Caws For Alarm, Let's Play Crow Country! [Finished]

[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
Part 3, Ghosts 'n Goblins
Part 4, Silver Secret Stashes
Part 5, Golden Opportunities
Part 6 (Finale), Maybe Everything Will Be Okay. And Maybe it Won't.
S+ Ranking Run

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.

[Cullen]

Part 3 is out! We clean out most of Haunted Hilltop and can begin working on opening up the Ocean Kingdom now that we have the Trident in tow. The Trident is the main thing that will enable progress for the game as a whole, as it's necessary to collect one of the most important keys in the game. Expect a flurry of upgrades next time.

If you wonder why I'm using up my Large Med kits first, they're effectively the same as using to small Med kits once you hit the injured status, so it's both more convenient and a good idea as we will later get an upgrade that makes our small med kits more potent. It's best to hoard them for now considering that.

The Goblins are shockingly dangerous considering their stature, they can easily take Mara down in about 3-4 nibbles, and those nibbles happen FAST. Always default to capping them with a Shotgun on sight. Their activation range from Mara getting close is very small, but they aggro from much farther away if they hear gunfire, so be wary.

In addition to potentially exploding on death, Grinners are much slightly faster than the basic Guests and will hound Mara over much greater distances if they become aware of her. Another good use case for the Shotgun.

When Harrison appears, he actually despawns all the enemies in the park entrance, so you get a small break from the Spindle and the Grinners if they spawned and you elected to leave them be. They'll come back as soon as Harrison moves on though.

[Cullen]

Part 4 is out! With the Trident in tow, we can secure the Silver Key, which in turn allows us to collect nearly every secret left in the game. We also picked up the Data Disk during this sweep, which in addition to allowing more secrets to be collected, it also is a necessary item to finish the game. None of the things we collected are necessary for the completion of the game, but they sure do make it faster and easier!

With the Med Kit upgrade, we can now default to using small med kits for all our healing needs, should we even need to heal going forward. The game is much more generous with the small med kits, so it's a much appreciated upgrade.

Funnily enough, you can enter Tolman's room, solve the puzzle and leave without ever speaking to him. He actually won't call out to Mara in this event. We will see him later, and he just kind of acts like we had all the possible interactions with him up to that point if you didn't originally speak to him.

[Cullen]

Part 5 is out! We're just about done with the game, by the end of this part, all key items and all secrets have been collected, and we just have 3 crystal crows remaining. But at what cost?

If you're curious, it takes about 25 units of Flamethrower fuel to melt the resin containing the gold key. If you're trying to beat the game as fast as possible, that's the way to go as there are several benefits to grabbing the Flamethrower while the Acid just lets you get a little more Magnum ammo.

Unfortunately it is not possible to grab everything in the underground in one go as it's not possible to enter it with the battery in hand. Such is life sometimes.

[Cullen]

The final part is out! All is revealed, and the open road of the future contains a mixture of hope and dread. Maybe everything will be okay. Maybe it won't.

One thing that just got pointed out to me after I uploaded the video, there's a third way to deal with the final mini-boss! Just past the shipping crate where you rescue Julie, there's a diagram that shows a specific pattern you can walk on the dice blocks in. If you perform this pattern before activating the central elevator, it turns on the incinerator and cooks the boss before he can jump out. I'd say the grenade+magnum method still ever so slightly beats it for speed, but if you're committed to conserving ammo, there you go. Killing it this way also counts for the achievement for defeating all 4 mini-bosses.

Blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but once you've completed Crow Quest the Zap Girl costume will be fully accessible from the game settings menu instead, so you don't have to redo it every playthrough if you'd like to have the costume in action again. It does invalidate ranking runs on Murder of Crows though, sadly.

The game doesn't actually care what mode you get an S rank on for the Crow Wings unlockable (it similarly also doesn't care if it's a + ranking), so you can totally cheese that unlock with the Crow Launcher on Normal mode if you so desire as the requirements to get an A ranking are ridiculously generous. You cannot get a rank on Easy mode at all though.

You can use the Magnum in areas other than the final boss, but as demonstrated throughout the LP, it's not really much of a help over other options. May as well go big with it on the grand finale.

If you have an excess of grenades, you can also chuck them into the pool in the general vicinity of the final boss and chunk his health pretty quickly that way.

Getting an S+ on Murder of Crows was the last thing I polished off before starting this LP. My stats if you were curious, screen grabbed for the S rank achievement popup which I doubled up on.



As mentioned at the end, all secrets are not necessary for an S+ rank and frankly the Handgun Upgrade is so tedious to get I would advise skipping it. I believe the 14/15 Secrets mark affords you a mixture of no more than 4 saves/heals though the exact requirements have never been deciphered to my knowledge. The speedrun community has determined the absolute minimum you can get away with is 12 secrets and either 1 save or 1 heal. Like I said, you need around 70 kills, but you should hit this pretty naturally as killing enemies goes hand-in-hand with minimizing damage and you need something to use all that ammo on.

In the event I can't be assed to record an S+ run for demonstrative purposes (it would likely be non-commentated), you also get a different ending card for an S rank.



And that's a wrap! I hope you all enjoyed this delightful little game, it's a real treat for the season and its short run time could let it easily fit into any October horror media binges, if you're all about that like I am.

[Cullen]

Huzzah, I did properly capstone this LP

This is just a slightly messy clear of the game with an S+ ranking. For safety's sake, I did save my progress at 3 different points, but ultimately did not need to reload at all. I also avoided any damage (excepting for the Handgun secret) until the final boss, who thoroughly rocked my shit. Still beat him without heals, but it was close. I'd practice the fight more, but unfortunately there's about a minute of mashing through text every time you refight it, so I wasn't super keen on spending my time on that. Playime is not a factor, but this can definitely be done a fair deal faster than I did it. I'm not super good at this game, so I opted for a much more safe and conservative approach.

To re-iterate, for an S+ ranking the bare minimum you can do is ~70 kills with 12 secrets and either 1 or no heals/saves. Using any bonus items will automatically invalidate an S+ ranking on Murder of Crows mode. I elected to collect all secrets, which afforded me 6 heals/saves, and I spent 3 of those on saves with no (item-based) heals at all. I wouldn't recommend going for all secrets since getting the Handgun Upgrade is a pain, so limit yourself to around 4 or 5 saves/heals if you go for this yourself.

For some interesting things that I do in this run that I couldn't show off in the LP, I demonstrate the Crypt puzzle skip as well as the skip for the mini-boss in Crow's office. I only kill 2 of the 4 mini-bosses, mostly because doing so is just faster than trying to juke them.

The 3 saves I used were at very particular points. My first save was after exiting the Theater, as this is when some of the tougher enemies and new traps begin to spawn, so damage becomes a much more prominent threat. Since it's also about 20 minutes of progress, it's a logical place to make a back up so you don't end up wasting all that time. My second save is after collecting all the secrets we can get off the back of obtaining the Silver Key. It's another great place to checkpoint since we've both accomplished a ton, got a bunch of upgrades and are just about to enter another extra dangerous section. The final save I used was before the final boss, to account for the possibility I might choke. I nearly did, so this was a wise place for it. Given how the run went, I could have not saved at all, but that would have increased the pressure and nerves and made it more likely I would have made a mistake. Here's to the could have beens.

There's a couple sections where I scrutinize my map because I knew I missed some Crystal Crows. The Swan Boats and the Mushroom Hall were the ones I was missing for awhile. Luckily I was able to figure that without consulting an external map.

For a funny thing I discovered doing this run, you must help out Julie layout the case against Edward Crow, otherwise she won't be abducted by Marvin. If you waited on it like I unintentionally did, then she can be abducted right after you just helped her, somehow. Speaking of Marvin, for some reason he doesn't shoot at you in the park entrance if you haven't seen all his scenes. We also got to see Harrison disappearing and suddenly reappearing in the plot like I mentioned in the LP itself.

The one bit of editing I did for this video was massively speeding up the part where I collect the Handgun secret. The healing pool before Edward Crow's bunker does not count towards your Heals used, so you can use it to offset the damage the poison mushrooms do. Walking between these two points is slow and annoying, so again I'd advocate for skipping this and just budgeting around that.

And that's a real wrap for the LP! Thank you to everyone who watched and commented, it means a ton. Hope to see you around for whatever I do next, which I have quite a few ideas in mind!