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We talked about how much we loved Crow Country before, as it is essentially SFB Games’ love letter to classic PS1 horror games along the lines of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. However, now that the Switch and PS4 versions appeared and the Halloween season is upon us, I had to return to it once again. The thing is, now that I did go through it, everything about the Switch version of Crow Country made me realize what a perfect horror game it is for all audiences this Halloween. Or really, for any platform when it comes down to it.

Mara Forest is a woman bound for the abandoned Crow Country amusement park in search of answers. Where is its owner, Edward Crow? What’s going on at the remnants of the attraction? Can we survive its horrors? It very much feels like the sorts of titles we saw in that era of gaming, minus some of the clunky control schemes. 

The first thing that struck me about Crow Country and left me thinking it was the sort of Switch addition anyone could enjoy, even if they aren’t a fan of horror games, is the available modes at the outset. Survival Horror is its purest form and the one that will call to mind Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Every shot will matter. You won’t want to make mistakes. You’ll need to be careful. However, it was the other two options that really felt designed to help appeal to absolutely everyone. Those concerned about it not feeling difficult enough would have a Murder of Crows hard mode that means you can’t waste any of your bullets, Mara and your life will be in danger, and every encounter is a serious threat. I tried that out before really getting into things, and it’s a lot. However, there’s also an Exploration Mode that is more about the aesthetic and adventure, omitting violent, life-threatening encounters.

That aesthetic also helps ensure Crow Country appeals to a wider audience. It is designed to be dark and eerie, with fog in the air and unsettling mascots. We’ll see blood. Odd entities that are unsettling appear. However, the execution and design mean that it feels more atmospheric and less uncanny valley horrifying. There’s a challenge to be had here, you’ll need to force Mara to touch or do things that are gross to get quest items, and it is unnerving. But because of the design direction, it’s possible to be detached and appreciate it even if you aren’t as comfortable with horror games. 

I also felt Crow Country was a great Switch fix because even though it is a horror game, it sort of feels like that is secondary to going through an adventure filled with puzzles. We’re trying to solve a mystery! It’s like Scooby Doo, but with guns and death being an actual possibility. Mara is even downright funny with her quips. I never thought I’d say this about a horror game, but it’s great at making you feel comfortable. 

I really liked getting cozy with Crow Country on the Switch, getting settled under some blankets, and dealing with puzzles in one of the most unsettling amusement parks. It runs perfectly on the handheld. The brevity of the adventure makes it an ideal fit for some portable play sessions. It’s just a fun pick to enjoy during the Halloween season.

Crow Country is available on the Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam.

The post Crow Country Is a Perfect Switch Game to Play on Halloween appeared first on Siliconera.

2024 has been a decent year for indie horror games. From abandoned theme parks full of monsters to Eldritch beings at sea, there has been something for everyone’s tastes. So if you’re looking for a smaller horror game to sink your teeth into this Halloween, these six games have you covered.

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While the Silent Hill 2 remake has proven to be remarkably successful at capturing the feeling of the PS2 original, for those looking for a more accurate gameplay experience it may be a letdown. This is where Hollowbody comes in, which sticks more closely to the fixed camera angles and awkward combat of PS2-era survival horror.

Set in a dilapidated Britain in a vaguely cyberpunk near-future, you play as a black-market smuggler whose partner has disappeared into an exclusion zone. You’ll be exploring the ruins of an abandoned town, complete with monsters around every corner. However, there’s a creeping dread that even beyond the beasts, this is not a pleasant place to be. Hollowbody does have some noticeable flaws, but it’s one of the best indie horror games to recreate that early 2000s feel.

Hollowbody is available for PC.

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War is a common setting for video games. Whether it’s dense strategy games recreating historical battles or gung-ho shooters about fighting for freedom, it’s been heavily covered. Where war doesn’t feature that often is horror, which is a surprise when the setting is so ripe for it. War is a miserable, terrifying experience for those who fight in it, after all.

This is where Conscript comes in. It uses the damp, rat-infested trenches of World War I as its setting and it’s incredibly effective. The tight spaces and poor lighting make it hard to see threats around each corner, while damaged supply lines force item management to the forefront. It’s very Resident Evil in its structure, but the horrors here are much more human. By marrying the mechanics of horror games to the harsh realities of combat, Conscript is an effective reminder that war is hell.

Conscript is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

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While not strictly a horror game in many people’s definitions, Pacific Drive meets the criteria of being one of the best indie horror games of 2024 in many ways. Supernatural threats you’re mostly powerless against? Check. A tense, foreboding atmosphere that persists everywhere you explore? Check. Jump scares? If mannequins appearing ominously behind you without you noticing count, then absolutely check.

Pacific Drive sends you out into an exclusion zone in America’s spookiest region (the Pacific Northwest) where science has unleashed horrors upon the landscape. Also your only protection is a beaten-up 1970s station wagon. Half survival roguelike, half car maintenance simulator, Pacific Drive manages to evoke horror through the random nature of its anomalous threats and with a landscape that becomes increasingly alien as you progress through the game.

Pacific Drive is available for PC and PS5.

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Isolated locations are the perfect locations for horror, and where is more isolated than an oil rig in the middle of the ocean? Still Wakes the Deep sees you playing as a rig worker as the crew drills into something terrible in the ocean that should have been left alone. The game that follows is a desperate rush to escape from this unknowable horror while trapped by your surroundings.

Developed by The Chinese Room, Still Wakes the Deep evokes the same horror as their previous work Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Plenty of tense atmosphere, a monster that could be anywhere as it cracks and breaks the rig around itself, and a cast of excellent voice actors that sell the terror make the game one of the best indie horror games of 2024.

Still Wakes the Deep is available for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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Mouthwashing is a game that seemingly came out of nowhere this year, and quickly shot right to the top of many players’ lists. The premise is that a spaceship crew is stranded following a crash that may have been caused by the captain. As the game progresses, the truth is revealed through a series of surreal flashbacks told out of order, revealing a rapid decline in sanity across the whole crew.

Mouthwashing uses low poly aesthetics to great effect, crafting a cast of characters who are generally unpleasant to look at and an environment that’s oppressive even before things begin to collapse. It’s a game that’s left a huge impression on its players, one that’s unlikely to be shaken any time soon.

Mouthwashing is available for PC.

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The low-poly PS1 aesthetic works wonders for horror. The shifting textures, static faces and awkward shapes and movements add an uncanny pleasantness that can be put to great work when it comes to making people uneasy. Crow Country embraces the PS1 horror aesthetic to its fullest, in a way you’d likely not expect from the developers of Snipperclips.

You play as Mara Forest, a special agent investigating Crow Country, an abandoned theme park, whose owner has disappeared. The game is a classic survival horror game, with limited resources, obtuse puzzles and an array of creepy monsters wandering around. However, while the gameplay evokes Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the visuals owe a greater debt to Final Fantasy VII, right down to the chibi character models.

Crow Country is a fantastic horror game all round. The story is a true mystery, full of twists and turns. The gameplay is full of inventive puzzles. And the theme park is dripping with atmosphere, with the feeling that more horrors are lurking around the corners you can’t see. It’s an essential game for any horror fan, and easily one of the best indie horrors of 2024.

Crow Country is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.

Let us know what your favorite indie horror game of 2024 is in the comments below!

The post Best Indie Horror Games of 2024 appeared first on Siliconera.

SFB Games announced that Crow Country, its horror game inspired by early PlayStation titles, will be heading to the Switch and PS4 on October 16, 2024. However, there’s another notable addition on the way. It will be playable in a new language on all platforms. Japanese is coming to Crow Country on every platform.

Crow County follows a woman named Mara who enters a long-deserted amusement park on an assignment. Like the amusement park found in Silent Hill 3, something is afoot. While she’s there looking for its owner, Edward Crow, she’ll also encounter various monsters and other individuals who are attempting to find out what’s going on and solve their own mysteries. While you can fight these otherworldly entities while exploring, it’s not the encouraged approach. 

Here’s the official trailer announcing the Crow Country Switch and PS4 versions of the game.

At launch, Crow Country was available in five languages. People could play it in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. There’s no voice acting in the title, so all we needed to worry about was the UI and subtitles. The Japanese version will be added to the list of options for everyone with Crow Country come October 16, 2024.

Crow Country is available on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam now, and the PS4 and Switch versions will arrive on October 16, 2024.

The post Crow Country Switch and PS4 Ports Arrive Ahead of Halloween appeared first on Siliconera.

In recent years, the unstoppable craving for an old-school survival horror revival has been growing within me. It seems I’m not the only one feeling that way, as various indie developers expanded on some of my favorite aspects of the genre, with excellent games like developers Jasper Byrne’s Lone Survivor and rose-engine’s Signalis. Now Crow Country s the list by offering a true-to-form classic survival horror adventure that draws inspiration from and pays tribute to PS1-era titles, all while doing its own original thing.

The game takes players back to 1990 Atlanta, Georgia, and it starts when protagonist Mara Forest breaks into the eponymous Crow Country abandoned theme park. Her job is to find the owner Edward Crow, due to his daughter filing a missing persons report. As Mara delves deeper into the creepy locale, she discovers a plethora of terrible monsters roaming the park, putting anyone that approaches the place in danger. Determined to discover the secret hiding behind these creatures and Edward’s disappearance, she pushes forward. Throughout the game, she meets a variety of characters that found themselves drawn to the place. While their reasons for being there differ, their motivations are the same: investigating the monsters that roam the park and the cause and consequences of their appearance.

I really enjoyed the story in Crow Country. The central mystery is engaging and unique, and it keeps things simple and easy to follow. The environmental storytelling is also very effective, with the park having plenty of files that go into the history and creation of the place. One of the things I appreciated the most about the story is how the narrative is confident enough to not overexplain how and why everything happens, leaving just enough unanswered and ambiguous. After all, desperately trying to seek answers for things we don’t understand can lead to unforeseen consequences.

The setting of a theme park is ideal for a horror game, and I thought that Crow Country effectively uses this concept to its full potential. Using a creepy theme park as the setting for a horror game allows the layout to feel like the Spencer Mansion in the original Resident Evil without the puzzles feeling out of place. Furthermore, Crow Country expands on the concept of a location like the Lakeside Amusement Park in Silent Hill 3, showing different flavors of horror with the contrast between the run-down public facing areas and the fenced-off staff rooms and corridors. While its main fairytale area is supposed to be charming, the decay and abandonment has rendered it eerie and unwelcoming. Its tacky haunted mansion-style zone wouldn’t really scare anyone under normal circumstances, but given the situation I felt like I was being effectively gaslit into doubting whether what was threatening me was a part of the fictional spectacle or if I was truly in danger.

The gameplay loop in Crow Country will be very familiar to those that have played any early Silent Hill and Resident Evil entries. The park is divided in different sized “rooms” and areas, similar to Resident Evil, while the inventory system veers closer to Silent Hill. Mara carries all her weapons and items all the time, reducing frustration and making puzzles more about the experience than backtracking to safe rooms. The game uses a limited camera angle that players can freely rotate. Not being able to see clearly made the game pretty frightening in my experience. This coupled with some weird things that start happen as the plot moves forward, I found myself always on edge. Even after I cleared up a room full of enemies, I felt like I couldn’t trust myself.

As with all PS1 survival horror games, combat is de-emphasized in Crow Country. Aiming weapons is slow and locks you in place, while shooting enemies from up close deals more damage but puts you at risk of being hit. Mara starts with a pistol and can find a shotgun, a magnum, and a flamethrower, as well as being able to use grenades to deal with various enemies at once. While the guns only offer different damage values, I really enjoyed the flamethrower as an AoE weapon, as well as how the pistol also serves as a tool for solving some puzzles or interacting with boxes and bottles, creating an interesting item economy.

The visual direction for Crow Country is one of the strongest suits of the game. It captures that low-fi feel that games like the original Resident Evil had, while keeping things modern and crisp. Mara is very well animated, and the chunky 3D character models mesh very well with the environments. The enemies are extremely freaky looking and uncanny. Finding a new unspeakable horror in Crow Country is always awfully refreshing. In fact, I would often leave rooms as fast as possible when finding new enemies to try and gather myself before counting my bullets and healing items, deciding if I wanted to tackle whatever I just saw. (Often opting to just bail.) The soundtrack of the game was composed by Ockeroid, and it is equally as fantastic as the visuals. One of the reasons I was so tense while playing is thanks to the oppressive and chilling soundtrack, which also gets a chance to be playful and breathe at times.

It took me approximately 6-7 hours to beat the game. And, even though it felt like the right length, I still wanted to spend more time in the park. After completing it, I spent a few hours trying to find as many secrets as I could and completing some of the optional content that unlocks after seeing the ending. The only blemish I found in an otherwise spotless experience was being unable to unlock one of the weapon upgrades available in the game after completing the required challenge. Fortunately, this is something that a patch would easily fix.

Crow Country is one of those games that answer all of my needs for an old-school survival horror title. The game isn’t shy about its inspirations and it is a clear homage to PS1 survival horror games. While it is a somewhat short experience, Crow Country shows that sometimes less is more. And I want more of this.

Crow Country comes out on May 10, 2024 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam.

The post Review: Crow Country Celebrates the Survival Horror Genre appeared first on Siliconera.