Crow Country is a new throwback survival horror game that challenges what people might really want from the genre. SFB Games has crafted a fascinating experiment here by toning down a lot of the horror elements, and streamlining the puzzle mechanics. What we get is a tighter gameplay experience that distills down the survival horror genre characteristics into their baseline elements. The game asks a hyper specific question up front: What is your favorite part of Survival Horror? Is it the graphics? The jump scares? The puzzles? Size of the map? What makes the Resident Evils and Silent Hills stand out over regular horror? I started Crow Country as a fun experience for Halloween but ended up with something deeper to ponder.
Our journey begins with our protagonist, Mara Forest, arriving at the abandoned amusement park: Crow Country. Mara is searching for the founder Edward Crow who has mysteriously disappeared. Mara is armed with a handgun and her own cryptic motivations. She finds clues, solves puzzles and saves a cavalcade of other people also investigating the enigmatic nature of Crow Country and its founders. It’s a relatively straightforward plot with a few twists and turns but for the most part moves forward at a predictable pace. It checks enough boxes to be engaging, especially when it comes to the other cast of characters that appear but that is not exactly what stood out most for me.
Attempting to rekindle that nostalgia feel, Crow Country’s visual style leans heavily into the Playstation 1 era with its graphics. Grainy filters and blocky featureless character models are used in conjunction with a Resident Evil inventory system to really hammer home those happy memories in the reward center of your brain. The camera is tilt shifted, but can be turned to display more of the environment. Each level felt like a Halloween themed diorama, with tiny little details to discover upon closer inspection. I personally spent way too much time within each map, combing over every single component, only to be rewarded with flavor text to make me laugh or further flesh out the world that I easily could have missed otherwise. Your in-game actions are expertly scored alongside a soundtrack with a deep level of dark atmosphere, dripping with suspense and intrigue. The music pushed me into a deep sense of unease and never let go.
It’s from there that I have to dig into exactly what stood out most to me about Crow Country: The Puzzles. I love the Resident Evil series, but specifically for the puzzles. The suspense and horror aspects are more of a deterrent with how heavily it gets towards the tail end of those games. Here in Crow Country, the focus is solely on exploration and puzzle solving. Find a door that needs a passphrase? You best believe that you will come across a staff memo that will have someone complain about exactly that and provide you the answer. Finding a computer terminal that needs credentials? Boy howdy is it satisfying to find the keycard an hour later in a safe, two buildings over. The map of the amusement park is also somewhat small, so getting stumped means going to other rooms and trying to see what’s missed. Backtracking isn’t really a chore on a map this size. Additionally, with the theme park aesthetic, there’s a special charm to finding the mermaid trident to unlock the path forward.
Pretty much instantly, the park does become flooded with varying types of monsters such as zombies, blobs and tree beasts, but most can be avoided by quickly running past. When that isn’t possible, the developers have provided a trusty hand gun, as well as other types of guns and weaponry found throughout the park. Yet, again, as if to say “let’s not make the game too scary” ammo and health packs are a dime a dozen, so enemies really are a non factor here. This is a welcome switch up for me because that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to find two different colored gems to try to fit into the eyes of a statue to open up the next area of the map. Of course, if you want to take those monsters out, the gunplay very much follows the original Resident Evil where you hold the gun out, then aim slowly and methodically. This is probably the weakest part of Crow Country. Aiming is super imprecise, and has a really wild kind of sway to it, so running away past enemies was my preferred option.
By lowering the fear factor, SFB Games has changed the focus of what the game presents and instead leans heavier into atmosphere, and puzzle solving. Fortunately, those are exactly my favorite parts for these types of games. Give me a big spooky house with lots of items to find and clues to solve and I’m in heaven. A haunted house escape room so to speak and Crow Country delivers perfectly on those fronts. It isn’t until later in the game that combat becomes a necessity and that’s where my enthusiasm wanes. The finicky aiming is frustrating enough to generally want to avoid it at all costs. Outside of that Crow Country is highly successful at what it delivers. A tight package of intriguing puzzle design and nail biting ambiance that is perfectly tuned in difficulty. There’s even a hint system in place to ensure you don’t get stuck too long on any single puzzle. I loved my time with Crow Country and it will definitely be making an appearance on my Game of the Year list.
