It’s a strange feeling to have such an overriding sense of nostalgia from a game, though that might seem strange to say that about a game that intentionally apes an older style. In truth, the reason my nostalgia has been piqued is due to the developer. If you spent the early 00s watching flash animations about video games, then the developers behind Crow Country will be familiar to you, and honestly, it gave me so much hope for this game, and that hope was not ill-founded.
If this isn’t the sort of spooky content that you need to float your boat, then maybe you’d like to check out one of our old Halloween specials from back in 2016. If you’ve been on the site for a while, it’s sure to be a nostalgia trip.
What Is Crow Country?
Crow Country is an old-school third-person action survival horror game developed by SFB Games, the folks who previously created games like Snipperclips and Detective Grimoire. This time around, the title involves a lot of nostalgia for PS1 survival horror titles, with Resident Evil and Silent Hill being particular influencers, partially due to popularity but mostly because Galerians isn’t good enough to actually inspire anything.
In Crow Country, you control Mara, a young special agent sent to an abandoned theme park to hunt down the missing billionaire owner. Upon arrival, you find the entire park abandoned, boarded-up, and strange creatures roaming the halls and shops. With the owner missing and monsters wandering all over the place, you have to wander the halls picking up items and solving puzzles until you can piece together what’s going on and why.
Time to Shoot Some Monsters
The actual gameplay on offer in Crow Country is a blend of influences from PS1 survival horror. You’ve got full control over the camera and 3D environments like in Dino Crisis, with an inventory taken straight out of Resident Evil, and even the ability to optionally use classic tank controls if you elect to try the D-pad over the analogue sticks, which is a nice touch. You start out with a single pistol, but after exploring, you can collect a handful of different weapons, all of which have featured somewhere in one of the aforementioned games.
Like any other games in the genre, you also have to press a specific button to ready your weapon and another to fire, and you have to keep a very close eye on your ammo count, and I do mean a very close eye. Unlike the semi-defanged versions of some of these games that you might be used to, it’s not uncommon to find yourself low on pretty much everything, even with a semi-generous policy on handing out containers with random items inside. Unfortunately, the game is also generous with the enemies after the first few opening hours, so you’re going to need all the items you can get.
Solving Puzzles and Kicking Ass
As well as shooting up some enemies, you, of course, have puzzles to contend with. There’s nothing super out-of-the-ordinary about these puzzles, but they’re a relatively refreshing brace of brain-teasers. More than once, I had to run around trying various things out before I actually managed to figure out how I was progressing, but there was nothing that ever tested me far enough to actually look anything up online.
It was a similar feeling that I had when I was first brave enough to check out Resi and Silent Hill: Challenging puzzles but without feeling like your progress is ever truly blocked off for very long. It’s a tough balance to strike, but Crow Country does it well, with every puzzle having the same twisted logic to it, making it pretty consistent throughout. There’s even a hint system if you get yourself really stuck, made up of crow fortunetellers stationed around the park. You start out with 10 credits to get hints at various stages of the plot, but I have to admit, the only time I used it was semi-accidental and surprisingly helpful.
Check the Replay
Another factor going for Crow Country is replayability. You get three difficulty modes when you first start out, as well as various gameplay bonuses being unlocked when you complete the game, depending on how you did. With a handful of secrets on the map to discover, it can be fun to go back through and try to beat your old score and see what else you might unlock. There’s also the temptation of things like “No save” and “No heal” runs, which will be familiar to players of other survival horror games as well.
Of course, how much you’ll want to replay it depends very much on how into the genre you are. Luckily, even if you’re only into newer games, there are enough quality-of-life adjustments to make Crow Country more than playable. There are the controls allowing both modern and ‘classic’ control schemes that we talked about before, but there’s also the hint system, the forgiving difficulty modes, and the lack of pre-rendered backgrounds, which make it much easier to orient yourself if you’re used to modern full-3D titles. You also don’t have to worry about tracking your inventory either as each item has its own carry limit.
Graphics, Sound & Atmosphere Abound
The graphics are pretty rudimentary and simplistic, as you might expect from a game that is aping a bygone era of gaming technology. There’s a slightly pixelated edge to all of the textures, and the characters are rendered in blocks of simple polygons. It gives everything a slightly eerie edge, aided by the music and sound design, which is part of the reason the aesthetic has worked so well for horror games over the past few years.
It’s a chilling game. Not exactly scary or likely to cause you to jump all the time, but it’s a game just brimming with dread and uncanniness around every corner. It knows when to use less sound to keep things tense and when sound effects can be put to their best use. Even with a relatively small map and shorter playtime length, it’s something that I’m sure I’ll find myself returning to year after year.
The Conclusion
Crow Country is a rare breed of retro-inspired game. It both understands the games that came before but is willing to do things just differently enough to make it more accessible to a modern audience. That said, it’s also deeply steeped in the sensibilities and tropes that defined the genre on the PS1 and is going to be best enjoyed by those who still find something to love in those old tank controls and brick-style character models. A true survival horror masterpiece that doesn’t outstay its welcome on any platform.
Developer: SFB Games
Publisher: SFB Games
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4/5, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: 9th May 2024 (PC/PS5/Xbox Series), 16th October 2024 (Switch/PS4)
Gaming Respawn’s copy of Crow Country was provided by the publisher.
