In the darkness of our living room, I giddily and nervously sat down with nothing more than the glow of a 15” screen and a wired PlayStation controller. A blocky character moved across a decaying amusement park.
This wasn’t the late ‘90s or early aughts, but rather a new release in 2024. SFB Games’s Crow Country instantly transported me back to my earliest horror game experiences in my Texas home. My PlayStation 5 controller was a little bigger, and my screen was a little flatter than the CRT I first played Resident Evil or Silent Hill on, but the experience felt spot on.
It’s hard to capture the experience of playing a PlayStation 1 horror game for the first time. Yet, somehow, Crow Country succeeds. Equal parts a love letter and a response to the horror of days long gone, it recaptures both the aesthetic and magic of early 3D horror games, balancing modern updates with classic touches. Though light on fear, Crow Country is a well-polished experience that expertly nails the old-school aesthetic.
Approachable Horror
Crow Country begins with its protagonist, the mysterious Mara Forrest, entering the titular theme park. Her goal is simple: to find Edward Crow, the eccentric and wealthy owner of the park. Of course, there is more than meets the eye to this crow-themed park, Edward Crow’s mysterious disappearance, and the game’s protagonist.
Much of Crow Country’s story, which explores themes like corporate greed and the search for answers, feels familiar if not comfortable. Considering the genre and moment in gaming that it replicates and celebrates, this is an incredible feat. Crow Country is a survival horror game for folks who are either nostalgic for those older experiences or curious about them but don’t want to be startled or scared. It leans into its themes while wanting the experience to be approachable for anyone who picks up a controller to play.
The game even provides two different play-style options: survival horror and exploration. The first option plays as one might expect a classic horror game to play: Creatures fill the park, and Mara is armed with limited resources that must be lightly managed. This option offers danger, and a more traditional survival horror game experience. The exploration option is much more approachable, getting rid of the monsters so that players can focus solely on soaking in the aesthetic of the world, solving its puzzles at their own pace, and finding all 15 of the game’s secrets.
A Scavenger Hunt in a Haunted Park
At its core, Crow Country is a well-structured scavenger hunt. Its puzzles guide Mara through the park, introducing her to its well-crafted cast of characters. Although the game obscures the location of its puzzles or objects, if the scavenger hunt ever gets too unclear, an animatronic crow called the Fortune Teller provides players with 10 opportunities to ask for guidance.
Beyond its animatronic birds, the Crow Country theme park feels strangely lived in. The park is less staged than Alan Wake 2’s Coffee World—another mostly abandoned and decrepit amusement park in one of 2023’s best horror games. The park’s sections build on one another and connect in interesting ways. Whether you’re exploring Fairytale Town or the Haunted Hilltop, these thematic spaces are filled with monsters to fight, puzzles to solve, and characters with a range of motives.
The game’s cast of characters is delightful. Their motives are often predictable, but they are well-written and their movement throughout the park provides some of the best moments in Crow Country. My only complaint is that Mara doesn’t get to spend enough time with most of them. Considering I completed my first playthrough in only about six hours, this isn’t all that surprising.
These characters all play roles in the game’s great scavenger hunt. Of course, the throughline connecting all of these objects and characters is the mysterious Edward Crow, an antagonist surrounded by speculation and rumor. His relationships with the other characters and their motivations for finding him drive Mara forward, playing kind of like a game of Clue or a viewing of Knives Out from only one of the player’s perspectives.
A Walk in the Park
The combat in Crow Country harks back to its inspirations. Mara cannot shoot and move at the same time. You can even play with tank controls instead of modern movement by switching from the L-stick to the D-pad, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The entire game can be beaten without picking up or using weapons beyond the initial pistol, but rewards player exploration nonetheless with new lethal toys and upgrades. I won’t spoil it here, but the character that upgrades Mara’s weapons offers some surprising quips if the player hasn’t found the weapon that they offer to upgrade.
I rarely stressed about running out of resources, which did occasionally get Mara into trouble. She would suddenly not have any ammo, Med Kits, or Antidotes for poison. This never created an impossible situation, because I memorized where the creatures would spawn when Mara entered a room and how to move past them without taking further damage. With that being said, Mara did occasionally die, sending me back to the nearest save point at an open flame—from fireplaces to burning barrels.
Final Thoughts
Crow Country stands out in what has been a phenomenal couple of years for horror games. From 2024’s Dead Space remake to Capcom’s long line of Resident Evil remakes, the biggest names in horror are either rewriting, reimagining, or remaking their own classic horror experiences as they seek to recapture the magic of their original releases. Don’t get me wrong: I have loved my time with those remakes, but I have also yearned for the late-night jump scares and campiness of the PS1 horror games I once knew.
Crow Country doesn’t just replicate that experience but creates its own within the genre. The game doesn’t reinvent the wheel but feels like a fresh return to an earlier form of the genre. It is more classic Alone in the Dark or Resident Evil than sequels of either can ever hope to be.
I hope that we’ll return to the world of Crow Country one day, even if we leave the confines of that theme park. What’s here is too good to leave to a single entry.
Score: 8.7/10
Crow Country is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. It retails for $19.99.
Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the publisher.
