Crow Country Review: The 90’s Around Every Corner

In Crow Country you're tasked with exploring an abandoned amusement park covered in tragedy, mystery, wiggly mushrooms, fascinating characters, and undead-like creatures around every corner. SFB Game’s new horror title is a retro inspired indie package filled with engaging puzzles and an evoking survival horror that imbues the player with PS One-type nostalgia and a compelling spooky ambiance.

Granted, you may have to look past an odd squatting animation here and there and some of the controls or mechanics of old. Yes, I'm talking tank controls, but overall, the title runs smoothly and feels modern, so there's no need to fret too much. Still though; yuck. 

Nostalgia Controls

The year is 1990; you are Mara Forest, police, or so you are led to believe, who successfully delivers as a competent and genuine main character without needing to talk all that much. Not to say she's the silent antagonist, but she speaks coherently and to the point. I appreciate it, and I can't recall a single eye-roll. Considering the ridiculous situations she puts herself in, that's a feat in itself. 

Over my roughly 6 hours, the game didn't evolve all that much, but it didn't need to. The formula in Crow Country's Survival mode, rather than its Exploration mode, delivers a good balance of combat, resource management, horror, puzzles, and piecing together the narrative.

That formula, coupled with the close proximity top-down-like camera, nudges it over the edge for as definitively a quality product with well-catered spooks and moments to remember all paced exceptionally well whether you follow the golden path or not. Considering Crow Country's small scale and the size of the overall map, the speed at which you can move, take on challenges, and progress the narrative feels like a master class in pacing.

Unnerving in the Best Ways

Suppose you like the typical blueprint for solving one puzzle on one corner of the map to get an item in order to enter a secret room just to attempt another puzzle and discover that the item you acquired here is used elsewhere to progress. In that case, you'll love Crow Country. While some can (and will) find this gameplay and activity boring, it's very well-catered here. The game is surrounded by alluring yet unnerving characters, moments, puzzles, and combat encounters that you will never do the same activity for a lengthy amount of time.

Speaking of combat encounters, Mara is strapped with a 9mm with quick load times to start, and players are able to locate a laser sight extremely early on, with new weapons and items for combat later on. The environments are also littered with explosive barrels, traps, electrical exploits, among others. These are especially great for those looking to use only a single bullet to get the job done.

On top of that, you won't see just the same old enemy everywhere you go. While Crow Country's creatures follow a similar theme or color palette, there's a myriad of enemies to encounter, so enemy variety should be fine for most.

Even though you'll be able to find essential loot like ammo, healing items, or even grenades everywhere, including the trash cans, key moments will only require your pistol and your wit. Or maybe all you need are your legs and the ability to maneuver with the tank controls. Later on, I ran through waves of enemies because I had narrative and puzzle solution breakthroughs regularly 

If you don't find Crow Country as clear-cut as I do or struggle in combat or narratively, it features contingencies that assist the player, like notes saved for you in every safe room, difficulty modifiers in the settings, and even a hint system in the form of a fortune teller attraction. The one area that was roughly implemented was navigation. Maps are present, but you must locate them for each area. I could not find one of the maps for an area, so navigating that area proved challenging.

Puzzle Me This

Crow Country's puzzles range from saying a phrase, to using a numbered code, to implementing the correct item in the correct fashion. Naturally, I was able to brute-force two puzzles: one was a number combination, and another was a four-letter word, which I was able to deduce without attempting the puzzle as intended.

My overall favorite puzzle, however, was early on. I entered a room with four graves, but immediately as I entered, the doors slammed shut. I was trapped. Then, at the top of the room sat a Grandfather clock of sorts holding a shotgun. The clock starts ticking, and the shotgun follows my every move. It's a Deathtrap puzzle yanked right out of SAW, where the only way out was to solve the puzzle before me or run out of time.This puzzle set the tone for the game going forward. I liked one less than this one, but the others that came after were to par.

Breakdown

Game: Crow Country

Developers: SFB Games

Availability: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X|S

Reviewed on PC

Pros:

+ Spooky Aesthetic

+ Character Moments

+ Key Puzzle Moments

+ Gunplay options

Cons:

- Gameplay doesn’t evolve or iterate on itself

- Loose Narrative

- Convoluted puzzles lead to brute forcing some without much help 

Final Thoughts

Overall, Crow Country is a well-catered survival horror title featuring an old-school look and feel without feeling dated. Crow Country being an abandoned amusement park, carries a lot of the ambiance featured, even though it feels one note at times, it's one heck of a note. The game’s narrative structure and plot feel a little loose regarding how players will encounter it, but they still work and feel unique, or at the very least, anything but shallow.

Crow Country is a must for fans of survival horror and those who crave 90s nostalgia. The latest entry into the grunge horror genre offers a compelling aesthetic, enticing characters, and engaging puzzles. Despite the horrors that will stick with me for a lifetime, I can't recommend SFB Games’ nightmare enough.

Reviewed by Austin Ernst