Who are you really, Mara Forest?
"If anyone asks... my name is Mara. Mara Forest."
Crow Country
is a 2024 Retraux Survival Horror video game by SFB Games.
The game takes place in 1990, and centers around Special Agent Mara Forest as she investigates a missing person report for one Edward Crow. The report brings her to Crow Country, Crow's long-abandoned amusement park. Mara has to not only navigate the old, locked-up attractions to find her quarry, but also must tangle with unknown horrors as this investigation turns out to go even deeper that it appears...
The game's graphics are notable for faithfully emulating the graphics of early Fifth Generation 3D games with low polygon characters against a pre-rendered, static background, such as Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VII, but with the twist that said "pre-rendered, static background" is actually a 3D environment and and instead of being stuck at one angle, the player is given control over the camera.
This game contains the following tropes:
- Amusement Park of Doom: Crow Country, having been closed down for two years due to an accident that injured a parkgoer. It turns out that the injury wasn't related to anything in the park, but instead related to one of the Guests.
- Anti-Villain: Edward Crow, although when you finally meet him and he explains everything, it could be hardly argued if he was ever a villain at all, even if he was blinded by greed. When he came to the realization that his harvesting of gold from the Roots has destabilized the time portal which humans of the future used to travel back in time and warn humankind of 20th century that they need to change before something bad happens to Earth (thus dooming the time travelers to becoming disfigured and mutated into monstrous abominations), he is horrified by what he had done and sets out to create a cure for the bacteria that the time travelers brought with them and infected several people including the protagonist, Mara/Elaine. He makes enough cure for everyone but himself, arguing that he deserved his fate after what he had done. The last thing he does is jump into the pool where the time portal is located, but not before asking Elaine to kill him if he returns, since he knows he will become a monstrous abomination like everyone else who uses the portal.
- Apocalypse How: Total Extinction; It's implied by the note taken from the first Guest's testimony that Earth becomes completely uninhabitable by the year 2106., which is why the humankind of that era set up the time portal and used Roots as stabilizer antennae for it, to travel into the past and warn humankind to change before they ruin the planet.
- Arc Number: 2106 serves as one, as it's seen all throughout the game. At first, it's believed to be a code, but an Apocalyptic Log at the end of the game reveals it's a year: the year the world would become an uninhabitable ruin should nothing change.
- Bear Trap: Several of these are scattered around the park, and are hazardous to both you and the monstrous Guests roaming about.
- Body Horror: The various monsters inhabiting the amusement park, called "Guests" in the various records, start out roughly bipedal, but gradually get more and more monstrous the further you progress.
- When you finally find Mr. Crow, his body is covered in bloody, infected sores, the result of continuous close contact with the infected Guests. Even more so when he willingly dives into the Pool and ends up a mutated horror that Elaine has to put down.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: The more you damage the Final Boss in the Pool, the more the Pool's water turns red, and it's solidly crimson when you land the final blow.
- Crate Expectations: Wooden crates and glass bottles containing supplies are scattered around, and Mara has to break them open in order to get the goodies inside, although there is a chance a crate can turn up empty.
- Cutting the Knot: A number of the game's puzzles have hidden alternate solutions that are much faster and often consist of this, both a case of Developer's Foresight and potentially for the sake of making speedruns more entertaining to watch.
- The puzzle in the Crypt can be solved by just shooting the clock on the coffin animatronic , and the Guest who bursts out of the wall can be easily dispatched by running past him and pulling the support out of the gate, which will cause it to fall and crush him before he even finishes his introduction animation.
- The Gold Key can potentially be obtained as soon as you enter the room it's in if you have the flamethrower, as you can just shoot the head of the animatronic and then burn the resin with the flamethrower, no acid needed.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mara has her moments of dry wit, especially in her description narrations.
- Disney Villain Death: When Marvin has Tolman and Mara at gunpoint, a flying duct cover (courtesy of Julie) knocks Marvin off of a walkway and into the abyss.
- Door to Before: A key part of the game is unlocking and removing barricades to open areas up.
- Do Not Run with a Gun: Mara can move or shoot, but she can't do both at the same time.
- Dumpster Dive: Mara can rummage around in the various trashcans in the park for items, although sometimes it just gives you garbage.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Roots, from what the notes and memos describe, seems to be some kind of unknown growth coming from beneath the land, and has a connection to the horrible monsters roaming the park. It turns out that the Roots aren't Eldritch at all, instead being "Calibration Antennas" for the Pool below.
- Evil Smells Bad: Every Guest is described as stinking like an infected wound. Justified, as due to their bacteria causing advanced necrosis, every Guest effectively is a full-body infected wound.
- Explosive Barrel: Medium-sized barrels in the traditional red can be shot for explosive damage, especially helpful when taking down larger Guests.
- Face Death with Dignity: Edward Crow has also been infected by the Guests, with his infection further along. He resolves to instead plunge into the Pool and see what's on the other side, but not before asking Elaine to kill him if he mutates.
- Fetch Quest: Mara has to obtain several key items in order to progress further into the park, and some items require others to obtain.
- Final Boss: After diving into The Pool at the end of the game to find out what's on the other side and requesting Elaine to kill him should he mutate, a mutated Edward Crow serves as this.
- Gameplay Grading: The game tallies up a score based on your healing items used, hints spent, secrets found, and lives used. Getting a B rank unlocks the Crow Bar, A the Crownade launcher, and S the Crow Wings
- Gold Fever: Edward Crow's father purchased the land of Condor Country after he and young Edward found parts of the Roots sticking up from the ground, and he and Edward spent years harvesting the Roots for the gold contained within. However, "mining" this gold turned out to have far-reaching consequences.
- Hint System: Has this in the form of a fortune teller attraction close to the entrance of the amusement park.
- Insistent Terminology: Early notes show Edward Crow insists on referring to his captives as 'Guests', to Tolman's discomfort. Crow's half-right to do so, considering said captives are mutated ex-humans.
- Laser Sight: Mara can obtain laser sights for her Handgun, Shotgun, and Magnum to assist in aiming.
- Locked Door: Mara's process is stymied by several, and obtaining the right keys (or other door-opening implements) are required for her to progress.
- Mercy Kill: Edward Crow asks Elaine to kill him should he emerge from The Pool as a monstrousity. He does and Elaine goes through with it.
- My Name Is ???: The people that Mara runs into during her exploration of the park are introduced as something along the lines of "Man" or "Woman" before Mara learns their name. Players might not notice that when Mara talks to one character, their name is already filled in.
- Notice This: A tooltip will pop up whenever Mara is close to an item or something she can interact with. The tooltip can describe the object ("It's an [X]") or not ("What's this?").
- Not So Above It All: For being a special agent with a knack for firearms, Mara is pretty silly. She talks to and sympathizes with the various figures and animatronics in the park, thinks a park worker's collection of dirty mags and bikini posters is gross, and dislikes coffee and is "not allowed" to smoke. Justified when you realize she's a 17-year-old girl, and has spent the past two years hospitalized to boot— of course she's a little immature.
- Percussive Maintenance: Since she doesn't have any change, Mara can get items from the scattered vending machines by kicking them. Sometimes they spit out items, other times they don't.
- Poison Mushroom: Aside from the literal poisonous mushrooms kept alongside safe mushrooms in the Mushroom King puzzle, miscolored ammo and medical pickups begin to spawn around the park later on. Attempting to pick one up causes it to explode in your face, dealing damage.
- Portal Pool: Notes and memos describe "The Pool," where the Guests originated from. The final confrontation with Edward Crow is at The Pool itself, after Edward decides to travel through it.
- The Reveal:
- The Guests inhabiting the park are, or were, humans that traveled through the Pool. Due to Edward harvesting the Roots, the mechanism for the Pool was irreversibly damaged, causing the process to warp and mutate the hapless travelers. The more Edward harvested the Roots, the worse the degradation became, until the travelers were more blobs than people.
- Mara is in fact Elaine Marshall, the girl at the center of the incident that closed Crow Country. She's escaped from the hospital to have a final showdown with Edward Crow before he dies. Her ID belongs to a real cop that she waylaid, and she's altered it for her cover identity.
- Save Point: Fireplaces in various safe rooms. Mara has a special line of dialogue that occurs before going to the save screen.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Mara gets into Crow Country by shooting out the padlock on the front door. The other locks deeper inside require other means to open.
- Shout-Out:
- The inactive "cyborg crow" in the unfinished area on the west side of the park was, according to the note found with it, inspired by the designer's late girlfriend's love of The Terminator.
- Shows Damage: As Mara takes damage, her clothes get increasingly bloodstained, and she will visibly clutch at her wounds and limp.
- Songs in the Key of Lock: The piano in the Haunted Manor opens up different paintings based on the note sequence played. The panel to restore power to the elevators is hidden behind a similar lock.
- Standard FPS Guns: Mara starts with a Handgun, but can later find a Shotgun and a Magnum pistol. She can also get her hands on a Flamethrower, and can also toss grenades at enemies.
- Story Breadcrumbs: Assorted notes and memos give backstory and context, and also provide needed information such as safe codes or the location of key items.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Everyone who's even slightly wounded by the Guests ends up violently ill within a short period of time. It's not often dealt with in time travel stories, but the Guests are from the early 22nd century, and as such, carry entirely different and hostile bacteria to what humans have in 1990.
- Edward and his buddy Marvin had a fortune in ridiculously pure gold, but couldn't find a way to sell more than a bit of it at a time without raising questions that they didn't want to answer. Marvin's solution was to acquire a gold mine in Brazil as a cover operation, but it fell through, which left Marvin on the hook for a federal investigation. When you reach Edward's office in Crow Country, it features a floor lamp and a statue of his late wife that are both made from pure gold, for lack of anything better to do with it.
- Tank Controls: Much like the old Resident Evil games, Mara is controlled tank-style.
- Technically Living Zombie: The Guests and their variants are all infected with an incurable and necrotizing bacteria, and all of them have lost their minds. It turns out that the bacteria, while dangerous and responsible for their flesh rotting, is not the reason for their horrific mutations.
- Teleporter Accident: This is revealed to be the reason why the Guests ended up like this. They were originally humans from the year 2106 who used a Time Travel portal to the past. Unfortunately, the stabilizers on the other side were the roots, which were damaged due to the gold harvesting, and as such those who went through came out as abominations, which only got even more grotesque as more of the Roots were harvested as the teleportation got even less stable.
- Time Travel: Revealed to be the source of the mysterious "Guests" that keep emerging from underground; they're actually humans from the year 2106. who have returned to the past to warn humankind that the Earth will become uninhabitable in the future, however because of Edward Crow (and his father before him) harvesting gold from the "Roots" which are revealed to be stabilizer antennae for the time portal, the humans that pass through the portal are disfigured into inhuman abominations.
- Unreliable Expositor: Mara is not a special agent like she claims, nor is her name even real. She is actually a girl named Elaine, one of the victims infected by the guests, who escaped the hospital so that she could confront Edward Crow for starting the whole mess in the first place.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Edward Crow thought he was just mining some unusually-generated gold. He didn't know what the Roots actually were, and what his continuous harvesting of the structures wrought until it was too late.
- Utility Weapon: The Flamethrower can serve as a weapon and is also used to solve a few puzzles.
- Violation of Common Sense: The Mushroom King's Feast has a table of mushrooms, with two plaques indicating poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms. It turns out that you have to eat all the mushrooms and use antidotes and medkits to tank the damage incurred from the poisonous ones to solve the puzzle.
- Volleying Insults: When Mara descends to the Roots, she finds Marvin and Tolman standing by one of the extraction points. They proceed to give exposition to Mara while exchanging insults with each other.
- The Virus: The Guests are covered in highly infectious bacteria, and getting attacked has the risk of getting infected. The infection is incurable by modern medicine, and Elaine had decided to escape the hospital and confront Edward Crow before she ultimately succumbs to it. Luckily for her and the other surviving people, Edward Crow had been developing a cure for the virus and has just enough for everyone, except him.
- Wham Line: Twofold, when Mara catches up with Edward Crow:
- When Mara finds an intercom and activates it, we see that Edward wasn't fooled by her disguise.
Mara: Mr. Crow? I'm here. I'm in your lab.Crow: Hello, Elaine.- She later receives a small, folded piece of paper containing the words spoken by the first guest. Examining this item in the inventory shows why the Guests were coming through the Pool.
Item Description: 2106 uninhabitable ruin we come 1988 last chance warn stop change
"Staring into the flames, I feel something"
"It's a curious mixture of hope and dread."
"Maybe everything will be okay."
"And maybe it won't."
— Elaine Marshall
