Crow Country Review (PC)

It’s a good idea to have a pad nearby to jot down important codes. Not the giant 2106 which pops up early on and is never actually used for one of the keypads. I had to backtrack plenty of times to discover that I messed up exactly one number in a solution, spending ammo to deal with threats. Worse, I used healing items when an enemy managed to tag me, despite my attempts to run and dodge.

Thankfully, I learned early on to kick the hell out of all vending machines to reach deep inside the crow-themed trashcans. I have enough healing items to make it through a few creature gauntlets, although ammo is starting to become a problem. My character, Mara, is fast enough to stay out of trouble but there are moments when she gets stuck in the environment and becomes vulnerable.

The list of codes is only growing, alongside a list of hints about what’s really happening inside this abandoned amusement park. I think I know how to solve one of the bigger puzzles and will try two or three approaches before I walk back to the fortune-teller for a big hint. Let’s hope that the area beyond contains more story reveals than zombified visitors with an urge to kill anything human. I might not have enough ammo for everyone.

Crow Country is developed and published by SFB Games. I played on the PC using Steam and it can also be picked up on the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and S, and the PlayStation 4. The game uses classic survival horror concepts, with a focus on big puzzles.

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Our heroine is a special agent named Mara Forest, tasked with exploring a mostly abandoned amusement park. The owner is missing but it quickly becomes clear that there are bigger mysteries to investigate. Monsters crawl out of their hiding places, ready to attack the protagonist, and she quickly understands she needs to investigate their origin while killing as many as possible to get out of the park with her life and sanity intact.

It’s a good premise and, thankfully, the focus is not on dumb jump scares but on atmospheric terror. The game’s presentation and nostalgic elements mean that its horror elements will make some players simply laugh while transporting others to childhoods spent engaging with the genre's classics, exploring scary spaces, and dealing with monsters. The narrative goes to some interesting places, including time loops and identity reveals. There’s a slight Twin Peaks vibe that isn’t explored enough.

Crow Country’s gameplay doesn’t aim to innovate but replicates standard elements of the survival horror genre well. Mara Forest might be incapable of expressing much emotion, but she can use high-caliber weapons to deal with monsters, as long as she has the required ammo. The overhead camera is decent, especially during the action sequences that require players to run while dodging creatures.

Make sure to go through the trash and vending machines to get extra bullets, health kits, as well as antidote vials. It’s a good idea not to waste shots but make sure to heal Mara as soon as her limp starts showing. Combat and exploration are decent, but the puzzles are the best part of gameplay. It only takes a few minutes before players discover a code scrawled on a piece of paper, with a suggestion about the location where they can use it. It doesn’t take much longer to discover doors that require silver or bronze keys as well as environmental puzzles.

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Crow Country offers a good variety of challenges, with plenty of notes spread around the park that offer ideas on how to tackle the puzzles. There’s also an actual fortune-telling machine that delivers up to ten hints for anyone who wants them. When one problem seems too difficult, move around a little, explore another room, and mull it over while shooting a few monsters.

There’s nothing in the game that would feel out of place in a survival horror launched 15 years ago. Newcomers accustomed to modern gameplay might find it hard to engage with Crow Country. Long-term lovers of survival horror will be eager to engage with this throwback experience.

Crow Country allows players to play a fully exploration mode, removing monsters to give them space to focus on exploration and puzzles. It’s a good idea and makes it easier to appreciate how the park devolves as players make progress. But I still think it’s a better idea to use Survival mode and get the full experience. This entire game is created as a love letter to the past.

Crow Country certainly knows the look it is aiming for and delivers on it. This looks like a video game created for a console retired 15 years ago, one complex enough that developers never knew how to fully use its graphics chip. Everything is grainy and blocky, and the main character is mostly a blob. It nails the retro approach, but players need to have already loved classic Resident Evil and their contemporaries to appreciate the effort.

The sound design also aims for a throwback quality. I like the soundtrack, which enhances the title’s creepy atmosphere. The combat effects aren’t interesting, but I came to love the way wending machines generate a tumbling sound even if nothing is actually coming out. The game’s interface also borrows from the classics and is best navigated with a controller.

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The Good

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