I’ve said this in the past but sometimes games do not need to be innovative to be good. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you make a car. Sometimes just sticking to what works and doing a really good job at that is more than enough to catch someone’s eye and that’s exactly what Crow Country has done! This game, which I had not heard of before release, caught me completely off guard by managing to be such a pure survival horror experience. Crow Country doesn’t exactly do anything you haven’t seen before in survival horror games of the PS1 era and that’s what makes it so good. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it feels like I stumbled upon a hidden gem from that era, Crow Country does still manage to capture the charm of classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill while taking inspiration for it’s visuals from a rather unlikely source. But I’m getting ahead of myself now! Let’s take a step back and talk about what Crow Country does so right that its managed to become one of my favorite games this year.

As I was saying before, Crow Country is a survival horror game meant to feel like a PS1 game and it does a pretty good job of that! If you are a fan of survival horror games from that era pick this game up right now, you don’t even need to read the rest of this review, honestly. But if you want to know a little more and why I enjoyed it so much, keep on reading!

Crow Country takes a lot from the classics of the PS1 era when it comes to it’s game play. You’ll be conserving ammo, finding key items for new areas, and solving plenty of puzzles while unraveling the mystery of the abandoned theme park, Crow Country!

You play as Mara Forest, a police agent coming to Crow Country to look for it’s missing owner, Edward Crow. The amusement park has been closed for a couple of years now due to someone mysteriously getting hurt while visiting the park. Since then, Edward has seemingly shut himself in the park but only recently have his family and friends not been able to contact him. So in comes Mara to find him. But of course, it doesn’t take long for Mara to figure out something is seriously wrong here as she starts to run into some freaky looking monsters roaming the park ready to attack her at any moment! With things only getting worse the more she explores, she has to find Edward Crow and fast before it’s too late!

Exploring the amusement park is very similar to exploring the Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil or Midwich Elementary in Silent Hill. You’ll be going from room to room, finding out what’s locked and what’s open as you look for supplies and puzzles to help you progress while also finding plenty of maps along the way. But again, I don’t think the fact that the game doesn’t try to do something crazy different is a bad thing! It’s clear the developers, SFB Games, knew that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. That being said though, exploring around will allow you to appreciate what is probably the most unique aspect of the game. The visuals.

Unlike the game’s other inspirations, the inspiration for the visuals doesn’t come from a survival horror game but rather another game from the PS1 era. That game being Final Fantasy 7! Specifically it’s overworld.

Here’s a little comparison for you between the two games!

I’m honestly not sure how to describe these visuals exactly. The first thing that comes to mind though is the fact that the environments look like a diorama and the characters themselves look like toys! And while these visuals aren’t technically original exactly, using them in a survival horror setting is! These visuals lend themselves surprisingly well to the genre especially with the pulled back camera, another more unique feature but one I’m kind of on the fence about. While I think having a fixed camera angle would be more fitting given the PS1 style, I can’t deny that giving the player more camera control does not only lead to a smoother experience but it lets the player appreciate the visuals that much more! And to be perfectly honest, if you aren’t sold on the fact that this game is a very simple, but very fun, survival horror game then the visuals should hopefully help seal the deal! It is what originally caught my eye about the game.

Exploring each area was always such a treat! If I had to pick though, I’d say the haunted forest area of the theme park was probably my favorite but I never dreaded looking at any area of the game, even the under ground sewer like area!

Of course, a game’s charming visuals can only take it so far, so let’s talk about one of the main things you’ll be doing in a lot of these areas. Puzzles!

Again, like every good survival horror game, Crow Country has lots and lots of puzzles for you to solve and thankfully all of them are pretty good!

While a lot of the puzzles will simply involve using the right item at the right place, a couple do actually require some thought in order to get done! Thankfully none of them felt all too cheap or had me going “how was I suppose to figure that out” after guessing for awhile or looking up the answer online. While some of the puzzles are very basic and easy, most of them were pretty clever and had me smiling as I pieced them together. One of my favorites has to be in the dungeon area. I’m not going to spoil how it works but it was super fun to figure out especially with the timer for this particular puzzle!

That being said if you were hoping from some real brain teasers that will have you running around the theme park for answers as you try to figure it out, the game has you covered there too! While most of the puzzles you need to complete to finish the game aren’t too crazy hard, the puzzles you’ll need to do for some of the extra goodies can be real tough! I like to think I’m pretty good at figuring out puzzles, especially from this era of gaming, but a few of the extra puzzles honestly had me stumped for awhile. But even when I was stumped, the answers never felt cheap or like they took massive leaps in logic. It usually came down to me either forgetting something in another area that would help me find the answer or simply just needing to take more time and pick up on more context clues. I never felt cheated out of a puzzle with Crow Country and that’s honestly a pretty big accomplishment that SFB Games should be very proud of! Crafting tough but fair puzzles is not an easy thing to do.

Beyond the puzzles though, there is still one major aspect of game play to mention, something that all survival horror games had in this era. The combat! And again, like a lot of survival horror games of this era, the combat in Crow Country is… Fine.

Much like the games it was inspired by, Crow Country‘s combat is a bit clunky and not exactly fun. But on the other hand, it’s not at all bad enough to ruin the experience in the slightly. Combat in survival horror games is always tricky. Either you make it too easy and fun and it no longer feels like a horror game or you make it way too annoying and clunky and it completely ruins an otherwise great game. This is why horror games of this era often had just fine combat, it was kind of the best you could do while keeping with the genre and Crow Country does just that!

To be fair though, Crow Country does try to at least make the combat a little more engaging than most of the games it took inspiration from. You actually have to properly aim and line up your shot if you want to maximize your damage and conserve ammo in the process. Honestly though, beyond all that, there really isn’t much to say on the combat. It isn’t bad but it’s not something I’d call particularly great either. It’s serviceable and that’s fine!

That being said though, you don’t actually have to interact with the combat if you don’t want to, and I don’t just mean that you can run away from almost every enemy in the game.

Whenever you start a new game in Crow Country you are given the option to play the game in Survival Horror mode or Explorer mode. The big difference being that in Explorer mode there are no enemies! So you can simply enjoy the game without having to worry about any of that. Granted, I would still recommend playing in Survival Horror mode for the more full experience since the enemies you encounter end up playing a big role in the story, but it’s cool the option exists at all especially if you’re just looking to enjoy the great atmosphere and puzzles! It’s always good to have more options over less in games.

Lastly, I feel like I should mention the story a bit more before wrapping up this review. However I honestly don’t have too much to say on it. It’s a good story and one that I feel like if I go into even a little will spoil quite a bit. Like a lot of the game though, it isn’t exactly a ground breaking story but it is good. If anything, I’d say the characters are what really drive the plot and got me to care about the overall mystery of the theme park. I especially liked the main character, Mara! She’s a great survival horror protagonist, the kind that is determined and a character I could honestly imagine being able to get through the horrors at the amusement park. It’s good to feel an attachment to characters in a horror game so you actually care about what happens to them in these grave situations, and Mara very much got me to care about her!

There are a few other characters you’ll run into throughout the game as well with all of them managing to have quite a bit of personality despite the game’s short length! I was honestly surprised by how much I cared when a number of these characters got into some trouble despite only sharing a few lines of dialog with them. And that right there shows off what I’d say is Crow Country‘s best quality, which is the game’s charm.

This game might be a pretty standard survival horror game at the end of the day but it makes up for that by oozing with charm! From it’s visuals to it’s characters, Crow Country and the developers behind it at SFB Games show they have a real talent for getting people to care and for making an enjoyable experience regardless of if you’ve played plenty of other games like it. Take it from me as someone who loves to play survival horror games! Crow Country managed to make me smile from start to finish as I played through it’s 5 to 6 hours of game play. Which is another positive with the game! It’s short and does not over stay its welcome, like any good survival horror game.

What I’m trying to say is don’t let the fact that Crow Country is a pretty by the numbers survival horror game on paper stop you from trying this game. Not only is it just $20, it manages to be so charming despite everything basic about it. While I hadn’t heard about SFB Games before I will 100% be keeping an eye on them now as they managed to give me one of my favorite gaming experience of the year so far! Here’s hoping it doesn’t take them long to come back to survival horror as well.

But those are just my thoughts, what are some of yours? Do you think every game should try to be innovative? Are you thinking about picking up Crow Country after this? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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