SFB Games
Have you ever find yourself thinking that quondam video games used to be scarier ?
I live I ’m in that gravy boat . Nothing creeps me out more than the originalResident EvilorSilent Hill 2 . Some raw game might hit me with some extra jumping scares , but many title of respect that really stand by in my nous run to be from onetime ERA . There ’s one obvious reason for that : I was younger and dumber then . But that only tells half the chronicle . There ’s something undeniably creepy about nineties repugnance games made before the years of photorealism . It ’s hard to put a severed finger on it , but a new indie biz might help .
SFB Games
Crow Country , a new going fromTangle Towerdeveloper SFB Games , is a retrohorror gamethat looks like it was pull from , the PlayStation 1 ’s library . It pays court to classics likeSilent Hill , putting players through a claustrophobic teaser box filled with shambling monsters . In make such a close ode , SFB Games gets to the tenderness of what made honest-to-goodness revulsion games feel so shuddery , even if they depend so goofy now .
Creeping dread
InCrow Country , players take on the role of Mara Forest , a detective who is call to an abandoned entertainment parking lot in lookup of a missing person . She ’s quickly leash into a mystery about the park ’s owner and the nefarious things he was doing there . Its a riff onResident Evil‘s Spencer Mansion plot , but with more animatronic crows . It ’s an purposely stock tale , but it works as a short recall .
After a moment of exploration , a intimate gameplay eyelet presents itself . I have to find keys and figure out puzzles to give the park and get to the secret at its heart . When I get a bronze key , I live exactly which doors to habituate it on . One puzzle way tells me I need to put an egg - form object in a muddle to operate a mechanical swan . When I do that , I recover another token that leads me to my next puzzle . It ’s elegant and uncomplicated puzzle box gameplay . The ballpark itself is small and nothing ’s too obtuse . The whole escapade only takes a few hour to zip through , ensuring it does n’t outstay its welcome .
There are monsters to shoot along the agency , of course of study . It does n’t take long before the car park fills up with zombies , slithering blobs , and hulk physique beasts . To attack them , I weight-lift a button to lock my character in home and then free aim from there to shoot them . Headshots do more damage , naturally , but shots also do more damage the closer Dolichotis patagonum is to a ogre . That adds a moment of extra tension , as it give to put myself in danger . give , combat is mostly optional . In most case , its easy to weave around creatures and not engage in battle at all . That ’s an intentional selection , asCrow Countrywants participant to make choices about how they conserve ammo , but it does make legal action feel inconsequential at times .
Though there are some crotchet to foot at , Crow Countrymakes its full-grown impact as a nostalgic tint piece . The most outstanding thing about it is its low polygon art style . It looks just like anold PS1 secret plan , with notched lines and rough edges that make it look like it ’s being play on a cathode - ray electron tube TV . Its somewhere between Resident Evil and Final Fantasy , with more color and rounded objects than you ’d ordinarily find in a repugnance game . It looks fantastic , and SFB Games modernizes the restraint around it to make certain that way does n’t amount with the gameplay frustration of the early era .
That optical style is n’t just for show . Crow Countryis wholly enervate in the same agency that the games it calls back to still are . That ’s most seeming in its monsters . Its “ automaton ” are n’t really identifiable as septic humans . They ’re a messy collection of red polygons that erratically twitch around the screen . Its hard to tell what on the nose they are — and that ’s what makes them scary . How can I get it on where to dash when I ca n’t event make out their limb ?
That ’s the kind of matter that I still love aboutSilent Hill 2 , one of my all - time preferred horror game . Every creature feels like an unnatural abomination . I venerate what I ca n’t translate . We ’ve lost that experience in gaming ’s hunt for photorealism , butCrow Countryserves as a gravid reminder that the bumps of honest-to-goodness biz are n’t error meant to be smoothed over . The warts are what makes them scary .
Crow Countrylaunches on May 9 for PS4 , PS5 , Xbox Series X / S , and personal computer .
