Crow Country Review
Rating – Highly Recommend!
I’m no stranger to the Survival Horror genre, if anything it might be one of my favourite genres of video game. My first experiences with horror in video games are now core memories to me. My first initial taste of horror and panic in a game was probably the ending sequence of Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro where Doc Ock had been infused with the Carnage Symbiote and you must flee through the air ducts, no fighting, only running. I don’t even really remember my age during this but I know I was on the younger side, maybe under 10? I was a bit of a scaredy cat essentially, my mum was visiting a friend and she had son maybe twice my age, while the parents were talking I got to witness the alligator chase sequence in Resident Evil 2 on the PlayStation 1, my immediate thoughts were “this looks so cool”, a police officer running away from a giant mutated crocodile only to blow it up when it’s chewing down on a gas canister. I was immediately interested, I brazenly asked if I could get a loan of the game and was also immediately shot down since they were pretty obviously in the middle of playing it, as a consolation prize I was offered Resident Evil 1. I jumped at the chance and immediately took it home with me, threw it into the PlayStation 1 I had and was transported to the dreaded Spencer Mansion. To cut a long story short, I made it into the dining room (the second room in the mansion), didn’t know where to go and was terrified that a zombie was going to burst through a door and turn poor Jill Valentine into the next meal, so I turned the game off and didn’t play it until I was older, braver but not any more wiser. You may be wondering why I’m telling you this, wasn’t this meant to be a review about Crow Country? The reason I wanted to take the trip down memory lane with anyone reading is because Crow Country managed to capsulate those memories that I had forgotten about so long ago, Crow Country delivers an authentic survival horror experience that after finishing all I could think was “I look forward to what the developer has brewing next”.
Crow Country was released in May of 2024 by the indie game developer, SFB Games based in London, United Kingdom. Some older internet dwellers may know them better as “The Super Flash Bros” as they initially got their start in game development making flash games on the popular website Newgrounds. The development team is primarily composed of two brothers, Adam and Tom Vian, together they’d create this charming little gem called Crow Country that has released on all major platforms Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC with it being only available on Steam with no release for GOG or Epic Games Store.
Crow Country follows Mara Forest, a government special agent, who is tasked with locating and finding the elusive Edward Crow, who has been missing for years. In her search she has been brought to the theme park that he owns; Crow Country. Once a park full of life, excitement and wonder, now filled with trash, run down buildings and broken rides, upon investigating the park and it’s mysterious owner Mara encounters many deformed, zombie like monsters called “Guests” who aim to stop you from reaching the truth of what happened to Edward Crow and how these monsters came to be. To do this, you’ll need to solve puzzles, avoid or kill enemies and think out of the box in some situations to get closer to the truth of what happened to Edward Crow and where these mysterious “Guests” have come from. I never found myself getting lost in Crow Country, I’d instead find myself stuck on a puzzle and then deciding to explore the theme park more and then I would find out that I wasn’t meant to be attempting that area/puzzle yet, it felt very rewarding to stumble into next areas as I felt as clueless as Mara did in trying to get answers. The story for Crow Country initially felt like our classic Resident Evil plots, enter an area, area is filled with monsters, area has a secret facility under it. While this is still the case the characters, their motivations, how they interact with each other and their entire reason for being at Crow Country are what sets this apart from its inspiration. I enjoyed the plot, it didn’t overreach on what would make it unbelievable to me and I feel the ending was satisfying and was left open enough that I can hope that eventually a sequel will be made.
One of the things that caught the eyes of many people (myself included) was the graphics and art style choices. In a world where survival horror is becoming realistic graphics with third person or first person camera views, Crow Country went for a different approach. They decided to make the camera isometric and graphically travel back to something reminiscent of the PlayStation 1 (my initial story pays off now!), specifically the biggest and most glaring comparison being Final Fantasy 7’s overworld chibi graphics, and I can’t say that it doesn’t remind me of that. This choice makes a lot of sense to me, you can create detailed environments and ensure that performance is great on all kinds of hardware, and you can also appeal to the nostalgic crowd that yearn for old chunky graphics. This also allows the game to be more accessible, many people can’t handle horror too well especially when the graphics are so detailed, this gives them a nice way to get into the genre. That’s not to say that the game isn’t scary, or failed to scare me. Crow Country makes great use of this design choice to make some very unsettling enemy designs that may not entirely work if the game was going for a more realistic approach.
As previously mentioned the gameplay is isometric, when aiming you’re locked in place and the movement is now your aiming cursor, you’d think that the isometric camera view would result in this being too difficult but it’s actually very well made and I never had an issue in fighting enemies, you’ll also have a nice time opening the menu to apply heals or antidotes for being poisoned, in here you’ll also be able to view maps that you’ve picked up throughout the investigation, where they’ll show which doors are locked, which have points of interest for puzzles to be solved and your general location. Musically, the game is great too, being scored by Tommy Robin/Ockeroid I think they’ve done a great job with the music. It knows just right when to keep things quiet and let the sound effects play out or when the music needs to build the tension up and up until it’s got nowhere to go except for spilling over.
This isn’t to say that the game is perfect, there were some issues that I had with it, the default control scheme I found myself getting confused on when shooting, the buttons are RB to aim, B to shoot, A to reload, X to throw a grenade and LB to change your weapon. Not exactly the most complicated control scheme, but I was finding myself getting frustrated as I’d instinctively press A or even in some cases X to try and shoot, which I’m more than willing to chalk up to user error. The game also allows you to rebind controls which made it easy enough to resolve this issue. The length of the game is pretty good I’d say, in total it took me 6 hours of playtime to complete and I’m sure you’d be able to chop that down drastically when you know where you’re going and what needs to be done. The game also awards you with an ending rank which was a staple of PS1-era survival horror games, the ranking you achieve also unlocking some extra weapons incentivising multiple playthroughs, which is a great idea to extend the stickiness of a game. The price point I feel matches this and if anything I think is a bit of a steal, the game is priced at £16.75 on Steam and I think it could have easily been sold for around the £20 price range.
I very much enjoyed the time I spent with Crow Country and can easily see myself loading it back up to try and obtain all the achievements in the game and to obtain a S rank run, with my first playthrough having only achieved a B+. I think SFB Games have knocked it out of the park (hehe) with this game and look forward to whatever they decide to do next, even if it’s not a continuation of Crow Country.
