Children of the Sun [PC]

[fuse]

Pleasantly short turn-around between when this first got announced and its release. Sniper/puzzle thing with a distinctly grungy presentation, published by Devolver. Been playing this on the Deck and I'm liking it quite a lot.



You start a level being able to run either way on a two dimensional track that often bends around the perimeter of the environment but keeps you safe as you peek through your rifle, zoom in and out, mark enemies, and generally plot your course. Soon as you fire your first shot though it's game on - assuming it hits a target you're then back into aiming your next shot, just it's now from the bullet's current position, being steered by some kind of psychic power rather than being from your character's rifle. This one bullet needs to take down every enemy in a stage, so as soon as you miss one target or find yourself having picked off a target too remote to get you back to another, it's time to start again.

Some of the shooting comes with more traditional challenge as targets start being more mobile, but the more crucial angle is definitely in first identifying your targets and then working out the puzzle of which order you can deal with them. You're slowly given additions to the basic gameplay, like being able to offer minor course correction, and then a complete course correction that's possible in a more limited capacity, but the basic premise remains the same. Some stages come with bonus rewards if you meet certain goals (an early, basic example: shoot every target in the head) but all are scored based on a number of different factors come with online leaderboards for each.

Personally quite like how it looks, but it is a dark and quite gritty-looking game that might put some off. The audio goes hand in hand with this too, with less of a soundtrack to speak of and more waves of distortion and feedback running alongside the percussive hits as you shoot and puncture your targets. Again, this works for me, but might not for everyone.

Planning to see this one through, will report back as I play more.

[fuse]

Eventually made it back to finish this. Mechanically it doesn't evolve much over the course of the game - shoot across enough distance and you can accelerate a shot to pierce armoured foes, and you later learn how to course-correct your shots - and there are a few enemy types that get introduced later on, but it works just fine focusing the difficulty curve on the layouts themselves, leaving the burden on you to get more devious with your routing. I was particularly impressed by the set piece of one level later on that I don't want to directly spoil, but...

->Open Spoiler<-

Chasing a convoy of vehicles in your own, sniping at them out of the window? Having one skid out as you take out a driver, or perhaps just aiming at the petrol tank to blow the whole car, all while you're lining up the next one? Very ****ing cool.

There's a story in there but it's not exactly in your face; the brief moments it does dabble in the narrative don't spell things out too obviously, and while it's just as easy to focus on the shooting, the locations and context of your missions does a good job informing you, with some nice neat little minor details hidden in the environments.

Liked this a lot. Grungy, focused, fun.