It’s not uncommon these days that a game gets overshadowed in a busy release season. Sometimes game release dates just happen to overlap, and in an era of ballooning AAA prices and ever-expanding length to justify those price tags, there’s only so much time and attention to go around.
The latest victim of this phenomenon is Children of the Sun, a phenomenal puzzle game where a nameless girl wages a one-woman war against a strange cult armed with only a single bullet in her sniper rifle. After the bullet hits a target, whether that be the brain of an unsuspecting cultist, the gas tank of a car, or any other environmental hazard, she can redirect it in any direction, ultimately clearing entire encampments with just a single shot.
It sounds simple on paper, but several environmental factors and unique abilities make Children of the Sun one of the most inventive puzzle/shooter hybrids in recent memory. On top of that, the game is dripping with style, a sopping-wet assault on the senses with smeared colors and clashing pinks and yellows that scream among the silence of rainy forests and moody nights.
The story is told without words, letting the art speak for itself. The short cutscenes whizz past like a bullet and hit just as hard, acting as brief flashbacks while our sniper moves to her next location. They reveal just enough to clue you into why the protagonist is doing what she’s doing, but the abrasive cuts back to the loading screen where she slowly walks through nothingness on the way to her next target preventing you from peering too deep into memories that have been purposefully locked away.
It toes the line between hyperviolence and horror in the way that the greatest revenge stories do. It constantly reminds me of the criminally underrated 2018 Nicolas Cage flick Mandy, an uncomfortably captivating reflection on loss that also happens to feature a chainsaw duel in its final act. Children of the Sun is “raw as hell” in the best of both ways, raw in the way it presents trauma and raw in the way it lets you warp bullets around corners to nail a triple collateral.
Even with mega indie publisher Devolver Digital‘s backing and a solid critical reception, Children of the Sun is struggling to find an audience. It peaked at just over 200 players on Steam on launch day, and the game is expected to only move a few thousand units within the launch window. Standing next to recent Devolver-published titles like Cult of the Lamb, Inscryption, and Loop Hero, it’s safe to say that it’s underperforming.
It’s a troubling sign for the indie scene, to be sure. Even priced at only $15 with a demo available to catch the attention of potential buyers, Children of the Sun’s metrics aren’t where they deserve to be, especially in a month like April where most people have moved on from March’s RPG titans like Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and need something to kill time until the next major wave of releases in the coming weeks.
If you care about indie gaming or just want something awesome to play, please, give Children of the Sun a shot. Even trying the demo for a few minutes will help get this game the attention that it deserves. When the industry is continually chasing trends, blending genres, and working to create more homogenized products, we need to champion games like Children of the Sun. It’s unapologetically itself, and games with its confidence are a dying breed.
