Caws For Alarm, Let's Play Crow Country!

[Cullen]

These black birds in the dead of night a'int too interested in flying or singing.

The Game

Crow Country is a 2024 indie survival horror game drawing heavy on inspiration from the aesthetics of PS1 games. The character models in particular are very reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy VII (Which is definitely a unique aesthetic to use as a base for your horror game!), the general vibe goes hard on Resident Evil influences and there's a distinct grain to the visuals that make the game feel like it's projecting from a cheap CRT. In contrast to its influences, Crow Country has very modern design when it comes to its controls, with completely free aim, 3D environments allowing for free control of the camera and standard 3D controls for movement as opposed to tank controls. It's a breezy and easy survival horror, but loaded up on fun and charm, and I think it's worth taking a look at!

The Let's Play

This will be a runthrough of the game's Hard setting, Murder of Crows. Murder of Crows reduces the number of available resources, ups the enemy counts in certain areas, increases the ranges enemies can detect you from and will pursue you to and adds a few mechanical tweaks to consider. I'll also be completing the game's Crow Quest collection objective, a special option for playthroughs that unlocks after having beaten the game once. Crow Country has a ranking system, but going for the max rank would only introduce a few mechanical wrinkles that wouldn't do much to differentiate it from a clean normal playthrough, so I'll just go over the broad strategies for getting an S+ rank and show off the unlockables you get for having accomplished it. (unless I change my mind) With that out of the way!

The Videos

Part 1, For the Birds
Part 2, Legal Battles

Full LP Playlist


If you're a fan of Survival Horror games, my LP of Resident Evil 4 may be to your liking. Alternatively, if you're just a general fan of resource driven exploration horror, then you'll probably find Look Outside to be a good time.

[Cullen]

It begins! Crow Country throws us into the thick of things, so don't worry if what we're precisely doing here isn't super clear. Mara has a mission and she's going to see it through, what more do you need to know?

There's a few more scattered gameplay things to comment on with Murder of Crows mode, but we'll just get to those as they come up. Do note though that the demonstrative way I'll be playing the game will invalidate an S+ ranking by default. Luckily I already have all the goodies from doing that on my own time, so I'll show them off when there's some downtime in game.

One other thing to mention is that the cap for each resource you can hold is fairly low and the game is still quite generous with supplies on Hard mode, so don't hesitate to make full use of everything you've got! With the Bronze Key in tow, our options for exploration will increase dramatically come the next video, so be prepared for an explosion of upgrades as this game is pretty rapid paced.

[Cullen]

Part 2 is out! We breach a new section of Crow Country, only to immediately turn around and address something back in Fairytale Land. Rest assured, we make steady progress right after!

The mushroom banquet is the most annoying any secret in this game gets, thankfully. Figures that when I'm recording I get the absolute worst outcome for it possible, but provided you can handle sacrificing the medkits the long term value of this secret is well worth it. Like I said in the video, it is possible to do this secret completely safely on an S+ ranking run with TECHNICALLY no heals used, but it's pretty annoying and tedious. It's better to just ignore secret altogether and make up the lost points elsewhere since there's absolutely no value to getting this at the end of the game.

Like classic Resident Evil games, Mara moves so unbelievably slow when critically injured on Murder of Crows mode that it is not worth continuing if you are unable to heal yourself out of that status. Load up the last save and save yourself any potential headaches.

If you're looking to speed clear the game, shooting out the clock in the Crypt is the way to go because the handgun ammo spent is pretty negligible. While I screwed up the door crush kill, it is worth noting that if you want to save resources against the Crypt mini-boss, you can simply open the gate and leave the room after baiting it away from the gate. Every mini-boss in the game can be skipped in some fashion, though some are easier to do this with than others and the Crypt boss is towards the middle of the pack for this.

Every puzzle solution in this game is set and does not vary between difficulties, unlike something like Silent Hill, so if you write down the codes and solutions from a previous playthrough, you can solve everything without doing the requisite work to actually learn the code. I already knew Soulina's death date for instance, but I always try to cover the intended way to do things.

You don't have to get the Shotgun right now, but it's very valuable for getting through cramped halls with enemies with minimal headaches, and I'm not a speedrunner so I just opt for the detour every time.