PART I
INTRO ╰（‵□′）╯
Wee-woo wee-woo ╚(•⌂•)╝
A Survival Horror game came out in 2024 Anno Domini that doesn’t copy the PS1 graphics?
Did someone actually think to use a unique style instead of jerking off to shaky polygons?
With that kind of style, the game looks more like a lawsuit than a horror game.
No shaky polygons (´･ω･`)?
PART II
STEPPING INTO THE MADDNESS ╰（‵□′）╯
Welcome to Crow Country Adventure Park. Our attractions include: red goo, notes, lots of dialogue, puzzles, backtracking, and a very large crow statue. Special Agent Mara Forest arrives in Crow Country of her own will. This is a game about bear traps, abominations, evil businessman, and unemployed protagonist.
We spot the first monstrosity in a narrow corridor. A funny red goo creature with a 360-degree attack radius.
The developers intended for it to be impossible to dodge enemies in this game, and according to the rules of good game design, they show this within the first minutes of the game.
Despite the narrow corridor, even if the little monster is facing the other direction from you, it’ll spin 180 degrees and bite off half your frontal lobe, sending us back to 1987.
The controls in the game are not tank controls, so it is not a problem, despite many people in Steam reviews confusing it to be.
Maybe that’s due to reviewers not having an experience in controling a tank.
Funny looking red goo (＃°Д°)
Considering we’ll be slaughtering every enemy that catches our eye, we need BIG GUNS. Mara keeps a pistol, shotgun, flamethrower and a REVOLVER in her purse.
That’s all ┌(。Д。)┐
A pretty small arsenal for a survival horror game, but more than enough for a 1918 war criminal.
Almost forgot to mention grenades, but there are like five of them in total, and I wasted all of them cause of missclicks. No big deal.
Unfortunately, there are no melee weapon, but that’s unerstandable since Britain banned all types of knives. Instead, we dig through trash cans hunting for single pistol bullets, which is a pretty authentic experience.
The further you progress through the story, the more you realize the narrative has a double meaning underneath it all. But right now I am talking about checkpoints, reaching which, much like engineers and medics in Britain, causes monsters to flood most of the map, even in locations where we committed genocide earlier.
Kill or be replaced at work by a highly qualified specialist from India willing to do the same job for half the pay. The correct answer is kill.
They’re extremely territorial, just like in real life. Enemies have their own radius, like a circle around certain locations, and once you leave it, they stop paying attention to you. They’re also incredible slow.
Traps are not cost-effective in terms of Total Monster Death, except for moments where the developers intentionally placed them in spots near the enemy.
That is, unless you already destroyed all of the red barrels before reaching the checkpoint. Regardless, 20 bear traps and 10 chandeliers will appear, but not a single red barrel.
The only moment I used a red barrel on the enemy (＃°Д°)
The traps appear together with the monsters, no idea who’s placing them. Maybe the red goo carries them around as a form of cultural enrichment.
Enemies keep becoming more numerous, while resources never replenish. There’s a real chance of exhausting your entire arsenal with no other way to fight back.
Chandeliers are the only REAL danger in the game (╯▽╰ )
I played on the hardest difficulty, not to brag, but I’m a gamer. Maybe that affected both the fragility of my character and my ego.
PART III
A LITTLE ABOUT GRAPHICS ╰（‵□′）╯
While walking through the beautiful environments, the low resolution melts away my retinas. A side effect of the graininess is that you stop paying attention to the surroundings and everything turns into a pixelated mess.
Pixel hunting in 3D space. I lost a couple of diopters playing this gane, and now they owe me.
PART IV
PUZZLES ╰（‵□′）╯
Every room has a puzzle. Just like in real life, you can uncover many mysteries by drilling a hole in your bathroom. Who knows what’s on the other side.
The puzzles range from heboidophrenic to schizophrenic, which is quite tame for the genre. One upside is that half of them are very simple. For the other half, there are notes.
Actually, there are notes for all the puzzles. I lied.
By completing one puzzle, we get the item needed for another puzzle. The loop consists of constant backtracking to previous puzzles all over the place. At least the respawned enemies can keep us company. We return to previous locations more often than in the games of one Japanaese Buryat.
Many-many notes (ಥ _ ಥ)
In every room we also find notes. The notes are split between story exposition and puzzle solutions. There are too many of them. Way more than eight.
The solution to one schizopatic puzzle may be described in a note which is located in a room on the opposite end of the map. Or maybe you figured it out yourself. You can still find the note later and confuse yourself.
In the end, it all just leads to even more backtracking.
PART V
STORY ╰（‵□′）╯
A mad scientist, Edward Crow, a supporter of eugenics, tries to create the ideal organism and continue the legacy of his mentor - Acrow Bipper.
A side effect of the experiments became red go, defective organisms.
An amusement park is an excellent cover for an endless supply of test subjects. Who will notice the disappearance of children, especially if orphanages get free entry and silence can be paid for.
Mara Forest, a survivor of these experiments, has personal scores to settle with the crazed scientist.
We go deep into the laboratory located under the Crow Country, and launch the self-destruction mechanism. Edward Crow is not an obstacle.
Does he know?
Realizing the futility of his attempts, creating only mindless zombies, each more deranged than the last, he injects himself with a Tit-Virus and becomes the biggest red goo we’ve seen in the game.
After defeating him, we can breathe freely… BUT NO, the self-destruction mechanism was tied to an atomic bomb aimed at Is…
Look at this SICK BASTARD ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ
I lied. I made this all up.
The actual plot in the game took more inspiration from Reddit creepypastas.
Under the amusement park, there is a portal of worlds, the key component of which is sprouts made of copper on the outside and gold on the inside.
The park was built on the place where the sprouts came from, so that pure gold could then be inserted into stone and sent to Brazilian mine as a cover to launder the gold.
The red goo, monster guys, are people who passed through this portal. They shouldn’t look like this; however, as the sprouts were damaged, they came out as freaks.
The more gold was taken from the sprouts, the more goo-like those passing through the portal became.
Happy end (❁´◡`❁)
Why are we here? Revenge. The only character who cares about the little monsters in the park is Mara. The rest of the NPCs are absolutely stoic.
We have a goal, to kill the park owner for molestation in childhood by the first monster, which infected us. Mara is terminally ill.
A leukemia victim closes the portal of worlds, stopping the flow of cheap labor. The park owner is dead, and we live happily, celebrating victory with a glass of green antidote.
That is how it was. That is what she did.
This time, I did not add anything from myself.
PART VI
REVIEWS ╰（‵□′）╯
But I am in the minority. One warrior before a horde of Redditors. My sword is dull, and my ego is fragile.
98 percent positive reviews on Steam, many awards, and major review outlets praising the game. Maybe the matter is in the difficulty without enemies, and non-gamers are filling up my cool space.
The studio’s previous game, Snipperclips, was a launch title on the Nintendo Switch. The publisher was also Nintendo.
Crow Country came out on all platforms. Self-published.
Nintendonyahu published the developers’ previous game. Think.
PART VII
FINAL NOTES ╰（‵□′）╯
Meh.
F - D - C - B - A - S - SS