Crow Country developed and published by SFB Games now available on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. Thank you to Neon Hive for providing us a review copy of the Nintendo Switch version.
Crow Country is a survival horror game with puzzle elements reminiscent of classics such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil on the PlayStation 1. You are Mara, tasked with investigating a missing persons case, Edward Crow owner of Crow Country Theme Park is missing, but not all is as it seems. The year is 1990 you step foot into the famous Crow Country theme park greeted with an eerily empty and trashed car park and entrance. Once in the park things start getting a little sinister, horrific creatures with the ability to infect others start populating the park, something evil has happened here and it is up to Mara to figure out what exactly is going on. Crow Countries story is a creepy one, it explains a lot of the story in little excerpts such as discovering old newspapers, or signs left behind by employees, it’s an interesting way of slowly piecing the mystery together and delivers it well, there were a few disturbing parts as-well and it being a survival horror it makes sense. As you progress through the game you’ll start to learn the dark secrets that Edward Crow is hiding as the game gets even more terrifying the further you get in both story and gameplay.
Diving into Crow Country, I couldn’t stop making comparisons to the original Silent Hill and Resident Evil. The action style and movement feel like an old PlayStation 1 title with the slight tank controls and aiming style. At first it takes a little to get used to but once you master it, it feels good. I found navigating the theme park fairly easy to do and didn’t run into any bugs in my playthrough. Crow Country also features puzzles, again I am not the biggest puzzle fan but if done correctly it can be a good time. The puzzles for me in Crow Country are a mixed bag they are creative, don’t get me wrong in no way are they bad it’s just that there are so many, I found myself quite overwhelmed at times. I felt like once I’d figured a puzzle out it would loop me into another I’d have to try and remember all the steps of multiple puzzles which I struggled with. To be fair this could be my fault for having brain fog and not being great at puzzles. There are a lot of puzzles at once which could have been spaced out a little by having perhaps one puzzle section, an exploration section, an action, and then a puzzle. I found myself getting quite confused. Some of the puzzles are fairly easy to figure out which leaves you feeling like you have accomplished something but other puzzles can leave you completely stumped however hints can be found via a little fortune teller. I think Crow Country could have used a little bit of a pacing change however exploring the theme park was great the developers truly made it feel terrifying.
Crow Country is an eery-looking theme park, it truly lives up to the theme of survival horror and wow did it get me a few times with scares. The developers have put a lot of little details and I am surprised at how well it ran on the Nintendo Switch throughout despite the environments looking so full. The park looks abandoned and has this really tense feel as you progress through each section with every part hiding some form of sinister detail. Throughout my playthrough, I felt like I was playing a classic PlayStation 1 game and that isn’t in any way an insult, there is an aesthetic with some of the older survival horrors and it’s one that I feel faded out a long while ago. It’s great having blockbuster graphics available on many games but something like Crow Country reignites that old nostalgia and memories start flooding back of going to the rental shop and taking out a PlayStation 1 game. Along with the graphics, the sound is just as terrifying, while there isn’t voice acting which in my opinion isn’t needed to add or take away from the atmospherics, it’s the sounds of the theme parks and enemies that also make it scary.
Verdict
Crow Country was a scary experience and I loved seeing how much detail went into the theme park. I’ve mentioned so many times but Crow Country reminds me of an old PlayStation One title and it felt like an oddly nostalgic trip to when survival horrors were often leading in the sales charts. I never ran into any bugs in my playthrough my only issue with the game is the difficulty of some of the puzzles and the amount that you have to do all at once, it’s a lot to remember and keep track of, for someone with brain fog, this didn’t help. Overall I had a pretty good time with the game and if you’re a survival horror fan looking for something similar to the behemoths of the games industry, perhaps this one is worth a shot.
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