How a game interfaces with the past is important. Good game design is a tightrope act of negotiating iterative influences while not being beholden to the past. Crow Country is good design and pure craft. Born from the two brother team of Super Flash Bros Games, the new survival horror game blends homespun charm with a dream-weaving nostalgic play on ‘90s horror videogames.
‘90s horror videogames weaponized the limitations of the hardware available at the time. The design principle was escalated because of the boldness of the designs, paired with the strict limitations of the era’s consoles, which very naturally benefited horror gaming, as it transitioned into its first 3D era choked with fog, sharp with rough edges, and built with aesthetics and mechanics directly informed by the capabilities of the hardware.
Now we create our own limitations. Or we just need to understand them and create a working design wherein the ceiling of the aesthetic and mechanical expression is well-defined. That’s what SFB Games have done with Crow Country, an isometric survival horror throwback that is truer to these founding design principles than the games it’s burrowing from.
The consistency of Crow Country’s vision is everything. Structurally, the game is a series of puzzles to create looping paths interspersed with survival horror combat. From an isometric perspective, the aesthetics are low-poly and chibi, as drawn from the art theory of the Resident Evil and Silent Hill games.
Our protagonist Mara Forest is investigating a long-closed theme park on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia. She’s not alone. There are other investigators on the scene but also grotesque creatures called “Guests,” and there’s a lingering mystery about what happened here. What happened here is that park-operator Edward Crow hatched some gold-mining scheme with supernatural principles and it all went sideways. What really happened is what you’ll uncover by playing.
Paying off the past is a high-value proposition. Crow Country so squarely fits into the mold of Resident Evil and Silent Hill with such authenticity as it pokes and prods our nostalgia at every turn. There is a good and bad way of doing this. This is the good way, not derivative of the past but additive to it.
The thing is that Crow Country also has its own signature set of aesthetics and mechanics. It is not at all a clone of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It is just a best-case scenario love letter to Capcom and Konami’s long-enduring franchises.
The moment-to-moment play is dialed in. Crow Country’s theme park makes for a bright and interesting space to explore, from its fairy town hub area to the branching paths of the haunted hills and aquatic-themed arcade. Enemies are never too much and come in the way of standard zombies, skeletal and tall big hulking boys, poison-spouting bird turrets, and bubbling amorphous blobs.
The mechanical structure is precise. Perfection is optional, which is important in survival horror, because it allows for the tension of allowing failure and agency along the game path but also because it provides a secondary condition wherein upgrades for your weapons — a pistol, shotgun, magnum, and flamethrower — are not a given but are rewards for probing the world more deeply.
As an addendum to the good structure, the aesthetics nail down the rest of the vibe. When you collect items, it goes like Resident Evil: a familiar musical sting then the item is enlarged on the screen. The balance also takes notes from modern revisions of the classics, likewise following the Resident Evil model of doling out items and ammo, based on what your inventory is lacking. Mood-wise, the game is both gritty and bobbly, channeling Silent Hill’s atmosphere and sense for exploration but doing it in a cute way.
Crow Country is that rarest kind of success, one that successfully draws from the right notes of the past and still makes room to implement good new ideas on a sturdy old design. Built with the right balance of aesthetics and mechanics, the game is a holistic success, bolstered by its own unique sense of humor and novelty. A must-play for all classic survival horror diehards and anyone who wants a game that firmly represents its genre trappings without being confined by them.
Reviewed on Steam Deck
One thought on “Crow Country: For Whom the Crows Caw”