A murder of crows line the ramparts of this mysterious theme park. Join Mara Forest as she ruffles the feathers of Edward Crow in our Crow Country Review!

Having arrived on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox earlier in 2024 to great reviews, developer SFB Games has now ported the game to PlayStation 4 and, as seen in the title of this review, Nintendo Switch! Promising the full-fat experience, does this Switch port fly high likes its other releases or is it left out the flock? Find out in our Crow Country Review!

Crow Country Review – Story

Agent Mara Forest is driving on a wet and dark night. Driven by her will to find the man Edward Crow, the owner of the now defunct Crow Country theme park, who disappeared mysteriously. Pulling up at the abandoned park she loads up her gun, checks her notes and blasts through the chained-up gates. Heralded by the jaunty theme park music she heads in and finds an injured man who mutters about needing to take a clear picture. After patching him up and delivering him to her car, she runs into some bizarre beings shuffling around that attack her.

I hope this is not Arthur’s blood.

As she works her way deeper into the park she starts to uncover notes left by staff members who seemed frustrated at the state the park was in and how the owners were acting. It becomes clear that something deeply disturbing is underway and that Edward Crow was deeply involved in it. Throughout the adventure, Mara comes across a variety of NPCs including Edward’s daughter and a rather haughty lawyer who is clearly looking for Edward as well. Their conversations have a surprisingly concise dialogue that is great at explaining who they are and their goal in Crow Country. Moving forward Mara finds herself deep underground where she uncovers a weird mining ring and experiments run at the park. All of which are fun to unravel.

The staff were clearly unhappy with the arrangements.

The way the story is paced and how it plays out is exciting to experience and the game is fantastic at presenting its twists and turns as the narrative plays out. It’s not much more complex than the average Resident Evil game but it has a cool atmosphere and combined with the environmental storytelling it offers something really special. Without delving into spoilers, even Mara’s story is really compelling with obvious foreshadowing but still surprising facts to uncover. This is a short one, lasting around 5 hours or so but it still manages to communicate its core themes and resolve the plot points it needs to to feel satisfying. Overall the story is very enjoyable and well worth the walk into a run down theme park!

Mmm illicit mineral processing.

Crow Country Review – Gameplay

Despite being a clear homage to older horror titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill the gameplay is much more unique. Using the D-pad, players can enjoy tank controls, this old-school option is nice to have though not hugely practical for navigating Crow Country’s levels. By default the analogue stick offers modern analogue control which combined with the fully player-controlled camera is the better way to control Mara. Exploration is primarily walking around the segmented areas looking for points of interest and, on modes that have them, fighting off enemies. It’s generally quite satisfying to run around the park as it interconnects allowing for shortcuts to previous areas after the player finds a certain tool. It feels natural with a genuine degree of fun and mystery.

Theme parks need horror vibes to survive.

Puzzles are also abundant here and make up the majority of the gameplay experience. Using environmental storytelling and notes scattered around, players can piece together puzzle solutions quite easily, this is a testament to how good some of the puzzles are. They never really get to the insane levels of Silent Hill’s more complex riddle difficulties but they are enough of a brain teaser to make players think. An example of a typical puzzle is the Tree Fairy puzzle early in the game. Players read a note that mentions the fairy and her secrets, later they find a note about maintenance, then they find a code to unlock her, and finally, they have to enter a verbal statement that activates the animatronic. It feels so good to piece it all together and it felt reasonably natural to discover the correct bits of information.

Nothing beats a mini game!

Combat is a weaker point, the actual mechanics for weapons and damage are great but the aiming is awkward which is a bit of a downside. Essentially to try and explain it, the movement in the game is separate from the camera and when aiming, that camera freedom remains in place. Aiming is then done via a free aim reticle, combined later with laser sights, with an initial camera snap that tries to find a reasonable angle but it always just feels stiff and wonky. As the game progresses and enemies change the combat just doesn’t quite toe the line. That said, it’s not unsatisfying all the time but it just lacks a certain snappyness found in games like Resident Evil where characters either shoot forwards, up or down. Too often enemies can get in around the player as shots whiz past their shoulders.

Some spooky enemies.

Health management is quite simple and works on a similar status system to the older Resident Evil games. Mara also exhibits the classic animations for injury such as limping and dragging her feet alongside blood splatters on her white dress. Health items are in short supply but following the Tomb Raider methodology, they come in small or large variants. For anyone finding it difficult to manage they do have an alternate option. The “Exploration” difficulty disables combat entirely for those who just want a spooky puzzle game. It’s actually a killer feature as the story is great and the puzzles are fun. It opens the game up to those who either can’t get the hang of the combat or who don’t work well with twitchy action segments. As an accessibility feature, it’s unrivalled.

A map of the park’s fairytale area, the S is for save room.

A final throwback mechanic to highlight is the save rooms which have a pleasant quiet atmospheric tune playing as well as a fire burning. These fires are the save points. Each save room has folders that collect notes and things from through the level so this is also a safe space to revisit puzzle clues. Often they also provide some provisions like ammo or healing and in a few cases, they also introduce some of the side characters in these spaces. It’s a great way to use these rooms and to give them the prominence that a safe haven should have.

Never thought a fire would save me.

Crow Country Review – Visuals

Did you love the chibi, segmented characters in Final Fantasy 7? Enjoy the look of its pre-rendered backgrounds as well? Then Crow Country has the visual design you seek! This game absolutely nails the low-fi PlayStation-style aesthetic while making use of plenty of modern features.

No theme park is complete without some casual horror.

The PS pre-rendered look of the locations in the game is superb but crucially it’s not actually flat, instead, it’s all rendered in 3d and so the game has full camera control showing off the nice modelling of the background elements. These are rendered in a super interesting way where there is just enough detail to show off the area successfully but each item is technically quite simple, again showing that kind of Final Fantasy 7 background style. Mara’s torch casts real-time shadows from objects, surprisingly these looked quite sharp for a Switch title. There is all manner of post-processing going on too with blurs, grain and VHS-type interference running that helps everything look seedy and horrific. It’s possible this could get fatiguing for some people however this wasn’t the case during review.

We all feel like this sometimes…

Characters look great and the animations are surprisingly clean and clear for the aesthetic. Mara’s clothes sway as she runs, she’ll reach out to things when interacting and more, it’s just pretty cool to see. Other characters in the game are all in line with the art style too. Enemies, on the other hand, get crazy. Starting with a normal “zombie” type enemy the player will first hear them and then see their silhouetted form become detailed as they approach. The animations are frightful and twitchy in a seriously unnerving way on all enemies. As the game progresses the enemy designs also get more terrifying, the ones first seen in the Theatre are genuinely hard to look at.

Shuffling out the fog like some Silent Hill baddie.

Tying the whole visual design together is a stylish and slick user interface which also makes use of a low-fi look. It can be a little awkward to remember that a shoulder button brings it up but seeing all the little low poly models of the collectables and key items is very neat.

The save menu is a brilliant design.

Crow Country Review – Audio

Unfortunately, there is no voicework to support the story but that really doesn’t matter here. With the story being so short and the typical texts being scanable in seconds, the dialogue can be digested in a way that voice acting would just be the cherry on top. Music-wise there is a bit of a light touch, sometimes there is a direct obvious melody like at the entrance to the theme park which plays a lovely little ditty. Save rooms are suitably chilled and the battle music is very intense. The music is always at its best being fun them park music. Each area has a theme just like a real park and they are all great atmosphere setters.

Speaking of atmosphere, this is where the game’s audio shines. Each part of the game has ambient sounds that complete the game’s mood. From something as simple as Mara’s footsteps to the crowing of the crows that line the walls there is always something grounding the setting. The sound effects are of relatively high quality but usually deliberately compressed in a pleasing way. Gunshots are heavy and environmental sounds like explosions, breaking, electricity and more all have the right sort of sound to stop the immersion being broken.

Crow Country Review – What Else?

Though there is only a single main ending the game does place a rank on players based on their statistics. Things like healing items and saving contribute to this as well as finding the secrets. These secrets are well hidden and often have a puzzle or condition to find them too. It’s not too hard to find everything on a second or third playthrough but it’s worth doing for completionists. Also as a final note, if players get stuck they can also use the fortune teller crows a limited amount of times.

There is a positive encounter in your future.

Crow Country Review – Conclusion

Crow Country is a delight to experience. It leverages a unique style that has obvious inspirations and successfully pays homage to them while sporting its own fun story. The overall adventure is a little marred by sub-par combat controls but it has so much intrigue and so many cool puzzles that it’s still a blast. The journey of Mara as she explores a strange dilapidated theme park is something worth experiencing and the Switch is a fantastic platform to do it on!

Excuse me officer.

So, why should you play Crow Country?

• It features some fantastic visuals and atmosphere.
• Survival horror with decent puzzles sounds fun.
• Retro-style designs in indie games are rarely this polished.

But why shouldn’t you play Crow Country?

• The combat is iffy, though can be disabled.
• It’s a short experience roughly 5 hours.
• A lot of the lore is in readable notes.

A review code was kindly provided by SFB Games for the purpose of our Crow Country Review.  You can check out our other reviews here and if you haven’t already, be sure to join the Qualbert Discord to find out about the latest game and review updates!