I genuinely didn’t know anything about Silver Pines when an opportunity to get a First Look at it was presented, but there were four words that genuinely caught my eye: survival-horror, side-scrolling Metroidvania (despite my disdain for the term). I genuinely haven’t played an interesting side-scrolling survival horror since Lone Survivor: Director’s Cut all the way back in the halcyon days of 2014, so I was eager to see what was new and exciting a full decade later.
Thankfully, CGM was invited to sit down with Wych Elm’s co-founders Mattais Snygg and Linus Larsson to learn a little bit more about Silver Pines. What we were shown was a game that looks to be lovingly crafted as an homage not only to the genre of Metroid-likes, but also a cerebral experience that blends horror with mystery.
Larsson began by talking about the inspirations that went into the design of Silver Pines, saying, “We took a lot of inspiration early on when we got started on this project from the classics. The sort of golden age PlayStation One-era survival horror games—you know, Resident Evil 1 and Silent Hill, etc.” It played into a philosophy that every encounter needs to cost the player something, be it health, ammo or inventory space, as a way of constantly keeping them on edge.
Beyond that, the team really wanted to capture the sense of confusion and dread that comes with an experience like this. Players of Silver Pines are thrust into the game as Red Walker, a detective who awakens in a strange, small town with no memory of how he got there. All he knows is that he needs to find a missing musician named Eddie Velvet. By posing so many questions to the player, and having the answers be revealed to both Red and the player at the same time, the team focused on putting the game’s atmosphere and world-building front-and-center to focus on the horror.
Another one of Silver Pine’s biggest inspirations is Twin Peaks, which you can see not only in the game’s story but within the game-world itself. “So as we started working on this we knew we wanted to make a believable town,” said Larsson, adding, “and it was really a pretty challenging thing to pull off in a side scroller.” So they opted to make a really nice, believable 3D space but mapped it as “this sort of Metroidvania tower that is lying down on its side.”
“Silver Pines does look to be a captivating experience that blends the challenge and exploration of a Metroid-like, with the cerebral and terrifying style of David Lynch.”
Another thing that gives Silver Pines its unique flair is its visual design and animation. Snygg explained that they used rotoscoping to create the game’s animations—capturing a bunch of images of the team performing different actions, and then breaking them down into individual frames before applying the in-game art on top. “And it’s inspired a lot by like old classics like Snow White, Lord of the Rings, the animated version if you’ve seen that one by Ralph Bakshi, which is one of my sort of childhood favourites,” Snygg said, adding, “it creates kind of a noir-ey, stark, with a lot of heavy shadows emphasized.”
The team got even more creative for the monster characters, which, despite being humanoid, have a lot of distinct shapes and need to emphasize a sense of size and weight. “There’s a lot of dressing up that goes into that. And we have a very, we try to do everything possible, kind of what we can do at home with home appliances and things like that, just to create the illusion of various things,” Snygg said, adding that he even used one of his children’s teddy bears to get a sense of soft-body deformation.
After being given a brief look at a new bit of gameplay, I can genuinely say Silver Pines does look to be a captivating experience that blends the challenge and exploration of a Metroid-like with the cerebral and terrifying style of David Lynch. It’s dark and moody and sets a premise that sounds truly captivating, as Larsson explains, “While it starts off as largely a detective noir sort of thing, you’re gonna be going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole and the story requires you to go along with this sort of dreamlike acceptance to it.”
Silver Pines launches for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch on October 8th, 2026. There’s also a demo available on Steam for players to try.
