Released in May 2024, Crow Country was developed and published by SFB Games, a studio that consists entirely of two brothers. Crow Country is just one example of a larger trend toward “cozy horror,” a less-scary experience inspired by retro survival horror games. Conscript, Signalis, and the recently released Fear the Spotlight, the first game published by cinematic horror juggernaut Blumhouse, are recent games that have taken inspiration from the mechanics and style of older survival horror titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, playing up the retro design and applying those features in new, less-frightening ways. The cozy horror genre is newly emerging and has already taken many forms, though they have primarily featured atmospheric horror-themed worlds that only evoke moderate tension in the play experience. I am particularly interested in the relationship between the newly emerging cozy horror genre, a name that invites players to cathartically confront an otherwise impenetrable space, and the traditional survival horror it both draws inspiration from and experientially subverts.

Crow Country takes place in an abandoned amusement park, located just outside Atlanta, GA, following a scandalous injury on one of the rides. The game takes mechanical and aesthetic inspiration from classic survival horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. The three central features of traditional survival horror—fixed cameras, low-polygon geometry, and a gameplay loop that emphasizes careful exploration and backtracking—remain in Crow Country (like other contemporary returns to survival horror), yet the game is nonetheless much less “scary” than the classic titles. Despite its roots in survival horror, the game is explicitly identified with a cozy and nostalgic atmosphere by reviewers, and I’m inclined to agree. We might cite the game’s setting and subject, an amusement park overrun by sentient malicious animatronic animals, as the pivotal component in remediating these properties to the cozy genre. Though Five Nights at Freddy’s also features similar animatronic animals and is considered to be scary. So, why does a once genre-defining set of features now produce a radically different affect than it once did, and why is that affect increasingly desirable in the industry, as evidenced by Blumhouse’s investment in Fear the Spotlight and the growing popular retro survival horror genre? To answer this, it is necessary to consider those original properties and consider how they are being remediated.

Unlike most action games, which feature movable cameras placed over the protagonist’s shoulder or in the position of the eyes, early survival horror set cameras in a fixed position, sometimes tracking along with the character’s movement. This view functioned much like a surveillance camera, looking down from above, monitoring the protagonist, and swapping from various feeds as they entered into different areas. The low-polygon geometry established a type of uncanny vision in which the surface of the game world was rendered in high definition (relative to the capabilities of the hardware at the time) yet not fully detailed. The player could see into the world clearly, but they could not fully make out its features. In other words, the image was crisp and cleanly rendered, but only in terms of larger geometric surfaces. Although this rendering approach was likely a product of necessity that was brought about by the graphical limitations of early gaming machines, the aesthetic was deployed alongside other features that did intentionally heighten the illegibility of the game world, like fog or darkness. The result is an uncanniness by which the world is seen but not clear, is familiar but unrecognizable. Finally, these games are ludically unique, deploying labyrinthine-level design requiring players to move back and forth through confusing areas. Players must explore expansive locations, gathering equipment like keys or weapons, before retracing their steps to deploy new equipment in prior locations. Along the way, enemies block paths and must be defeated or avoided to progress. Because materials like ammunition and health packs are finite, players must venture into dangerous new areas and avoid new threats to gain the needed materials needed to survive prior locations. The result is a destabilizing affect as players would be constantly discovering new areas and retracing their steps to fully explore old ones.

Although Crow Country applies similar game design features of traditional survival horror, their application in a contemporary format takes a different form. Firstly, our view is much expanded from that of traditional survival horror. We remain fixed in place, looking down from above, though we are situated above the game world, removed from the space. In traditional survival horror, the camera was placed within the space, involving the player within the world. Furthermore, empty black space clearly defines each room in Crow Country, marking its perimeter from the surrounding area. Only by entering another area does the view shift, as each new room is similarly set apart and defined by a perimeter. By shifting the view in this way, Crow Country gives the player more safety, removing them from the world and delineating the space of threat. In traditional SH games, the threat remains ever present, immediate to the player’s space, and persistently just out of view. This means that by rendering a full space connected to outside areas (unlike Crow Country), there remains a persistent possibility of danger beyond view, perhaps even in the player's virtual position.

Secondly, the game’s aesthetic is fundamentally distinct in a contemporary context. Original SH games utilized large geometric surfaces as a necessity, making use of other tools to enhance the opaqueness of the in-game spaces. Here, players will immediately identify this aesthetic as retro, dated, and distinct. Having seen high-fidelity games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill remakes, players immediately perceive Crow Country as having lost a degree of verisimilitude. Not only is the game visually low fidelity, it is identifiably and intentionally unrealistic, a recognizable borrowing from the past, hollowing the game of its potential fright as a present danger. Furthermore, the aesthetic is applied in a retroactive sense, meaning the forms are sharper and surfaces cleaner than before. The game looks as though a pixelation filter has been applied, making it clear that the forms exist as we see them, and they are only mildly distorted. In the case of traditional survival horror, our view was marked by uncertainty, as the low resolution served to abstract the flat geometry of the world, suggesting a perpetual inaccuracy to our view or even a diegetic distortion of the world. Not only did the game world appear distorted to us, but it was perceivably distorted in its very fabric.

Finally, Crow Country adheres closely to the gameplay loop of the traditional SH games. Players navigate back and forth through areas, collecting and using materials as they explore and revisit places in the park. The primary deviation comes in the form of an interconnectedness of the levels, not found in prior titles. As players progress in Crow Country, new areas reveal hidden paths to prior areas, making it increasingly easy to revisit places found early in the game. In older titles, players needed to backtrack through extensive sequences of rooms to solve puzzles with newly discovered equipment. This restructuring underscores the ludic experience that players are playing a game in a handcrafted world. In total, we may say that the changes in Crow Country serve to reduce the dread of the gaming experience relative to traditional survival horror experiences.

What value does this “cozy horror” introduce? Survival horror games have historically investigated the idea of the return, particularly to spaces and experiences. For instance, the Silent Hill games depict protagonists returning to towns from their past, only to find themselves lost in the now unfamiliar space. I argue that contemporary SH games are in line with this investment in return, now utilizing the retro media properties to produce for the player a “return” to the traditional experience of playing and experiencing survival horror games. Games like Crow Country regularly and explicitly draw attention to their retro features, but in so doing, they both exaggerate the mediation and reduce its immersive effects. Because the game emphasizes its retro features, they serve less to mediate us into the game world and more into a state of returning. The interaction with the medium now supersedes interaction with the game world. The modification to these traditional structures does not flatten the game world entirely; rather, it remediates it. Now, players return to a familiar place with a degree of comfort. “Oh, I’ve been here before,” they may say as they revisit memories of play. But rather than feel the dread experienced by the games’ protagonists, we cannot be frightened by the return to the retro aesthetic because we can no longer immediately encounter the genre as we once did. Due to the emphasized mediation, we now face it from a distance, as if viewing (or playing) the genre in a museum, sterilized and harmless, only producing fear insofar as they can reproduce an affect of fear by mimicking older forms. Thus, Crow Country, like many other contemporary survival horror games, functions as a cathartic window to the past, a reflection on the nature of media, a revisitation of experiences of fear.

Surely not every contemporary survival horror game establishes this relationship with the player, even retro-inspired ones. Worth considering are the remakes of traditional survival horror games like Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill 2, which take recognizable worlds and rebuild them as modern, graphically impressive, high-fidelity games. How do they integrate the retro while retaining a frightening sense of immediacy? Surely there are also games that retain retro aesthetics while producing fear. How do they do so? What of the distinct entries in the cozy horror genre are games like Cult of the Lamb or Dredge, which present horror aesthetics in the format of farming and fishing simulators, respectively?

In an industrial sense, industrial interest in the cozy horror affect is clear: developers can remain actively affiliated with the horror genre while creating a novel and enjoyable experience for players on a relatively small budget. Horror games with mass appeal can be expensive to make, as evidenced by the aforementioned remakes, especially when pursuing contemporary visual styles. Frightening games risk alienating or gatekeeping players who struggle to remain actively engaged in an intense experience, particularly one that prioritizes dread (which can be intentionally slow, confusing, and frustrating) over play. Crow Country signals a new approach to the survival horror genre, one that emphasizes its own mediation to create a new, reflective and cathartic, relationship to the player. And this approach may help explain the increased industrial and audience interest in the “cozy horror” genre.