Crow Country
SFB’s retro-styled horror begins by rewinding to 1990. It’s where this story starts, but the date also hints toward where it calls back – a little earlier than its main inspirations, perhaps, albeit a year after Tokuro Fujiwara’s genre-sparking Sweet Home. It’s an agenda-setting moment for a game with the hallmarks of a blow-away-the-cobwebs lockdown project extended well beyond its original scope. Which doesn’t mean it’s bloated – its taut six-hour runtime is comparable with the classics – but rather that this is an evident labour of love, packed with atmosphere, detail and character.
You wonder if the pandemic directly inspired the theme: you need merely add an ‘r’ to Covid, after all, to get the family of birds whose presence looms large over this abandoned amusement park. As investigating agent Mara Forest, your first task is to shoot the padlock off the gate, the doors swinging open with a portentous creak. It’s a sign that creators the Vian brothers are more than happy to embrace horror staples, at the same time as they depart from formula, affording the player control of a rotatable camera. Not that it lets you see what’s inside – you’ll have to bravely stride forward toward the arrow that points into the darkness beyond.