(Edit for the Hard Mode Update at the bottom of the review)
When it comes to Survival Horror, we seem to be in another golden age right now. The Puppet Combo games, Signalis and Alisa are only a couple of the popular titles to come out of the indie space in the last few years. All of them already highly regarded and entirly unique in their own right. And now 2024 has seemingly given us a fresh classic to add to that list with SFB Games newly released title Crow Country.
Crow Country puts you in the shoes of Mara Forest: sassy teenager and special agent on her way to the abandoned Crow Country amusement park. Upon arriving at the park, it quickly becomes apparent that this isn't exactly the safest place to be, as it tends to be the case in any horror story. Of course Mara still presses on in order to find the park's missing owner, the mysterious Edward Crow, while uncovering its dark backstory. If you played more than one horror game, then this setup will sound very familiar to you, in particular if you played Silent Hill 3. At the very least the setting and the attitude of its protagonist seem more than a little inspired by Heather and her horror trip on the PS2. It's good then that Crow Country isnt just a flat copy but manages to easily carve out its own identity. Survival Horror has always had a silly side to it, with its weird puzzles, contrived story lines and absurd unlockable items. In particular, Crow Country's spiritual big brother Silent Hill is famous for its cheeky secrets upon completing a first play through. There is still an unnerving atmosphere to the environments and you'll meet all kinds of sketchy characters, but the overall ton is closer to parody than anything. It really feels like a fun treasure hunt through a haunted theme park for about 80% of the game while the rest of its serious twists and revelations are reserved for the end. It all workes quite nicely in my opinion and I quickly learned to love Mara along the rest of the cast. Those who have played the game would probably now mention how predictable its main plot twist is, but I didn't mind it. The game itself seems to treat it more like a throw away gag anyway, making it fairly obvious from the very beginning. There is of course a whole other, better twist to the story, for those who are curious enough to piece together the clues. Thats all im going to say on that, without spoiling anything.
Speaking of curiousity, I think what got most people so curious about Crow Country is its look. Me included when I first played the demo during a Steam Next Fest. The style mixes the color choices of a Silent Hill, with the general chibi charm that made the original Final Fantasy 7 so memorable. What was used back on the PS1 out of necessity because developers still had to figure out hardware limitations, is used here as a stylistic choice. All the characters have this blocky look to them, clearly showing the connecting points between their limbs and coming off relativly simple in design. It not only works great as a charming throwback to PS1 era graphics but is also used to make each character distinct and recognisable. In a line-up of silhouettes, you would instantly be able to tell everyone apart based on poses and distinctive features. Enemies follow a similar design philosophies by being these very distinct but grotesque blobs and shambling, bloody corpses. They look like someone or something turned a human inside out. Its great. The environments are equally impressive, not lacking in detail at all compared to traditionally pre-rendered backgrounds. It doesn't matter if you're standing at the looming gate of the amusement parks entrance or try to get through a spooky hedge maze, there isn't a miss here. And the coolest part is the ability to fully spin the camera around, at almost all times during the game. You can always peer at the game at wich ever angle you prefer and everything looks like a diorama, a cute little playset of sorts. That is something I havent seen in any game before and im in love with it. And the ability to spin the camera around isn't just used as a gimmick either, it's cleverly given a gameplay purpose aswell.
When it comes to the gameplay, Crow Country is as traditional as a survival horror game can get, albeit with a heavy emphasis on puzzles. That is where the majority of the focus lies and where the ability to spin the camera is often used to suss out clues and secrets. To be perfectly clear: This game won't assault you with mind-bending brain teasers. Rather, SFB Games have made the very wise decision of handing out clever puzzles, that may have you stumped for a few minutes but never interrupt the flow of gameplay in the long run. Something a lot of puzzles focused games do wrong in my opinion, where you end up frustrated and just want to get the puzzles over with so you can move on to the next part. There is always have an easily understandable hook to it, never does it withold vital information, and you will always get a satisfying reward at the end. Its only one part of an effort to make Crow Country a very accessible game to everyone.
On the topic of accessibility: I have seen some people bemoan the lack of difficulty and the argument that this makes it a lesser game somehow, but I don't see the problem in making a genre accessible to new comers. Not when everything else is so rock solid. This is, in the best possible way, babies first survival horror game. The bones of combat and decision-making are still here, but without the looming threat of getting soft locked or getting stuck on bullshit puzzles. There is a limited hint system that will more or less guide you if you're stuck on the critical path, you can optionally turn on an extra life system, so you don't have to go back to your last save upon death. There is even an exploration mode if you don't care for combat.
Was it way too easy for someone who has played so many survival horror games ? Yeah, sure it was very easy, and ultimately it did hamper my enjoyment a tiny bit, which sparked a debate with myself as to what my final rating should even be. Do I take points away from Crow Country because of the lack of difficulty or not. In the end, I came to the conclusion that you can't always throw people into the deep end when it comes to new genres. There is a place for entry level survival horror, and I'm happy to welcome every new fan who might get into the genre through games like this. Besides, the developers have already posted a roadmap with various fixes and an additional hard mode. Once that comes out, ill update my review and bump up the rating, probably. Anyway, go play Crow Country, it's a cool little game about spooky crows.
(Hard Mode Update: So SFB actually managed to drop the new update pretty shortly after release, and I'm happy to say that this adds just about everything I wanted to see. After initially dismissing the hard mode as a bit of a nothingburger update, this luckily bumps the difficulty up to a significant degree. About halfway through the game, I found myself in the big old Survival Horror ammo shuffle. No trash can diving and vending machine kicking for you anymore young lady. Resources are now actually limited and enemies are way more aggressive. Having played through the game twice already, I had new moments of surprise where I had to stop and assess my current situation. I found myself considering the clever use of traps much more, and removing the ability to run whenever you're close to death adds a lot of tension to exploration. The game frequently threw me for a loop as I had to pay much closer attention to enemie placement and traps when doing trips back and forth across the map. Knowing where some of the secrets were hidden became a big advantage. When enemies are so much faster than before, every extra magnum bullet and weapon upgrade does seem like a godsend. If I had to nitpick one tiny thing, it's the fact that I would have liked to have seen more survival staples added, like limited saves and item boxes. It's not a huge dealbreaker and the rating system has been changed to punish frequent saves, but as it stands now the game doesn't really suffer from their absence. Together with the new unlockable item for beating Hard Mode, which can now be enabled in the main menu once you unlocked it (Thank you, why the fuck wasn't that there from the beginning ?), I now consider Crow Country the full survival horror package. Now, both perfect for horror game newcomers and veterans alike. Definitely one of the best games I played in 2024 so far, and one I'm will be happy to return to in the near future. Score gets bumped up of course, good job SFB games. More developers should listen to feedback from fans like this).
When it comes to Survival Horror, we seem to be in another golden age right now. The Puppet Combo games, Signalis and Alisa are only a couple of the popular titles to come out of the indie space in the last few years. All of them already highly regarded and entirly unique in their own right. And now 2024 has seemingly given us a fresh classic to add to that list with SFB Games newly released title Crow Country.
Crow Country puts you in the shoes of Mara Forest: sassy teenager and special agent on her way to the abandoned Crow Country amusement park. Upon arriving at the park, it quickly becomes apparent that this isn't exactly the safest place to be, as it tends to be the case in any horror story. Of course Mara still presses on in order to find the park's missing owner, the mysterious Edward Crow, while uncovering its dark backstory. If you played more than one horror game, then this setup will sound very familiar to you, in particular if you played Silent Hill 3. At the very least the setting and the attitude of its protagonist seem more than a little inspired by Heather and her horror trip on the PS2. It's good then that Crow Country isnt just a flat copy but manages to easily carve out its own identity. Survival Horror has always had a silly side to it, with its weird puzzles, contrived story lines and absurd unlockable items. In particular, Crow Country's spiritual big brother Silent Hill is famous for its cheeky secrets upon completing a first play through. There is still an unnerving atmosphere to the environments and you'll meet all kinds of sketchy characters, but the overall ton is closer to parody than anything. It really feels like a fun treasure hunt through a haunted theme park for about 80% of the game while the rest of its serious twists and revelations are reserved for the end. It all workes quite nicely in my opinion and I quickly learned to love Mara along the rest of the cast. Those who have played the game would probably now mention how predictable its main plot twist is, but I didn't mind it. The game itself seems to treat it more like a throw away gag anyway, making it fairly obvious from the very beginning. There is of course a whole other, better twist to the story, for those who are curious enough to piece together the clues. Thats all im going to say on that, without spoiling anything.
Speaking of curiousity, I think what got most people so curious about Crow Country is its look. Me included when I first played the demo during a Steam Next Fest. The style mixes the color choices of a Silent Hill, with the general chibi charm that made the original Final Fantasy 7 so memorable. What was used back on the PS1 out of necessity because developers still had to figure out hardware limitations, is used here as a stylistic choice. All the characters have this blocky look to them, clearly showing the connecting points between their limbs and coming off relativly simple in design. It not only works great as a charming throwback to PS1 era graphics but is also used to make each character distinct and recognisable. In a line-up of silhouettes, you would instantly be able to tell everyone apart based on poses and distinctive features. Enemies follow a similar design philosophies by being these very distinct but grotesque blobs and shambling, bloody corpses. They look like someone or something turned a human inside out. Its great. The environments are equally impressive, not lacking in detail at all compared to traditionally pre-rendered backgrounds. It doesn't matter if you're standing at the looming gate of the amusement parks entrance or try to get through a spooky hedge maze, there isn't a miss here. And the coolest part is the ability to fully spin the camera around, at almost all times during the game. You can always peer at the game at wich ever angle you prefer and everything looks like a diorama, a cute little playset of sorts. That is something I havent seen in any game before and im in love with it. And the ability to spin the camera around isn't just used as a gimmick either, it's cleverly given a gameplay purpose aswell.
When it comes to the gameplay, Crow Country is as traditional as a survival horror game can get, albeit with a heavy emphasis on puzzles. That is where the majority of the focus lies and where the ability to spin the camera is often used to suss out clues and secrets. To be perfectly clear: This game won't assault you with mind-bending brain teasers. Rather, SFB Games have made the very wise decision of handing out clever puzzles, that may have you stumped for a few minutes but never interrupt the flow of gameplay in the long run. Something a lot of puzzles focused games do wrong in my opinion, where you end up frustrated and just want to get the puzzles over with so you can move on to the next part. There is always have an easily understandable hook to it, never does it withold vital information, and you will always get a satisfying reward at the end. Its only one part of an effort to make Crow Country a very accessible game to everyone.
On the topic of accessibility: I have seen some people bemoan the lack of difficulty and the argument that this makes it a lesser game somehow, but I don't see the problem in making a genre accessible to new comers. Not when everything else is so rock solid. This is, in the best possible way, babies first survival horror game. The bones of combat and decision-making are still here, but without the looming threat of getting soft locked or getting stuck on bullshit puzzles. There is a limited hint system that will more or less guide you if you're stuck on the critical path, you can optionally turn on an extra life system, so you don't have to go back to your last save upon death. There is even an exploration mode if you don't care for combat.
Was it way too easy for someone who has played so many survival horror games ? Yeah, sure it was very easy, and ultimately it did hamper my enjoyment a tiny bit, which sparked a debate with myself as to what my final rating should even be. Do I take points away from Crow Country because of the lack of difficulty or not. In the end, I came to the conclusion that you can't always throw people into the deep end when it comes to new genres. There is a place for entry level survival horror, and I'm happy to welcome every new fan who might get into the genre through games like this. Besides, the developers have already posted a roadmap with various fixes and an additional hard mode. Once that comes out, ill update my review and bump up the rating, probably. Anyway, go play Crow Country, it's a cool little game about spooky crows.
(Hard Mode Update: So SFB actually managed to drop the new update pretty shortly after release, and I'm happy to say that this adds just about everything I wanted to see. After initially dismissing the hard mode as a bit of a nothingburger update, this luckily bumps the difficulty up to a significant degree. About halfway through the game, I found myself in the big old Survival Horror ammo shuffle. No trash can diving and vending machine kicking for you anymore young lady. Resources are now actually limited and enemies are way more aggressive. Having played through the game twice already, I had new moments of surprise where I had to stop and assess my current situation. I found myself considering the clever use of traps much more, and removing the ability to run whenever you're close to death adds a lot of tension to exploration. The game frequently threw me for a loop as I had to pay much closer attention to enemie placement and traps when doing trips back and forth across the map. Knowing where some of the secrets were hidden became a big advantage. When enemies are so much faster than before, every extra magnum bullet and weapon upgrade does seem like a godsend. If I had to nitpick one tiny thing, it's the fact that I would have liked to have seen more survival staples added, like limited saves and item boxes. It's not a huge dealbreaker and the rating system has been changed to punish frequent saves, but as it stands now the game doesn't really suffer from their absence. Together with the new unlockable item for beating Hard Mode, which can now be enabled in the main menu once you unlocked it (Thank you, why the fuck wasn't that there from the beginning ?), I now consider Crow Country the full survival horror package. Now, both perfect for horror game newcomers and veterans alike. Definitely one of the best games I played in 2024 so far, and one I'm will be happy to return to in the near future. Score gets bumped up of course, good job SFB games. More developers should listen to feedback from fans like this).
7 Comments
@Spinnerweb Lol Thats crazy. I dont even know most of my closest friends really, let alone any famous devs. Cool stuff, you really are a famous person Mr Spinnerweb.
@Spinnerweb - something happen b/w you two?
@redbackloggd Not at all, guy is a gentleman. He also changed the entire direction of the game based on input received from people who gave more funds than others, making it much less scary and much more 'censored,' which made me lose interest. In my view, he compromised his creative cision because people who gave more money wanted things a certain way.
@Spinnerweb - is he American?
It's interesting how 10 years or so ago it was becoming popular to make games with modernised pixel art styles as a nod to that generation, and now we're seeing a large increase in PS1 low poly style games. It must be the case that the people growing up with those gaming eras are finally becoming old enough to put their own projects out there, which is awesome, it tells a nice story. The fact they can take that style and modernise it to feel sleek and natural while retaining the charm it always had is just wonderful.
Spinnerweb
1 month ago