't reach yet, but taking an actual photograph of what stopped me and attaching it to that location made the whole process feel much more natural.
I literally mean one hit, too. For a while, every enemy I encountered had the potential to send me back to my last save, simply because I couldn't find anything to heal myself with. Weirdly enough, I ended up appreciating that more than I expected. I had no choice but to stop being careless and actually get better at fighting, because taking damage wasn't something I could simply shrug off afterward. Once I realized how much trouble I was in, I started paying far more attention to enemy attacks and figuring out when I could safely get in a hit without immediately regretting it.
I tend to enjoy survival horror most when it actually makes me survive, and Silver Pines absolutely does that. I'm the kind of player who will happily burn through ammunition if a game keeps handing me more of it, but scarcity forces me to behave differently. Suddenly, every shot matters a little more, and an enemy standing in my way becomes something I have to think about rather than an automatic invitation to start shooting. Silver Pines kept me in that mindset for almost the entire demo, and considering how much exploring I wanted to do, there was always this little bit of tension in the back of my head about whether wandering off somewhere was going to cost me more than I got out of it.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/silver-pines-steam-survival-horror-metroidvania-alan-wake-resident-evil/
