This is a superb survival horror game that thrives on fantastically rendered art and dense atmosphere, but stumbles with its combat features and overall balance.

Crow Country is a PS1-inspired survival horror game that follows detective Mara Forest, who is assigned to investigate an abandoned theme park, that was closed for reasons unknown. The story that unfolds here is sublime, achieving the perfect equilibrium between the supernatural and the scientific. By the end of it, I was completely sold on the world they were building and hope that they explore more of it in subsequent games. Crow Country itself is rendered with such strong attention to detail, in that it feels like no expense was spared when it came to creating new assets that fit the particular location. The soundtrack compared by Ockeroid was a real delight to listen to, particularly the save room music.

Crow Country's one big flaw is its lack of tension, owing to the resource / damage balance that seems skewed towards the player. Though the gunplay itself is sound, the tuning of enemy damage and overpowered running mechanic makes combat and resource management feel trivial. Enemies rarely deviate from the "creepy thing that walks slowly towards you" template. As such, I never found exploration in Crow Country to be suspenseful, much less scary.

Still, SFB games display a tremendous amount of range here. I cannot believe this is the same studio that made Snipperclips and Tangle Tower — two very bright & cartoony games —, and that they nailed the survival horror format on their first attempt. Highly recommended to any type of players, even people who don't usually play this sort of game, since there's an exploration mode which removes the enemies.

Just Wow.

This game has many flaws for sure, and could have used a few more months of polish. The hitboxes are genuinely bad and the texturework gets progressively more sloppy as the game goes along. Game balancing is also an issue, where the first Adaptation you get absolutely trivialises bossfights and regular enemy encounters. The game is quite sloppy in its construction, which would ordinarily kill the experience for me.

But...

This game is MASSIVE. The fact that a team of only 12 people made this was constantly buzzing throughout my mind, as I stumbled into a massive new area or discovered a secret location hidden in the landscape. The story and lore impress more than I thought it would. I've been following the game since it was announced, and nothing in the game's marketing indicated the true scope of the experience. There are several fakeouts throughout the story where I thought "surely this is the end" but it just kept going and introduced surprising new locations, bosses and mechanics. Level design and platforming is all great as well. The soundtrack is a banger too.

With some extensive patches, this could be a 9/10 though the combat stumbles too often to overlook it's issues.