This creepy game is a picture-perfect throwback to PS1 horror

Have you ever found yourself thinking that old video games used to be scarier?

I know I’m in that boat. Nothing creeps me out more than the original Resident Evil orSilent Hill 2. Some newer games might hit me with some extra jump scares, but many titles that really stick in my mind tend to be from older eras. There’s one obvious reason for that: I was younger and dumber then. But that only tells half the story. There’s something undeniably creepy about 1990s horror games made before the days of photorealism. It’s hard to put a severed finger on it, but a new indie game might help.

Crow Country, a new release from Tangle Tower developer SFB Games, is a retro horror game that looks like it was pulled from, the PlayStation 1’s library. It pays homage to classics like Silent Hill, putting players through a claustrophobic puzzle box filled with shambling monsters. In creating such a faithful ode, SFB Games gets to the heart of what made old horror games feel so scary, even if they look so goofy now.

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Creeping dread

In Crow Country, players take on the role of Mara Forest, a detective who is called to an abandoned amusement park in search of a missing person. She’s quickly roped into a mystery about the park’s owner and the nefarious things he was doing there. Its a riff on Resident Evil‘s Spencer Mansion plot, but with more animatronic crows. It’s an intentionally stock story, but it works as a light callback.

After a bit of exploration, a familiar gameplay loop presents itself. I have to find keys and solve puzzles to open the park and get to the secret at its heart. When I get a bronze key, I know exactly which doors to use it on. One puzzle room tells me I need to put an egg-shaped object in a hole to operate a