Crow Country review

Crow Country is a VHS home movie of a kid's amusement park recorded in 1997, then left in a hot, fetid cabinet until the tape has warped and mildewed. A yellow visual smear gives its throwback graphics a rich but fuzzy CRT texture, muddying everything enough to add a patina of creepiness impossible under the harsh light of high definition. If horror movies have taught me anything, it's that when you find an object at the back of the cupboard that has every chance of being cursed you can't, like, not watch it.

What is it? Survival horror from the days when CRTs made everything scarier (and fuzzier)
Expect to pay:
Developer: SFB Games
Publisher: SFB Games
Reviewed on: Intel i5-13600K, RTX 3070, 32GB DDR4
Multiplayer? No
Steam Deck: Verified
Link: Official site

You gotta jam that thing into a VCR, then obstinately shrug off the ominous vibes that begin to cloud your waking life. Was Crow Country sneakily manifesting new items into rooms I'd already wandered through just to mess with me, or had I simply missed that welcome medpack nestled on a grimy shelf through the haze? Am I just imagining things?

Nah—tape's definitely haunted.

This snack-sized bite of PlayStation-era survival horror makes a strong case for horror games that can comfortably fit within the length of a VHS tape. I beat it in five hours across two sittings, the perfect amount of time to spend unspooling a series of Resident Evil mansion-style puzzles as I worked my way through the rotting remnants of Crow Country's gift shop and haunted house and undersea arcade. 

In those five hours I played notes on a piano to open secret compartments, solved a gravestone riddle while a hand jutting out of a clock menaced me with a shotgun, and jolted back in my chair at least twice when Crow Country nailed me with jump scares. This is not the kind of horror that soaks you in constant, high fidelity dread, but it does have the kinds of demented monster designs that immediately make the skin crawl when you see them in the