At first glance, Crow Country is a nostalgic piece. It draws inspiration from the terrifying expanse of Resident Evil, filling its amusement park environment with brain-bending puzzles and monsters transforming into human forms. It also takes cues from the toy-like aesthetic of Final Fantasy VII, with characters depicted in chunky, plastic ratios reminiscent of Playmobil. However, it transcends mere reminiscence; it delves into the intricate origins of nostalgic culture.
The main character, Mara Wooded area, revisited the eponymous theme park during her youth, but the experience was far from joyful. There, a peculiar man bit her, leading to a terminal illness that is gradually taking her life. Now, she returns to set things right, uncover the truth, and prevent history from repeating itself. What was, even if briefly, a place of childhood delight has instead become a haunting ground filled with death, shadows, echoes, and remnants.
The entirety of Crow Country’s atmosphere echoes childhood play. The park seems explicitly created for young children, lacking thrilling high-altitude roller coasters and instead filled with graveyard creatures, maze-like thickets, and fairy tale performances. Everything feels whimsical and playful. Even the “Haunted Hilltop” section of the park feels more like a trick-or-treat setup than a Horror Nights. Yet, devoid of the bustle of life—the families and children that would bring it to life—the park acquires an unsettling aura. This is not a unique observation; amusement parks are a common backdrop for horror, but Crow Country’s adventure begins at the park’s entrance and concludes when Mara exits. The entire game is enveloped in this childish ambiance. It’s in the contrast between the playful toy aesthetic and its sinister undertones—between theme park and haunted realm—that Crow Country cultivates its terror.
Unlike its inspirations, Crow Country does not adhere to fixed camera angles. Instead, every space functions like a miniature diorama. The viewpoint imitates peering over a dollhouse, lifting the roof to peek inside. For a while, the outside world feels remote; you only see this specific room, its small objects, traps, and puzzles. This applies to most video games, where only a limited number of areas are accessible, but Crow Country marks its boundaries clearly and artificially, much like its amusement park environment. Yet, the theme park remains a genuine space—interconnected. Like any survival-horror game, it comprises a series of keys and locks, with each dependent on the others, one door leading to the next. Crow Country’s universe is a self-contained ecosystem, seemingly cut off, but essentially a microcosm of the broader world.
Warning: Crow Country spoilers ahead.
Interestingly, the theme park itself is deceptively vast, crisscrossed with corridors and delving down into secret depths. Mara explores backstage areas and offices just as much as playgrounds and roller coasters. Eventually, she finds herself in the park’s hidden mining operations, an underground realm constructed from metal frameworks and endless chasms. Much like the mansion in Resident Evil, Crow Country possesses a hidden industrial core. However, akin to the amusement park itself, the mining areas are compartmentalized. Each section contains a “root,” an endless limb-like structure made from precious metals that the park’s owner, Edward Crow, has been clandestinely extracting. As the game advances, the theme park becomes increasingly sullied, inundated with monsters, and tangled in traps and barriers. The daylight fades. The park descends into darkness, like the abyss beneath.
This structure, from the surface realm to the depths below, and from day to night, reflects the narrative’s trajectory, where concealed elements come to light. Edward discovered the roots while traveling with his father, wriggling in the soil near their campsite. As an adult, he began to extract them, masking his operation with a fabricated tale of a mine in Brazil. But soon, creatures began to materialize. Edward quickly realized these creatures were, in fact, human beings. Edward Crow’s extraction from the portal distorted those passing through it. The more the portal was mined, the more it warped, blobbed, and melted the individuals who crossed it. They could not communicate—merely reach out—and their presence tainted everything around them. The portal serves as a harbinger of suffering and a prediction of a desolate future. Yet, Edward continues to mine, concealing this grim reality instead of sharing it openly.
Nonetheless, Edward possesses an unusual reverence for the portal. He refers to the entities that emerge from it as “guests,” almost as if they were visiting the theme park. One root he preserves, creating a shrine in honor of his childhood discovery. The remainder he extracts, leaving gaping voids like severed limbs. This may seem an odd contradiction, yet it mutually reinforces his character. His own history is what matters most to Crow; everything else is expendable.
Crow Country taps into a vein that other works of culture might also explore. The contemporary novel Birnam Wood discusses a billionaire secretly mining lithium beneath a New Zealand national park, echoing Crow’s extraction activities. No one would bat an eye at a reclusive millionaire mining resources in Brazil, but a mountain of gold from a remote U.S. backwater? That would spark controversy. Both narratives prompt reflection on the unseen violence that exists and the conditions under which it thrives.