(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).

Even though it was free, Sheepy: A Short Adventure felt like it should have come with a price tag. Its quick runtime offered a thoroughly enjoyable experience, with a handful of chapters that had their own platforming challenges as well as powers to overcome them. There were even some collectibles and secrets to find. It had the whole package, albeit a condensed one with a confusing narrative.

What added to it was the seamless integration of music into the gameplay, one chapter in particular going all out on being epic. It's hard to believe it was developed by one person.

Fears to Fathom: Home Alone is the first game by solo indie dev Rayll, in his attempt to create an indie horror game based on ''real'' stories submitted to his email.

This first story covers a intruder trying to get into your home, the thing most notable about this game is the atmosphere that is creates, which is by far the best part of this game, the concept is also eerie too.

Sadly, the game just falls short, they could have built up the suspense more, and built up to this invasion, but it basically just happens in the span of a few minutes, with no build up at all. If it took my time fleshing things out, I'm sure it would have been much better. Though, it is a free game, so I shouldn't expect much out of it.

Overall: 6/10

Fears to Fathom: Norwood Hitchhike is a improvement over Home Alone, it has a better story, better narrative, better characters, and it is longer, and it is more fleshed out, and they build out the scenario a bit more.

Even though it is an improvement over Home Alone, Norwood Hitchhike still didn't click to me. The atmosphere, and the setting isn't as scary as Home Alone, and because of that, it does greatly lose its scare factor for me.

It's a sure improvement, but it's still a game I just find to be okay. I do hear the series does continuously get better, so I hope the following installments are better, because this was an improvement, at the very least.

Overall: 6/10

Fears to Fathom: Carson House is the 3rd installment in the Fears to Fathom series. And, though this might be a unpopular opinion, its by far my favorite of the 3 games I have played so far.

The story to me, is the best here, and really feels like a revamped Home Alone, where it has a better build up, and it hits a lot of the same beats, but I think Carson House hits those beats, significantly better.

We also are bringing the series back to a house, which to me is scary when a situation like an intruder is breaking in, because we can all relate to being in a house, late at night. When you start to do concepts of being in totally abstract places, we lose that realism factor, and we can't really relate to the fear that much.

This game is just really good, and really bumped this series up for me, where I am really interested in Ironbark Lookout to play, because I was very impressed by this. All the games so far have improved upon themselves, so if Ironbark is an improvement, then I'm sure I will quite like it.

Overall: 8/10

Cannibal Abduction is a PSX styled Survival Horror game published by Puppet Combo. I am a personal huge fan of Puppet Combo's work, and find his games innovative and very unique. Sadly, this game is just okay.

This game really has nothing special to write home about, it just feels like a worse version of Murder House. The house is eerily similar to Murder House's layout, though it also does take some inspiration from Texas Chain Saw Massacre's house layout too.

The killer really isn't that scary. He's trying to kill you to feed his family, but there also is a weird creature in the basement you can find that they are feeding, and it's not really touched upon why there's a monster in the basement.

The entire game was grounded in reality until you get that secret ending, which totally invalidates most things in it.

The puzzles are very easy, and it really wears off after a few minutes. The killer is extremely slow, which is the same for Murder House, but Murder House made up with that, with the Easter Ripper being a scary villain in what he did to his victims.

This game's just okay, it's just another PSX survival horror game that is very generic, but was worth playing in the end.

Overall: 6/10

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is a step up in most ways from the first Hotline Miami.

The gameplay in Hotline Miami 2 is overwhelmingly improved from Hotline Miami 1's, and Hotline Miami 1 already had amazing gameplay. The new weapons introduced are all great, and all the new levels are the best in the series.

You get to play as way more characters, opposed to just Jacket and Biker in the first game, you probably play around 7-8 different characters, within the span of this entire game, and most of these characters are unique in how they play, that it really makes their own designated sections extremely fun.

The one issue I do have is the story, the story becomes extremely confusing and convoluted, and the first game already had a decently confusing story, this one amplifies the confusion to a new level. While I think I got what the story was, it really didn't need to be as complicated as it was.

This is an amazing game, and is an actually good sequel, that is better than the original game, which is quite rare nowadays.

Overall: 9/10

This game is jankier than I remember. It's got good aspects to it but its certainly weak compared to some of the later games. Much like the Hitman games, you can see a clear concept here that isn't quite realized. The platforming is broken as hell and there's moments here that force you into combat and it's quite rough.

The story of Splinter Cell is something I care so little for as well. It's never well written, I'm basically only here for the gameplay lol.

This game sucks to play on PC, it took me atleast 30 minutes to get this in a playable state.

Anyway, all in all. I don't think I recommend it? It's not very fun, but it's still impressive and unique for the time. Though, I think stealth involving usage of shadows was perfected in the Thief games.