A charming, recognizable art style, great story, fun characters in spades, who manage to intrigue even with their relatively short time spent on screen and in conversation with the player, which is highly commendable. The soundtrack is a great, if somewhat muted work of ambience, which straddles the line between music and hair-raising, quasi-musical tonalities (quasi-musical, for they are scarcely recognizable as such at times) incredibly well. Along with the actual ambient sounds, and the aforementioned spectacular art and animation, it manages to create an atmosphere as thick as the fog that surrounds its Haunted Hilltop.
This is SFB Games' first foray into any kind of horror, but boy do I hope it isn't their last! They went directly for the jugular with Survival Horror, one of the more difficult kinds to pull of, and yet they passed the trial with flying colors. For my entire 9 hours of playtime I was fascinated, confused, freaked out or scared in some form and always interested as to what would come next and how the game's unique theme park aesthetic would surprise me. But Crow Country also managed to have something many pieces of horror lack in today's day and age: coherence. It is way too often that I see developers so insecure of their art, that they decide that the only way to make a well-liked horror game is to throw in cheap jumpscares or vaguely grim imagery that seems to have little to do with any on-screen happenings; but not Crow Country!
The game even manages to sprinkle in some tasteful comedy for good measure, which manages to marry both Leon S. Kennedy's endearing confusion and naivete from Resident Evil 2, along with his unfettered bravado from Resident Evil 4, and put both into Mara Forrest, the Crow Country's wonderful, female protagonist.
If you enjoy slightly more oldschool survival horror, such as rose-engine's masterful sleeper hit "Signalis" from 2022, then you will love Crow Country in equal measure – of that I am sure!