Crow Country is a throwback with bite: one that summons death as much as childhood.
At first glance, Crow Country is a nostalgia piece.
Yet, it’s more than just a throwback, it lays bear the haunted roots of nostalgia culture.
Protagonist Mara Forest visited the titular theme park as a child, but it was not a happy experience.
There, a strange man bit her and she gained some terminal illness, which is slowly killing her.
She has returned to make things right, find out what happened, and stop it from happening again.
She returns to what was, only fleetingly, a site of childhood joy.
She finds death, its shadows, its echoes, its remnants.
Crow Country’s entire setting is a place of childhood play.
The park is clearly designed for small children.
It’s all playful and encouraging.
Even the “Haunted Hilltop” section of the park is more trick-or-treat than Horror Nights.
This is not an original observation, of course.
The whole game is enveloped by this childhood environment.
Crow Country departs from its influences in that it does not have fixed camera angles.
Instead, each room is a miniature diorama.
The angle mimics peering over a dollhouse, lifting off the roof to see inside.
Yet, the theme park is continuous–interlocked.
Crow Country’s world is a microcosm, apparently siphoned off, but actually the wider world in miniature.
Crow Country spoilers ahead.
Fittingly, the theme park itself is deceptively large, intercut with hallways and dug under with hidden depths.
Mara wanders through backstage rooms and offices as much as playgrounds and rollercoasters.
Much like Resident Evil’s manor, Crow Country has a secret industrial heart.
However, much like the theme park itself, the mine is segmented.
The park turns as dark as the abyss below.
Edward discovered the roots touring the land with his father, wriggling in the dirt by their campsite.
But then the creatures started coming through.
Edward quickly discovered the creatures are, in fact, human beings.
Edward Crow’s mining of the portal has distorted what goes through it.
They cannot speak–only reach–and their touch contaminates.
The portal is to the future: a prophetic warning of disaster and the planet rendered uninhabitable.
But Edward keeps mining, obscuring this truth rather than spreading it widely.
Yet Edward has a curious reverence for the portal.
One root he leaves intact, building a shrine for his childhood discovery.
The rest he mines out, leaving them gaping like severed limbs.
That might seem a curious contradiction, but it is mutually reinforcing.
His own past is all that matters to Crow; the rest can rot.
Crow Country taps into a vein the rest of culture is also mining.
That might be controversial.
The story turns nostalgic longing into pure terror: the kind of thing only a fool would actually want.
Crow Country builds out a span between secretive economic exploitation and a personal longing for the past.
Edward Crow’s mission is in exact contrast to those of “the guests.”
They transport themselves from the future to the past to take a stab at save it.
In contrast, Edward maintains an imagined past to destroy the future.
The one section of the park that is inaccessible is an unbuilt sci-fi section a la Tomorrowland.
Notably, Crow Country was not always called such.
It used to be called Condor Country, presumably by its native inhabitants.
Nostalgia is by nature selective, often violent in what it chooses to omit.
To be clear, Crow Country is not exactly a startling work of horror.
It is cute, and at times cuddly and warm like a worn VHS tape.
But its treatment of nostalgia gives it hues, depths, and darknesses.
That is what is so scary about it.
Any game looking to the past to make a future has a lot to learn from it.
More Best Of 2024:
Got a news tip or want to contact us directly?
