‘Crow Country’ might have strong inspirations, but it’s a classic in its own right.
It’s one thing for a game to promise a contemporary take on a gold standard of 90s gaming, but it’s another to deliver on the pledge and become a modern classic in its own right. Crow Country’s previews certainly looked the part, but the finished product smashes it out of the park.
Crow Country, which arrives on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation tomorrow (May 9), draws on the golden age of third-person survival horror, channeling elements of PS1 greats like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Parasite Eve. It’s the brainchild of Tom and Adam Vian, A.K.A. British indie dev SFB Games, a duo who started out by making browser games for Newgrounds.
You assume the role of Special Agent Mara Forest as you drive to an abandoned theme park in Georgia to find its owner Edward Crow, who abruptly closed the park after things got weird. Nothing is as it seems; no one is to be trusted; it’s your job to get to the bottom of what happened.
And what a ride it is. Over its five-hour runtime, Crow Country proves itself to be one of the best indie titles of the year–and it could be your favorite games of 2024 outright, whether you like survival horror or not. It certainly looks like it’ll be mine.
Something old, something new
Crow Country takes its visual cues from Silent Hill and Final Fantasy VII–drab, dingy surroundings are punctuated by Mara and the game’s supporting cast, who cut bulbous, colorful, comic silhouettes in their otherwise depressing environment. Think of an Otherworld Midgar with a failed Six Flags and you’re pretty much there. It runs at a solid 60fps but adds a murky, grainy filter that harks back to the glory days of 32-bit gaming–a delightful meeting in the middle.
The atmosphere is enhanced with an excellent score from Ockeroid, which draws from similar inspirations. It’s a definite love letter to Nobuo Uematsu, with a solid focus on the more unnerving scenes in FFVII with Sephiroth and JENOVA, plus callbacks to 90s survival horrors that dined out on orchestral melancholy and hearty doses of church-bell sound effects. All in all, you couldn’t ask for a better-suited soundtrack.
Where it all begins, setting the tone for what’s to come.
Tying this all together is a brilliantly paced story with top-notch dialog, which manages to be self-aware and occasionally campy without ever straying into Jill Sandwich territory. Mara is a headstrong character but her dry sense of humor doesn’t undermine or diminish the personalities of a strong supporting cast, who all have a level of relatability but don’t devolve into outlandish oddballs for the sake of it. Every conversation feels important, whether to advance the narrative, provide suspense and intrigue, or just entertain you.
With strong foundations in place, and presuming you’ve opted for the survival horror experience rather than exploration mode–a welcome addition for those who just want to enjoy the story without combat–Crow Country slowly weaves enemies and puzzles into the mix, bringing the park to life even after its death.
Nothing compares to your first encounter with a Spindle.
Tackling terror
Crow Country’s old-meets-new theme extends to its controls, available in classic and modern styles. Tank movement aside, throwback inputs feel alien nowadays–reloading with X, shooting with Circle, opening your inventory with L1–but it’s a nice touch for purists. You’ll likely opt for modern controls, even if they don’t fix Crow Country’s dodgy gun aiming system–but as you get to grips with its core gameplay, you realize this was probably included on purpose.
After shooting the lock on the park and improbably finding both a flashlight and a laser pointer for your handgun in the first three minutes, you begin to explore the kooky, waste-ridden world of Crow Country. Through poster-based tips and early conversations, it establishes familiar rules: you can avoid enemies to conserve ammo, but they’ll increase in number; you deal more damage when closer to your targets; and you need to explore every nook and cranny of your surroundings to move forward.
Puzzles regularly take on cute but foreboding forms.
At the start, this is easier said than done. Unlike tech-limited PS1-era games, Crow Country’s art style makes pickups and interactive elements difficult to identify. Items in OG Resident Evil or Tomb Raider games were obvious as they were flat images with different lighting; Crow Country’s medkits, grenades, ammo, and key discoverables blend into their surroundings, and you regularly spot things in places you’ve repeatedly visited.
Anything you collect drops neatly into your Resident Evil-inspired…
Read More: Retro Survival Horror, Modern Indie Classic