Crow Country (2024)

WOWWWWOWWOWOWWOW. what a masterpiece

this was enjoyable from start to finish :> i am obsessed with the sound design and the art style and the weird humour through out it all. most of all i obsessed with julie ^_^

this threw me through SUCH A LOOP at the end, jaw on the floor honestly. no spoilers but the shower at the end that kind of tips it over the edge as to whats really happening and why maya is here was just so well executed. i loved that :>

i would thoroughly recommend to any old school survival horror fans looking for something more short but equally as satisfying ^_^

Crow Country caught my eye as part of this new wave of indie horror games taking inspiration from the original Resident Evil. Resident Evil 4 started a conversation about whether horror games have too much action now. Resident Evil 5 made it worse, so in response, indie developers went in the opposite direction. Amnesia: Dark Descent was a horror game with no combat whatsoever. It was a hit and started a trend of indies making similar games such as Outlast and Among the Sleep. Resident Evil 4 is the best horror game I’ve played. While I agree Resident Evil 5 wasn’t as good, I still preferred it to the type of games indie developers were making at this time. Jump ahead to now, I’m seeing games like Signalis and Tormented Souls which bring back the action, but limit it to the level of the original Resident Evil. This works for me as I think Resident Evil Remake is a great game. Crow Country is the type of horror experience I want from indie developers. It hits the Resident Evil mark with its approach to combat, puzzles, and exploration without limiting itself to the style of movement and camera. This allows it room to stand on its own with a unique art style and personality.

Crow Country stars Special Agent Mara Forest. She’s a suspiciously young woman sent to Crow Country theme park to find missing person Edward Crow. This theme park was shutdown after an incident where a child was hurt leading to their parents suing the park. Entering the park, Mara sees its deserted, but soon monsters start appearing all over the place. Mara needs to brave the park to find Edward while fighting off these monsters to survive. Part of her investigation uncovers details about Edward and his staff’s suspicious operations at the park and in Brazil.

The story is nothing special. There are no characters involved worth taking interest in, and there’s not much commentary to leave me thinking about the world or life. There is some amusement to running into a character I’ve been reading about in notes I discover, but there is no payoff to the initial intrigue their presence causes. There’s one twist, but it was obvious before the reveal comes. The story is not a memorable part of the game.

I did appreciate one aspect of the writing. When I started Crow Country, I wasn’t expecting the game to have a sense of humor. Almost all character interactions involve a joke. The game never takes itself seriously, and all characters are introduced in a way that makes them feel silly. It’s a decision that works because the horror doesn’t come from the humans, and the humor doesn’t detract from the monsters. The game never makes light of the threat of the many enemies in Crow Country. Running into another person in Crow Country works as a release of tension from facing off against the horrors of the park.

Crow Country borrows the polygonal graphics of the PlayStation era, but with a different goal in mind than Resident Evil. It’s not trying to make its characters realistic with limited technology. Instead, they appear doll-like with spherical joints and hands with sharp edges on hair, clothing, and noses. It’s a cute look on the human characters, but it becomes disturbing on the monsters. The monsters are mostly humanoid, but they have limbs that are way too long, discolored flesh if they have any at all, and may crawl around on all fours like animals. There are smaller enemies that are a pile of goo moving around to poison the player. One enemy is a puddle of flesh and bone that takes a humanoid form when they move in for an attack. The enemy designs hit the perfect spot of causing me to pause and become alert when I see a new one for the first time. A few times the words “what the fuck is that?” popped into my head upon a new monster reveal. It’s also good at pacing out monster reveals. It would often drop a new monster in a room I already cleared catching me off guard. The Resident Evil series even struggles to get this right these days.

The game has a V/H/S filter over the screen. It gives the visuals a fuzzy, lo-fi look. Pixels on the screen sometimes come in with the wrong color in different spots. It gives the game a found-footage-style I think looks really nice. I first appreciated it at the start of the game outside of the theme park. There was a red car parked outside. It’s a simple 3D model lacking in texture, but the filter added the texture to it making it feel more tangible. The filter gives this game more out of its simple polygonal approach.

Crow Country’s map is made up of distinct locations bringing their own personalities fitting the theme park setting. Among the attractions is a haunted house, water ride, theater, and an Alice in Wonderland inspired dining room with a Mushroom King animatronic at the head of the table. Crow Country’s map is small though, so don’t expect to get lost in here. Some areas are just one room. Other than the attractions are the behind-the-scenes areas reserved for staff. Some of which are terribly hidden from guests which one of the letters points out. The game enjoys poking fun at survival horror tropes. I don’t think Crow Country’s map will be iconic in the way Resident Evil’s mansion is. It’s not a creepy location. I can see the appeal of using an abandoned theme park for a horror game. Malfunctioning animatronics, dangerous, broken rides, rodents and pests, ghosts of guests and employees that died there, wild animals, and so on. This game doesn’t fulfill its potential. The music does help build an atmosphere with its sparse use of piano. It’s both eerie and investigative music.

Crow Country’s puzzles never break from the typical survival horror formula. Puzzles require paying attention to the environment and notes picked up along the way to solve them. There are a lot of locks to find combinations to. There’s even some piano playing puzzles as a nod to the original Resident Evil. None of the puzzles are difficult. There is no true standout clever puzzle to write about, but thankfully, no frustrating ones either. It’s enough to hit the spot of what I expect from a Survival Horror game.

The combat took a bit to get used to. This game has an isometric camera perspective while allowing full 360-degree control of the camera with the right thumb stick. Aiming also provides full 360-degree control using the left thumb stick. Mara can’t move and shoot similar to Resident Evil, so I have to make sure my spacing gives me enough time take down my enemy before they are in attack range. Getting use to the aiming was tricky at first. I can do more damage by aiming for the head, but it was difficult to be precise with the controls. I eventually got there, and I celebrated my progress. Mara finds a red laser sight early on like Leon Kennedy, and there’s an aiming reticule that appears on the enemy when the laser is pointed at it to help communicate where I’m shooting. What throws me off though is the camera will move behind Mara’s back when I aim my gun. I kept wanting to aim my gun in the direction the camera was facing even if Mara was facing in a different direction, so it becomes disorienting. I think most games will turn the character around to face the direction the camera is in, so this took some getting used to. The game is light on combat though, and enemies can be avoided. I took advantage of this many times until I got comfortable with the combat. Even boss fights have an alternative way of completing that doesn’t require shooting them. This will please the survival horror fans who think Resident Evil 4 has too much action. It’s an inarguably true survival horror experience.

Crow Country is a true survival horror game following the current trend I welcome among indie horror. It hits the mark of what I expect from survival horror without excelling at any of the genre staples. Its theme park setting is also not used to its full potential. The creepy monster designs and solid handling of monster reveals help pick up the slack. It’s good enough to be just “another one of those” at this point in time as the genre is having a resurgence. It’s worth playing, and I enjoyed my time with it even if it’s not an all-timer.

It is clearly inspired by Resident Evil, but doesn’t copy it as much as I thought it would. The item screen, with the heartbeat reflecting health and ID, is there. As is the raise weapon mechanic.

But that’s where the differences start: your camera is not fixed, nor is your aim. The flashlight and theme park setting are more Silent Hill, though, as is the screen noise filter.

As a big fan of classic Survival Horror and its recent revival, this is a game that I am the target audience for. For me, for the most part, it pulled off what it was going for. While admittedly, during my first session I wasn't all that hooked, as I came back to it as part of my 2024 Spooktober challenge, I found it hard to put down, pushing me to blast through it rather quickly once I really sat down with it. While it fell short of being a 5-star experience, it overall delivered on its promises and thus I'd recommend Crow Country to fans of the genre.

The classic Survival Horror gameplay of the PS1/PS2 era is mostly all here. You explore an interconnected bunch of areas, each providing a different improvisation on the core amusement park theme, collecting keys, solving puzzles, and scrounging up limited resources while trying to clear out or avoid threats. The mechanics are fairly similar to the classics, with some differences. For one, the isometric view of the game requires some tweaks since you can see much more than a fixed-camera angle might allow. For instance, aiming is more dynamic and requires a bit more movement. At first I found the aiming kind of wonky, but once you get the hang of it, it's simple. Perhaps a little too simple as once I got a handle on how the game controlled, most of the combat was fairly easy. Eventually there are traps to watch for and the enemies respawn often, making much of the traversal dangerous if you're not careful. Though I still found the game a little on the easy side, these obstacles definitely kept things from becoming trivial and I expect the harder difficulty might capture more of a gritty Survival Horror feel, though I haven't tried it out myself yet. Personally, I didn't like how often the enemies respawned. The game probably provides too many resources to the point it's less of an issue, but one of the things I really enjoy in early Resident Evil games—which clearly were a big inspiration for this game—is planning out "safe routes," pathways around the map where you've cleared out the enemies so you can safely traverse back and forth at the one-time cost of precious resources, leaving other routes more dangerous when you do need to use them. Here however, enemies come back so frequently, you might as well just get used to dodging them and not bothering to kill most of them.

The story of the game I found a little hit or miss, though for the most part it's fine. There's some mystery to it that makes me not want to say too much as I think not knowing is part of the fun. The plot is rather straight-forward, so I had no trouble following things, even playing the game with some larger gaps between sessions. There's a relatively small cast of characters wandering around the Crow Country amusement park as our main character Mara works to track down Edward Crow, the eccentric park founder who's been missing for the last couple years. Even when you're not interacting with an NPC, there are enough notes to fill in the background lore and events of the park and keep things interesting. I wasn't really expecting some of the places the story goes later in the game but I think it all works well to provide a set up for the game's setting.

And that's mostly where I think Crow Country excels: its atmosphere and setting. For one, amusement parks aren't overused in the genre—at least not as much as say, a mansion. The game utilizes the setting pretty well too, presenting areas that feel like an amusement park's attractions, but remaining spooky. Further, there's not too much reliance on on overused tropes like creepy clowns or a Five Nights at Freddy's aesthetic you might expect from the playful environment. There's a clever touch of realism found in lots of staff areas you unlock that connect the park in a way that provides for helpful shortcuts while also making sense in the context of the setting. The tone the game is going for is a weird mix of playfully creepy with humor and irreverence thrown in, but never so much that it cancels out the fact this is to an extent a horror game. Though I never felt particularly scared or disturbed during the game, it doesn't feel like Crow Country's dialogue kills the gruesome mood, which was a problem I had with Evil Tonight, a game that attempted to similarly straddle thee spooky and silly tone, but with less success.

This all comes together for a pretty enjoyable game. The puzzles are decent and the environment is small enough that the backtracking necessary for the genre is never too annoying, but intricate enough to present some excitement to unlocking a new segment. Sometimes the find-the-key-for-the-door gameplay loop was a little too transparent and could have used a touch more variety, but it works for what it is. I found Normal mode a little too easy, though the harder difficulty may make up for this on a later playthrough, if I'm ever in the mood. I enjoyed the story for what it was and exploring the park was a lot of fun, making this a pretty fitting game to play through for Halloween season.

Perhaps one of my favorite things about Crow Country is that it achieves its goal of being a callback to the nostalgic origins of one of my favorite genres, while also being something totally its own. Even when I find the tone a touch odd or the direction the story goes a little out of left field, I still appreciate its originality. Though it's slowed down some, the early 2020s have seen a revival of classic Survival Horror with modern takes on the genre such as Them & Us, Tormented Souls, Alisa, and Signalis. Crow Country adds yet another title to that line-up, and in a similar fashion, does so without merely copy/pasting from the classic titles. In fairness, I don't mind simply getting more of the same when it comes to a beloved genre, but it is nice getting something like this where the aim for nostalgia doesn't preclude originality.

Crow Country is a love letter to old school Resident Evil. It's designed to play a lot like those early titles in the series, warts and all. This means cryptic puzzles, no autosaves, and of course, clunky gunplay. The commitment the devs had to recreating these elements makes this a blast to play for fans of those games such as myself. It's excellent and also runs like a dream on the Steam Deck, though I mostly ended up playing on my desktop.

Mara, the protagonist, is a joy to play as. She has a cute sense of humor that helps balance out the game's tone versus the pretty fucked up stuff going on around her. The rest of the cast is pretty standard but I have no complaints with them. The atmosphere is excellent. The story takes a bit of a backseat until near the end so you can focus on exploring and tackling the various puzzles hidden in the titular amusement park.

The puzzles are mostly easy to handle as long as you explore thoroughly, though one or two times I had to resort to Google because the game didn't give me much to work with. I'm not a huge fan of how collected notes and hints are accessed via save rooms rather than just being visible in the inventory like other games in the genre. It means you'll sometimes have to backtrack to check them. I'd recommend writing them down yourself or just snapping a pic with your phone so you don't have to.

The combat is as I said above deliberately clunky but what's interesting is you actually manually aim the gun in this game, rather than simply point in a direction and fire. This is to let you break certain objects to get supplies, which is neat, but it also makes actually hitting enemies a good deal harder than it needs to be. I wouldn't go so far as to say the game is hard by any means but it can be a tad frustrating to fight as a result. Thankfully, you aren't forced to engage in combat much more than you want to.

The odd note system and slow aiming controls drag this down a bit, but I still had a great time all the way through. I was actually a bit impressed at how well the game wraps up its story too, which was a nice surprise. If you like the original Resident Evil trilogy, go pick this up, it's an easy recommendation. If you haven't played them but like horror and have a tolerance for some old school gameplay, I'd also say give it a whirl.

TLDR: This game is good survival horror with some minor problems. I played this on steamdeck docked it ran really well. This game is a charming short survival horror game that has faults. The story and atomosphere are amazing. Dilapidated rides and buildings that hold both charm and horrors. I really liked exploring but the back rooms could get confusing until I got the map for them.

The plot was intriguing, the characters were all interesting for how little you see them. The characters all felt like they had lives and equally as suspicious reasons for being there except Arthur who is there for photos and now wants to leave.

I don't love some puzzles required bullets a resource that you can run out of. If anyone reads this I know you can go back to the car to get ammo but the main offender the lantern puzzle in the end game you sure couldn't i'm pretty sure or it was a hassle. Either way, a thing that would improve this game in general and get rid of my game complaint is a knife.

A cute, cosy and easy survival horror that’s still enjoyable and well put together, okay I’m up for this. Crow Country is really set on bringing back childhood memories and evoking nostalgia in those born in the 80s and 90s. It is a survival horror that looks like a diorama, with 90s PlayStation visuals. It is set just before that time period, has incorporated the technology of that era in the game and it all takes place in a theme park. They’ve made it pretty hard for someone my age to hate this. You honestly couldn’t anyway because it all comes across as genuine. It’s really well done and these elements work together while fitting with the genre and gameplay too.

It might look like a diorama with cute doll or toy like characters, objects and environments but that doesn’t mean it shies away from things. It’s still blood soaked, it’s still dark, it still delivers atmosphere, and it can still be weird and unsettling. It is still horror and serious but it also has some humour and there is light heartedness to it as well. It blends and balances things well not steering to hard in either direction. The story, the characters and the dialogue just belong with this presentation and approach. It is good, I constantly felt pulled through because I wanted to find the next bit of information, to discover the next area in the park, to see the next character interaction and to find out what happens at the end. Of course it has good, fitting music too. If I had more free time I would have played through this in one sitting. What is it comparable to, maybe like a spooky kids cartoon but more serious and for adults, maybe The X Files?

It all really works for this genre and in a video game too. I have always thought of survival horror as cosy and comfortable in a way, at least when you’re coming back for repeat play throughs, but still with that tension, atmosphere and violence there. Survival horror often comes with some cheesiness and maybe a bit of silliness too. The amusement park setting is great for survival horror and great for a video game and this game knows it is a video game and it wants you to have fun. An abandoned amusement park is naturally creepy. Taking something that’s meant to be bright, fun and full of people and making it empty, dark, run down and a little twisted and bloodstained obviously works and that recipe is amplified by the 90s PlayStation and diorama style that evokes positive nostalgic emotions. This style adds to the uncomfortable, unreal, oddness of it as well. I like a lot of the smaller touches here too. Like how the characters health is visually represented by how they currently look or how time passes, changing the lighting and weather.

The setting also works for survival horror gameplay and I like the layout here. It was made for backtracking in a circular way. There are staff areas that function like connecting short cuts and you’re never too far from where you need to return to. Things that might seem weird or silly could be explained away by it being an amusement park. It makes sense for it to have all kinds of puzzles, games and secrets built in. Exploration and puzzles are really the emphasis in Crow Country and I found it enjoyable to search through and solve everything even though progression might be a little too straightforward. The story and lore is delivered in a similar way that works with this genre and gameplay through bits that are put together like a puzzle; a variety of documents, conversations and the environmental details. Being observant and remembering details was key and the perspective from the high up, rotatable camera fits like a glove. You need to move it around to look at every wall, find every resource, every detail and every interactable thing. The character’s movement speed and the controls are right at home as well.

Crow Country comes across as so well thought out and cohesive although it is on the smaller, more simple side. A first play through will be around 5 hours and then follow up runs maybe 2 or 3. It’s not that length should be a huge determining factor but it should be at least considered. Crow Country is low priced and does deliver on quality though. Far more important than run time is that it could have been larger and more complex with greater replay value. It just lacks some needed extra depth. There are these crows to find and shoot, an S+ rank to go for, a harder difficulty, unlockables and you could always just aim to improve efficiency and perfect your runs. For me, I got the Platinum trophy and was ready to move on and I’m not sure that I even went past 10 hours total. One thing I did really welcome was that rank is based on how well you explored, how much was solved, how well you avoided damage and not relying on help.

The greatest issues I have with Crow Country though are its lack of ‘survival’ and challenge and that the combat just isn’t particularly engaging. This really undercuts the game. Resources are so plentiful that you often can’t pick them up any more because you are already carrying too many. There are no restrictions on how many different things you can bring along. Save rooms are never more than a couple of minutes away and you can use them as much as you like. There are hints you can access and tips on playing posted everywhere. Reloads and weapon swaps happen so quickly. Once you get aiming down combat is a breeze and running past isn’t much issue either. Traps and more enemies are introduced as it goes on but it is not enough. All of this means the player is not forced to consider encounters, you’re not forced to think about resource consumption and you’re not forced to explore everything to the fullest potential. Most of all tension just isn’t there. There’s just no stakes and no satisfaction. It is not rewarding and instead is a more flat, easy going experience. It’s no surprise then that, while the first play through is a fairly strong experience, I didn’t want to stick around much after. There is a harder difficulty that helps a bit by reducing resources and increasing the enemy threat and I would highly recommend it for people comfortable with survival horror.

I enjoyed and really appreciate Crow Country but for me it sits just below Alisa, Signalis and Tormented Souls. Still, I would definitely recommend it to anyone and not just survival horror fans. There is a potential positive to my main criticisms as well. This could work as a starting point for newcomers to ‘enter the survival horror.’

7.6/10

Crow Country and the previous game I reviewed Alisa recently had physical editions announced which is fantastic. So it might be worth waiting or double dipping, I just hope they aren’t too limited.

Spooktober 2024 Game #8 Complete!

Admittedly, I wasn't as into this game as I expected to be the first time I played it, but once I got a little ways in, I found it pretty engaging and ended up enjoying it a lot more as it went on. It was not my favorite of the month, but definitely one it was easy to come back to till I finished it.

This time right now will certainly be known for the era of demakes. But I must say this game has nailed the vibe like few others have been able to manage! It really feelsauthenitcly retro.

Love the vibes, the music everything. A really nice experience with a nice story and cool environments. I think i'm praising the art mostly here, but for me it was enough for a solid 4 stars!

This game was pretty good! Not Signalis level, but I liked how chill and low-key cute it all was despite scaring me a few times.

Tips: -You'll have a better time than I did if you use all the ammo you come across when playing the "Survival Horror" difficulty. -If you're used to old Resident Evil, Dino Crisis games, or even something new like Signalis, consider bumping up to Hard Mode. -Consider writing down each locked door or key item area and its location. The map isn't gigantic, but it's bigger than you'd think.

As a fan of the classic 'survival-horror' games of the 90s, this game made me extremely happy. Graphics are on point, the atmosphere is perfect and the story was better than I though.

The combat almost makes me throw the controller to the TV. I know shooting in this kind of games is supossed to be tense, but this is downright frustrating.

Here's my full review in spanish

I liked it so much that I'm replaying it already.

Edit: 7/10/25 replay:

The game is still amazing. I did a hard run mode which basically makes the game closer to classic survival horror. It is necessary to conserve ammo, decide which enemies to leave alive, etc.

So basically you can either have a fun puzzle action horror experience on normal difficulty, or a modernized classic survival horror experience on Murder of Crows difficulty,

Again, my only complaint is how short the game is… but otherwise, still a 10/10 game,

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Yeah… this game is basically perfect to me. I love everything about it. It is a 90’s style classic survival horror game with a modern touch and it is SO GOOD.

The art style is so unique, and every room is just eye candy and so fun to look at. The puzzles are so good, perfect level of challenge. The optional secrets are a blast and I love that the game equips you to 100% it.

The story was interesting as well. The UI and just feel of everything is so polished and ahhh - I can’t stop raving about it.

As with every great game, the only downside is that I want more. This one is pretty short - I beat it all in one day. But the sheer quality makes it worth the purchase at full price.