A love letter to a fading era of horror, it's sure to tug at the heart strings of anyone who holds survival horror close to their heart. Who knows, maybe more games like these will continue to keep the subgenre alive?
Crow Country (2024) is a short survival horror game made by SFG, aiming to emulate the childlike wonder and dread instilled by classics such as the older Silent Hill and Resident Evil games. You play as Mara Forest, an agent sent out to investigate the eponymous defunct amusement park "Crow Country", whose owner, Edward Crow, went missing. With the park falling into disrepair, and strange husks littering the premises, what's really going on here?
To those familiar to survival horror, this game is like a visit from an old friend. CC offers several quality of life options for controls, from classic tank controls, to the more modern analog control scheme from RE1 Remake's HD remaster, and even full mouse support. You'll generally walk around and interact with objects to look for item descriptions and hidden objects, and solve puzzles that range from light to respectably nuanced. You have access to an inventory system that combines the one from the original RE trilogy with RE4, as you have a limited amount of space to keep ammunition and healing items, but have a dedicated key item zone that is only used for said items. You can view all of their little models and descriptions when highlighting their inventory slot, too. Shooting and aiming is taken out of RE4, where you will be fixed in place but offered an aim reticle you can move with your movement keys, and you must manually load in each bullet or shell when you're spent. You have a few damage states to keep mind of, all also inspired by RE, going from a healthy green to a critical red in your health gauge, as well as poison you must cure yourself of. There are many trash cans and vending machines littered around the map for you to rummage through and find randomized loot in whenever the loot pool resets after a while of not interacting with them, as well as items hidden in glass bottles and crates you have to spend a bullet on to try your luck, giving a small risk and reward system. Crow Country is, as a theme park, fairly large, with many closed off areas you'll have to slowly unlock, like in any good survival horror game, complete with a map you can fill in and look at any time. You can save anytime at any 'fire' adjacent save station (campfires, ovens, firepits, flaming barrels, etc). Enemy variety here is decent enough, with the increasingly more mutated Guests all requiring differing amounts of effort to put down for good. There are several secrets you can find if you backtrack, including sneakers which increase your sprint speed, so be on the lookout. Throughout the story, you'll engage in dialogue with important characters found in certain areas that progress the game, who'll clue you in on what you need to do next, though you may also receive a limited ten clues from a fortune-telling crow animatronic who can be found in a few areas, giving you relatively useful pointers. It is a simple enough game, but lovingly curated with mechanics to make the runtime feel meaty.
Presentation-wise, it is subjective, but I've found the PS1-inspired environments and character designs to be beautiful, being similar to RE1's blocky geometry. Crow Country is brought to life in all its bilinear-filtered glory, with many pretty (and grimy) attractions, such as the Halloween-themed Haunted Hilltop with its cemetery and haunted mansion, submerged Ocean Kingdom with its water rides and swashbuckler themed restaurant, and finally the Fairytale Town with the fairy pond and lavish theater. Underneath the fantastical decor, deep in the bowels of the park, you'll venture to utility rooms, maintenance tunnels and staff-only offices, offering a nice contrast to the more child-friendly surface areas. The monsters of mysterious origin, the Guests, are coated in blood and mucus, sometimes hardened and spiked carapaces, flipping the still somewhat nostalgic visage of the park on its head and making way for something more unsettling with their presence. It is a gorgeous game and a clear work of passion to encapsulate a bygone time. The soundtrack is equally reminiscent of RE1-2-3, with an eerie but also comforting chiptune, taking the design philosophy of the old greats in giving nearly every single area its own soundtrack, and by extension a personality of its own that helps frame every scene, just another of the many cherries ontop of this generously frosted cake.
Set in 1990, Mara Forest travels to Atlanta to investigate the disappearance of Edward Crow, owner of a local amusement park named Crow Country (after the man himself), though she finds it abandoned and falling apart. Finding what few survivors there are after the establishment had been overrun with mutated monsters, some things stop adding up about the reasons why the park closed to begin with, and whether Mara even is who she claims she is. The story has some interesting twists, so I urge you to see it for yourself, even if it isn't anything crazy. It's your standard cheesy RE-style horror B-movie flick, but I think it pulls it off well.
From a technical standpoint, there isn't much to say. The game runs flawlessly, is pretty small in file size (I'm sure it could even run on a phone), and has no bugs or crashes to name. Boasting a short but sweet runtime, with an extra feature or two awarded at the end of the game, it does just enough.
All in all, Crow Country is a wonderful little blast from the past, and a glimmer of hope that the survival horror subgenre is still shambling along, and I'd say it's worth every penny. Absolutely buy for full price, though it'll get very cheap eventually, anyway. This one's going on the trophy wall.
