Team17's Silver Pines Launches as a Rotoscoped Survival Horror From Sweden's Wych Elm

Silver Pines, the debut collaboration between Swedish studio Wych Elm and publisher Team17, left Steam's "Coming Soon" shelf for good on October 8, arriving simultaneously on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. The 2.5D survival horror Metroidvania casts players as private investigator Red Walker, sent to a half-forgotten town to track down a missing musician who would rather not be found, and a case that quickly stops being about the musician at all. Wych Elm first announced the project almost a year ago, and the finished game arrives with a Metacritic score already in hand and a soundtrack and artbook sold alongside it.

A Missing Musician, A Town That Isn't Talking

Walker's job starts simply enough: find Eddie Velvet, a musician who vanished without a trace in the town of Silver Pines. According to the game's own synopsis on its official site, the investigation "soon slips into a strange and nightmarish descent beyond his control" as Walker digs into secrets the town has spent years trying to bury. The premise, and the game's neo-noir, rain-soaked small-town setting, has drawn repeated comparisons to Twin Peaks since Wych Elm first announced the project last October, though Silver Pines plays nothing like a point-and-click mystery.

Fight, Flee, or Find Another Way

Instead, Silver Pines borrows its structure from classic survival horror and its map design from the Metroidvania playbook. Locked doors and dead ends dot the town from the opening minutes, and progress comes from scavenging new tools and weapons that reopen areas Walker couldn't previously reach. Ammunition, medicine and upgrade items are kept deliberately scarce, so every item picked up off a shelf or pulled from a drawer is a small trade-off between fighting back and conserving resources for whatever comes next. Encounters range from ordinary townsfolk who may or may not be hiding something to the "large variety of challenging monsters and hulking bosses" that Wych Elm promises will keep every room tense.

Rotoscoped Dread

What sets Silver Pines apart visually is its animation. The game renders its cast as hand-painted, rotoscoped silhouettes moving through muted, high-contrast environments, closer in feel to an animated noir than a typical pixel-art Metroidvania. One of its own Steam screenshots shows Walker leveling a shotgun down a blood-spattered hallway at a shape barely visible in the doorway opposite; another catches him mid-firefight aboard the rusted Silver Pines Gondola, fending off a flock of crows as it sways over a storm-lashed mountainside. A free demo covering the game's opening stretch has been live on Steam ahead of launch for anyone who wants a taste before buying in.

Five Platforms, One Launch Day

Silver Pines launched at $24.99 across every platform, discounted 10% for launch week according to its Steam store page, with a pricier Deluxe Edition also available at checkout. The PC version asks for little: Steam lists a GTX 660 Ti or Radeon R9 270X and just 8GB of RAM as the minimum spec, with 5GB of storage covering the whole install. Every platform ships with 23 Steam achievements and full controller support, including native DualSense features on PS5. Console players can find the game through the Xbox store and the PlayStation Store alongside the Steam and Epic Games Store releases on PC.

A Small Studio's First Game, Sold With a Soundtrack and an Artbook

Wych Elm is credited as an independent Swedish developer, incorporated as Wych Elm AB, and Silver Pines marks its first release under the Team17 label. The studio isn't just shipping the base game: a standalone Silver Pines Soundtrack and a Silver Pines Artbook both went live on Steam alongside the main release, giving players a way to take home the game's score and its hand-painted key art once the credits roll. It's a modest storefront presence for a studio this size, but one that signals Wych Elm is treating Silver Pines as a complete package rather than a single, disposable release.

An Early Reception to Match the Hype

Early reviews have been kind to Wych Elm's first outing. The game's Metacritic listing sits at 85 on PS5 and 84 on PC, both landing in "generally favorable" territory, while critic aggregator OpenCritic has recorded a 96% recommend rate from reviewers so far. Player reaction on Steam has moved just as quickly, with the store page already past 150 user reviews within its first day live. For a small studio's first collaboration with a publisher the size of Team17, it's the kind of debut that should keep Silver Pines' gondola running for a while yet.