Crow Country (PC) Review

It's a thrilling ride.

 

 Crow Country is an indie survival-horror game from SFB Games. Heavily inspired by PS1 Resident Evil games, it follows a young girl on a journey to explore an abandoned theme park. I learned about it ever since I played the demo a short while ago and I've been excited for the full game ever since. So, does Crow Country delivers a spooky and eerie adventure? Let's find out. 

 The game begins when Mara Forest visits Crow Country, an abandoned theme park that closed years ago due to an unfortunate accident. She's searching for its missing owner, the enigmatic Edward Crow. What starts out as a simple missing persons case turns into something more when disfigured creatures are coming out of the park. As Mara, you must explore the park to unveil its secrets while also meeting a few odd faces. Several questions get raised such as where do these creatures come from? And what's Mara's connection to the park? All of which get slowly answered as you pick up journals that hint at the grim truth. 

Mara's here to help.

 I enjoyed the story as it was engaging with the ominous themes of greed and disaster being prevalent throughout. The characters were a good bunch as Mara was great lead thanks to her friendly personality and humours thoughts. The others were alright since they had their reasons for visiting Crow Country. 

 Crow Country has you playing as Mara as you explore the titular park in search of clues and persons of interest. Along the way, you'll come across locked doors and puzzles that block your path, so you'll be doing lots of exploration for ways to advance further into the park like finding colored keys to unlock doors. Combat has you pointing and shooting enemies with the analog stick with most of them going down with ease. You'll come by a good deal of weapons like a pistol, shotgun, and flamethrower as well as healing supplies when hurt. Beating the game on higher ranks will unlock bonus weapons like an infinie grenade launcher and crow bar to use on a second playthrough.

Fight and or evade some frighting monstrosities.

 The park itself has plenty of variety some areas having a unique theme like the Seven Seas, Haunted Hills, and Fairy Forest that were fun to explore. You'll even come across an arcade with mini-games to play as well. However, areas are littered with monsters and environmental hazards like poison and bear traps to avoid or make use of to lure enemies in-- so you need to exercise caution when traversing. Lots of secrets hide in certain rooms that include weapon parts and upgrades, as well as nifty running shoes that increase Mara's movement speed. It wasn't a long game as it took me six hours to beat. I leisurely took my time getting all secrets and nabbing the "A" rank at the end.

 Crow Country boasts grainy and blurry visuals that are reminiscent of the PS1 era. Character models are presented in doll-like designs and pre-rendered backgrounds rife with detail that was so good that it often hid items of interest. It's not a demanding game, so it ran well on my ageing PC. There's no voicework, as you'll be reading dialogue that was pretty intresting. The soundtrack was excellent as it created a tense, unsettling atmosphere that rarely offered room for comfort-- aside from the calming save theme. 

Crow Country features a colorful and nostalgic look.

 With solid gameplay and satisfying puzzles as well as original setting and cool characters, I grew to love the time I spent in Crow Country. It successfully captures the aesthetics of PS1 Resident Evil games while delivering an unnerving experience. It's one of my favorite experiences of the year so far and I hope to see more games like it in the future.