We Didn’t Start The Gunfire
HIGH Pulling off a perfectly-timed string of hits without hesitation.
LOW Where is the last guy on this level?!
WTF The balancing of the last two stages!
It’s been a minute since Hotline Miami came crashing in with its sublimely disturbing tale of bloody, ruthless murder amid twisted conspiracies. It was a tough act to follow, and even its own sequel couldn’t carry the torch of its unnervingly-cathartic action paired with puzzle-like structure. However, Children of the Sun might be considered the next real contender for that crown.
Players star as a nameless teenage girl gifted with immense psychic powers, on the run with her injured father. When he succumbs to his injuries, she goes on an absolute bloodbath against the cult responsible for her abilities, and for mortally wounding her father. With a sniper rifle, she’ll hunt down their leader — a psychopath in sunglasses who apparently thinks he’s Jesus reincarnated, judging by his outfit choices. The cult is terrorizing the local area, so stopping them is arguably the right thing to do… but exacting revenge is still a harrowing task.
Despite how intense the subject is, Children of the Sun is a surprisingly simple shooter. Players are set on a linear, semi-circle perimeter that they can walk back and forth across. While walking the perimeter, they can aim down their scope to mark enemies, and once they’re ready, they pull the trigger and fire a single bullet.
Players then guide their bullet with the heroine’s psychic powers. With each strike, they can pivot it in any direction, chaining an ever-escalating bodycount until every member of the cult is six feet under, all of it achieved with just a mouse. It’s incredibly smooth to control. Other than some balancing limitations for how much each bullet’s arc can be altered, pulling off brutal headshots has never been easier.
Over time, the heroine’s powers evolve to allow for adjusting the shot’s course after it’s fired, first subtly, then more, and the finally upgrade enables a brutal charged shot that requires enough distance to pierce the defense of the heavily-armored enemies.
Wild birds and fish can be used as ‘bonus’ targets that link the bullet into deadly chained hits across great distances, letting the shell effectively leap from one vantage point to the next. Also, clever environmental trickery rewards not only with faster kills, but can lead to achieving bonus objectives themed around each stage. It’s still just killing bad guys, but sometimes with an extra flourish, like using explosive to kill them, or getting two kills with one shot.
I tended to mark every enemy I could see before firing my shot, but the sometimes-frustrating irony is that later stages will hide some enemies in such a way that a player can only find them after their bullet is in the air. Most of the time this works out fairly enough, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few instances when a hidden straggler was just too out of the way, testing my patience.
Nowhere was this more evident than the final two stages. I won’t spoil what happens, but it’s so trial-and-error that it feels built to pad out the runtime and desperately needed a mid-level checkpoint. I totally understand why in smaller stages, with only six to eight targets, that there’s no room for error. Starting over takes seconds. The final stage takes substantially longer, not as a test of skill, but a test of enduring tedium. There are also two weird back-to-back minigames that are mandatory, inspired loosely by Pac-Man and WarioWare. I couldn’t begin to explain why they’re there.
The silver lining to all of this is that most of the frustration is drowned out by wonderful little touches and clever design wrinkles. Without even trying, I binged the entire campaign in one sitting. There were points where it made me feel over the moon with glee at a perfectly-chained series of strikes, and times when the plot left me deeply disconcerted in just the right way.
It’s not gonna be a game for everyone, but for some, it’ll be an unforgettable ride.
Final Score: 9 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Rene Rother and published by Devolver. It is currently available on PC. This copy of Children of the Sun was provided via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Four hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, and it was completed.
Parents: Though not yet rated at the time of review by the ESRB, this game is full of M-level mature content, including Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual References and Use of Drugs. You’re essentially playing a serial killer villain with psychic powers. Everything is both graphically violent and morally ambiguous at best. Though you only kill with a sniper rifle against stylized, low-detail enemies, the context is in no way distanced from the player’s mind. This is not a game for kids.
Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available. Certain enemy designations are indicated by slight color gradient variations when marked by the player. This may cause difficulty in tracking targets for those who are colorblind, though there there are other distinguishing factors to set various enemy types apart.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features limited subtitles, and otherwise relies almost entirely on visual prompts for how to proceed. Regardless, it’s a reasonable experience to play without sound, and I would say that it’s at least near-fully accessible.
Remappable controls: No, the controls are not remappable. The entire game can be played one-handed with a mouse or controller.
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