Pine Harbor Early Access Review – We Don’t Go to Pine Harbor

While there are quite a few horror games out these days, the genre still maintains quite a bit of popularity among indie game developers, where small studios are doing their best to come up with fun ways to reinvent the genre. The latest such attempt is Pine Harbor by Vision Forge Team, which in some ways feels like a retread of older ideas, but in other ways, also feels like an interesting new take on horror games. It is worth noting, however, that Pine Harbor is still in Early Access at the time of writing this review, and will undoubtedly go through quite a few changes before it hits its final release.

At its core, Pine Harbor is an incredibly simple game: it melds mechanics that would be more at home in a genre like survival or even extraction shooters with a heavy dose of horror-based tension for its core gameplay loop. As the game’s description on Steam will aptly tell you, the entire gameplay loop revolves around scavenging for supplies and materials during the day, which in turn will help you out with surviving the following night. And while this core gameplay loop always exists in the background, there’s also a story that tries to give players more structure with how they go about achieving their goals.

"Shortly after getting separated from Richard, it’s up to the players to try and figure out what kind of mysterious secret he was uncovering, and why a corporation might want to shut him up."

The setup is rather simple: Pine Harbor is a small town where some sort of accident caused a factory to blow up. This, for some reason, has essentially caused the town to become infected with zombie-like enemies all over the place, in turn leading the town to get abandoned by most of its regular populace. Players take on the role of Josh, who hitches a bus ride to the eponymous town at the seeming behest of his father. Shortly after meeting his father, Richard, Josh discovers that the letter wasn’t sent by him, and that darker forces, and maybe even a conspiracy might be at play.

Shortly after getting separated from Richard, it’s up to the players to try and figure out what kind of mysterious secret he was uncovering, and why a corporation might want to shut him up. It also doesn’t help that the zombie-like skinners also seem hellbent on taking him, and by extension, you down. Throughout the plot, you’ll be sent all over Pine Harbor on missions, ranging from looking for some supplies for some fellow surviving humans that might be looking forward to escaping, to following the cryptic instructions left behind by your father.

Generally speaking, Pine Harbor feels like it’s inspired quite a bit by classic survival horror titles like Silent Hill. The titular town is constantly covered in fog, which does a great job in adding to the general atmosphere of the game. The general nature of the narrative also feels like it’s lifting a page right out of Silent Hill, thanks to its creepy atmosphere, weird-looking enemies, and strange-acting NPCs.

"Pine Harbor feels like it’s inspired quite a bit by classic survival horror titles like Silent Hill"

Interestingly, the NPCs behaving strangely might actually be the result of the game still being in Early Access. Right from the get go, it’s quite evident there’s still a lot of work left to be done on Pine Harbor. Among other things, just about every animation in the whole game feels incredibly stiff, with some standout examples being Richard being incredibly still while talking to you in a moving car, or how enemies generally tend to behave. The generally strange behavior of the NPCs also goes beyond just stiff animations, and crosses right over into the bad voice acting category.

Most quests tend to have you running between two distant parts of the town on simple fetch quests, and sometimes taking on some enemies along the way. While this has the great effect of getting you intimately familiar with the town over a long period of play, unfortunately, this also has the side-effect of making the game feel incredibly repetitive. The quests needed a lot more variety in them than just simply being sent to a building on the other side of town to either talk to a survivor, or to find some supplies that you then have to bring all the way back.

While the core structure of Pine Harbor shows that a fun game might be somewhere in there, just about everything else throughout your time with the title will prove to be tedious, frustrating, or outright boring. For example, there isn’t really much in the way of combat options when it comes to dealing with enemies. You either shoot them if you have a gun, or you keep spamming a basic melee attack until they go down. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that enemies don’t really tend to react in any interesting way to your actions, aside from coming to you when they hear you getting close. This isn’t, for example, like Resident Evil where you have a ton of options in combat by choosing to shoot different body parts on zombies. Rather, all you can really do to deal with them is keep spamming left click and wait for them to eventually go down.

"You either shoot them if you have a gun, or you keep spamming a basic melee attack until they go down."

Pine Harbor quite obviously still has a long road ahead of it, and in its current state, keeping it in Early Access is definitely the right call. While the background setting is pretty interesting, the main story is bland because of the lack of quality voice acting or even decent writing. NPC characters will often act like they’re either students acting on stage for the first time, or aliens that are failing miserably in their attempts to sound like actual human beings. Couple that with the fact that the gameplay is pretty boring, and the missions are just simple fetch quests, and there really isn’t much here.

The game really starts to come alive at night, when you’re shacked up in your house and have to make some decisions about how you’re going to deal with skinners that will be gunning straight for your head. Unfortunately, the bad enemy AI rears its ugly head once again, and you never really have to employ much in the way of strategy aside from finding a good place to hide and having plenty of ammo to survive the night.

Somewhere inside Pine Harbor, there is an intriguing game. The fact that it’s an Early Access release also means that there’s nowhere for the game’s quality to go but up. The foundations are decent, and the general vibes of the game is pretty spot-on when it comes to instilling a sense of horror in the player. Unfortunately, the roughness around the edges, the lack of any real combat options, bland quests, and terrible voice acting hold the game back quite a bit.

As it currently stands, Pine Harbor isn’t really worth your time, even if you are a horror fan. There are a few good ideas there, however, and with time, there are definitely hopes that it goes on to become a decent addition to the horror genre.

This game was reviewed on PC.