Five Nights at Umbrella Corps

Crow Country is a really neat Resident-Evil styled survival horror that takes place in a theme park somewhere in the Atlanta metro. Being that I'm a huge fan of RE and the survival horror genre at large, when I saw this near the top of the highest rated Backloggd games for 2024 my interest jumped. This was everything I was looking for in a game while I await Shadow of the Erdtree. It's remarkably short (less than five hours, however I was afk for some of this,) fairly easy, has an awesome CRT aesthetic, an RE1 camera, and the lore was interesting enough and told well to keep me interested in its short run time. Plotwise it’s nothing extraordinary: You play as Mara, a girl investigating this dilapidated land of attraction. The more time you spend investigating the nooks and crannies of Crow Country, you meet more people and become further enveloped in the spooky mystery behind disappearances and fatalities alike. Zombies known as "guests" inhabit the park in various shapes and sizes. Some of these guests are large and tower over the area you're in, some nimble and move quick, others literal blobs on the map... they're remedied all the same by a few shots from whatever weapon you're using. I used the basic pistol, in RE style, for the majority of the game until the final boss and got along just well. There are several optional bosses as well, all of which went down with a few grenade tosses and a shot or two. I liked this a lot about Crow Country, its short and doesn't control all too well (I mean really, what tank control game ever did) and making combat as simple as it is just making the runtime feel better.

Now I am generally pretty positive in regard to this game, especially because it respects the players runtime, but I felt like a lot of the puzzling and item usage felt a little... random to me. This made the game for much of its latter runtime feel more like a metroidvania than an RE style survival horror than I believe was intended. Items required you to run from one end of the map to the other and sometimes puzzles felt a little obscure in their solutions. Overall I think it could take a hint from the RE2/3/4makes and be more intuitive than it was.

In all if you're a fan of survival horror, especially from indie studios, Crow Country is a must play for 2024. It's short, sweet, and wears its inspiration on its sleeves in the right way.

Crow Country Review

Gameplay:

Crow Country aims to bring back the nostalgic feel of the original survival horror greats, it aims to blend a few modern mechanics with the familiar atmosphere of games like the original Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, ect. They even added in a classic tank control scheme for those of you who want the classic feel but I opted for the more modern controls myself. The gameplay basically revolves around exploring Crow Country which is a dilapidated amusement park with a dark history. You play as Mara Forest, and if youve played the inspirations you basically already know what to expect. Solving intricate puzzles, stand still to shoot combat against slow and nasty creatures (that you do not HAVE to kill of course since this is a survival horror), not knowing where to go or what to do (good or bad?), and "intense" sections of long backtracking. The game goes for an isometric view instead of the third and first person standard for modern horror games, but it does add free aiming and a camera you can move which adds a bit of a modern feel to this style of game.

I found myself keeping a notebook of all the things, codes, and notes that I found that I need to come back to which was fun, but the games puzzles are either halfway across the entire map from its solution leading to a bit of confusion on what is or isn't important for each puzzle or digital lock. If you keep a piece of paper on hand this probably wont be an issue but even still I was at a loss for a few of these moments for a while.

A few things the game could've improved is the map system. When you enter a room, the map only shows what room you are in. It wasn't a big deal of course, but I felt like it would be beneficial to have a map marker of your player and orientation to help with larger rooms and knowing which room you are heading towards. Again, its not a big deal I just have a poor sense of direction and my memory isn't amazing either so I'm sure someone else will probably have the whole map committed to memory by the time the game finishes.

Final notes, this game also doesn't do anything really new, I enjoyed my time playing it but it was mostly just familiar mechanics. You shouldn't expect a crazy mind-blowing, innovative game, instead expect a solid recreation of a game that could've came out in the 90s but with most of the clunk removed. The scares are also pretty low as well which is to be expected for a ps1 era game where the low poly groaning of monsters was scary back then but nowadays that is tame. This game focuses solely on the classic scares which is a good thing for some, but I wished it would take its style and make it truly horrifying by completely blindsiding you at moments with things you would never expect.


Graphics/Visuals:

The art direction in Crow Country is really mostly focusing on the nostalgic feel, it doesn't really blow anything out of the water of course, but it WAS super creative to have detailed environments while keeping the main characters as low poly as possible. It reminds me of PS1 games where the background was only a picture and the low poly 3d model would walk around it, yet they kept this same exact style while making those 2D envonments 3D, leading to a cool effect when moving your camera around. The abandoned amusement park is brought to life with eerie lighting, those detailed background textures, and a great visual style that enhances the experience for me. The creature designs can be very strange at times, mostly consisting of extremely mutated, bloody and grotesque things clambering towards you.

I'll remember the atmosphere of this game the longest as it is pretty memorable at times.

Story/Narrative:

The story of Crow Country is compelling, balancing eerie and comedic moments that kept me engaged, giving that nostalgic feel of old Resident Evil dialogue but doing so in a charming way. Having fun little things that the character says when you inspect something unimportant, or awkward interactions with NPCs you find. The story follows Mara Forest as she investigates the park, uncovering the secrets and dark history of the place and encountering a very small cast of characters. The game never takes itself too seriously while still delivering a gripping tale until the ending that got pretty deep which I really enjoyed. You figure out the story pretty quickly but there is still some surprises and twists especially towards the ending.

Audio/Sound:

Great sound design, chilling audio cues and ambient sounds when you just know there is something spooky nearby but its too dark to see. The creatures moaning and the ambient noises of the park are unsettling for the most part. The distorted once happy tracks that were played made me feel uneasy. Guns felt powerful and the it always felt like something bad was going to happen.

Replayability:

The game offers a low level of replayability for me, seems like it only offers a few small mechanics on extra playthroughs. Once you know the answers to the puzzles it's a pretty simple and short game. For me, I say play it once and maybe replay in a few years when you forget most of the game if you really enjoyed it. The main story is pretty linear, and it doesn't seem like the one or two choices you make really make a difference which might limit the replay value for some players. Play it once on survival mode and you'll be fine.


Overall Enjoyment:

This is a standout survival horror game despite the few flaws I had that successfully merges those nostalgic elements with a touch of modern gameplay. It offers an atmospheric experience with challenging puzzles, classic combat, and a simple but interesting story. If you're a fan of classic horror games or looking for a modern take on the genre that doesn't take too many risks or change too much about the formula, Crow Country is recommended.

Similar Games:

Classic:
Resident Evil series
Silent Hill series
Dino Crisis

"Modern":
The Evil Within series
Amnesia series
Fatal Frame series

One day you’ll realize you’ve hit that age. That age where you don’t understand what young people are talking about, and the games you grew up loving have become the new retro indie style. Cool twitch streamers are playing it but you wonder if it’s the same feeling as playing Silent Hill in 1999 and you go into that school classroom and the phone on the desk rings. Your mind has been imprinted. You will literally never forget this moment. The phone rings in this game too. But it’s not the same.

I’m sure there’s more indie horror of this variety that have come out lately but this and Signalis seem to have made the biggest impact on the larger gamosphere. I rated Signalis higher than this but maybe it’s because I played it first. I’m all for indie games doing whatever but I’m not sure my brain can sustain many more games that call back to a childhood I can’t have back.

Anyways, this game is fun. I like the chunky ps1 polygons. I finished it right before they added a hard mode which the game needed because it is way too easy.

A charming survival horror set in a dilapidated theme park. Each area of Crow Country, whether designed for customers or employees, is brought to life with excellent attention to detail. The gunplay takes a bit of time to get used to, but by the time the credits role you'll be taking down monsters like a certified firearms expert.

It is a joy to slowly unlock more and more of the theme park by solving puzzles. These puzzles are well designed but not too overwhelming. Players can utilize easier difficulties and a hint system to help bypass areas that they're having trouble with. I really appreciate how certain puzzles have multiple solutions, rewarding experimentation. Of all the puzzles in the game, only one stands out as weak due to its focus on brute forcing the solution. All other puzzles, whether they be optional or mandatory, are enjoyable.

The story is intriguing as well. Due to the game's concise length, you'll start piecing together the scope of the narrative fairly early on. Fortunately, the characters are fun to talk to and the discovery of what hides in Crow Country is fascinating. I especially love how the final act recontextualizes different parts of the game, which is great since repeat playthroughs are recommended.

Crow County is a PS1 style survival horror game which clearly takes inspiration from Resident Evil and other horror games of that era. It’s a good feeling game, it controls well with a camera that does move but still gives off a static camera feel. The issue I have is it doesn’t follow the limited inventory of RE games and that’s what I feel is key for the old survival horror games.

You explore a derelict theme park that is now filled with monsters and traps as you uncover the mystery of the missing owner and why your character is searching for him. The story ain’t bad, I liked the few twists and turns and the characters you meet. It’s all told through text, no voice acting. The graphics are interesting as it goes for the PS1 blocky style but the coloring pops, it feels like a living Lego style world. I think the presentation is well done, it’s never really scary, it’s too cartoony for that but it feels like I’m playing a game from back in the day, with better controls.

This game weighs more to the puzzle solving adventure aspect of survival horror than any kind of surviving. As I stated before there is no limited inventory to manage, no item boxes, you can explore and take everything you want, I always had plenty of ammo and health so there was rare ever a sense of danger. Also when you take away the gameplay loop of needing to be selective of what to bring on a run the game becomes just an adventure game with monsters, and that’s all this is.

So adventure games rely on puzzles and exploring to be memorable and this game has some good puzzle moments but nothing really stand out. I will say it moves at a brisk pace, plenty of locations open up with new dangers growing as you go. I think it starts a bit too open, I was wandering around a bit looking for where to go, later on it felt much more focused so I enjoyed the second half more.

The combat is gunplay where you can even aim at individual parts of an enemies body though I think only headshots matter giving you a bonus. Enemies are pretty much all very slow and easy to kill, the only thing you need to worry about is do you have enough space to back away while firing and hope it dies before it reaches you. Again I had plenty of ammo and health so I never felt the fear of surviving. As the game goes on the park adds more and more random traps, these things are super annoying as they almost come out of nowhere and just serve to annoy you. Most of my damage came from these traps that litter the world. Also there seems to be no rhyme or reason to rooms being cleared of enemies and then they are repopulated the moment you return. The key to these games is usually choosing what enemies to kill so you have a easier path to get around but now enemies just respawn whenever they want so what’s the point, it’s easy to run past most enemies. A few interesting boss fights do enhance the experience at least.

It’s a good length, took me like 5 hours and I made sure to find all the secrets which were really enjoyable to figure out. There seems to be multiple endings to get, there is a hard mode that unlocks, rankings with how fast you beat it. New items to unlock and so on, so it has a nice amount of content you expect from a survival horror game.

Crow Country has a lot of heart, it shows its respect and love for this genre. For me I like more RE style games and this one forgoes that with no limited inventory. I can see why others enjoy this more than I do, but I think there is more they could have done design wise to be better. If you want the best indie style RE game out there, try Tormented Souls, for those that like the more adventure style this will do fine.

Overall Score: 6.7

Easily one of the best survival horror games released in years.

Crow Country is an absolutely beautiful love letter to classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill. The gameplay is the point and click esque puzzle design that the genre is known for, but with gunplay that feels really solid and tight. The game can be played with either tank controls or classic controls, and since Im a fucking loser I of course went with the tank controls which felt great.

The puzzles were all extremely well thought out, with none feeling too hard for too long. There were a few brain-scratchers in there, especially when it came to the super secrets within the game, but none that felt like they became too frustrating or tedious to do. In my personal opinion, the loop between resource-centric combat and puzzle solving is the most important aspect of a survival horror game, and they mostly nailed it here.

The surprising standout for me was the music and sound design. Crow Country has a genuinely fantastic soundtrack, which really elevated the entire series. While I dont think that the save room theme is quite as good as some of the legendary save room themes, the rest of the game has music that does a really good job elevating the tension and scares all throughout.

The story and characters were all fun, but honestly nothing really to write home about. It all felt about on-par or even slightly above an average Resident Evil story, which was completely fine by me. Mara was a really great protagonist with a lot of really fun moments, and I absolutely love her design. I hope we somehow get to see her again in a sequel, but with how the game ends I doubt that will happen.

Crow Country is a triumph of modern survival horror. It checks off all the boxes for me when it comes to the genre, and really elevates itself among its contemporaries. With both this and My Friendly Neighborhood, I feel like classic survival horror is on a bit of a renaissance in the indie scene.

Fuck those small little green orb enemies tho.

Wow this game surprised me!
I love the environment, the difference in areas and the whole theme of it being an abandoned theme park!

The enemies are eerie especially the lanky ones that kinda look like me ;)

The guns feel great to use! And the ammo system where you can kick vending machines or go back to bins that you didn’t find anything in before to give you ammo (as there isn’t any melee weapon until you get a B rank on your first playthrough, )so that you can progress is fantastic.

The puzzles can be a bit challenging especially the train one, that messed me up a lot, even chat couldn’t get it.

The save points I liked the feel of, all being centred around a fire and being cozy!

Characters were interesting, and added to the lore and plot of the game.

The optional bosses were different but felt way too easy if you had upgrades beforehand.

Ending was unexpected and definitely made me go “woah! Wtf!” 😂

Replay value I’d say 3 times, to play on the hardest difficulty and to do the crow hunt.

This really brought back memories of myself playing resident evil and Dino crisis back as a kid! So I applaud this studio! Please make more like this!

Some bad things about this was an achievement bugging out for me, that’s about it really lol!

A really nice nostalgic throwback to the PS1 era with an art style reminscient in some ways of the original Final Fantasy VII though it obviously also calls back to Resident Evil, and to a lesser extent, Silent Hill. The controls for firing weren't the smoothest, and at times it wasn't always clear how some puzzles were meant to be solved, but it was fun, the story was fine, and the writing was decent. Finished in less than six hours, was only missing the achievement for S rank presumably because I used too many healing items. There is some incentive to replay, but I don't think I'd enjoy it so much--never really have enjoyed repeating content. Soundtrack is nice too, worth playing if you need something fairly light and not too intense.

Classic survival horror is back! This game is really special. its atmosphere is impressive in bringing a 90s nostalgic theme park feel. That feeling was really what I loved about this because when thinking about the mysteries ,that you uncover throughout this game, I couldn’t help but feel all the characters were drawn to this place for a sense of comfort inside of the nostalgia of a closed down theme park. But then again the place is extremely eerie. It’s a very warped sense of nostalgia in this game. That’s sort of what makes it special the hope and the dread.
The game itself is terrific with engaging tricky puzzles and tense retro combat which works with its clunkiness. The writing is wittily charming and and involves a creepy mystery filled with characters with different motivations.
Truly remarkable.