Children of the Sun Review: The Cult Hit of the Year

Much like there are thought to be just seven main story plots, it might seem as if we’ve already uncovered every possible video game genre. Yet after four decades of gaming evolution, a bold new experience defiantly smashes preconceptions. Children of the Sun is a genre-blurring masterstroke blending the cerebral challenges of puzzle games with the bloody catharsis of the shooter genre – all wrapped in a provocative, neon-soaked package dripping with style.

At its core lurks a deliciously dark premise: you inhabit The Girl, a vengeance-fueled force of nature armed with a sniper rifle, psychic powers, and enough homicidal rage to reduce cities to rubble. Her mission? To dismantle the ominous cult that stole everything from her, eviscerating every last member from lowly initiate to their sadistic leader.

While the narrative Setup hooks you immediately, Children of the Sun’s true ingenuity lies in its utterly unique gameplay. You’ll decimate cultists not through traditional shooting sections, but by telekinetically guiding a single bullet through intricately designed killing fields. With breathtaking slow-motion sequences, you choreograph each shot’s lethal path, violently zig-zagging from target to target in gory unison.

Cult of Vengeance

In keeping with its bold, unconventional approach, Children of the Sun opts for an evocative minimalism when portraying The Girl’s tragic backstory. There’s no verbose exposition dump – just brief, haunting cutscenes illustrated in a striking hand-drawn style. These fleeting vignettes provide sliced glimpses into the cult’s sadistic actions and The Girl’s all-consuming thirst for vengeance.

The lack of explicit dialogue leaves aspects of the narrative open to interpretation, but the broad strokes are clear. We bear witness to The Cult’s atrocities through disturbing flashes – human silhouettes consumed by searing yellow light, distorted screams echoing from shadowy chambers. As the levels unfurl, these fragmented scenes slowly reveal how the group’s depraved leader mercilessly slaughtered The Girl’s loved ones, catalyzing her relentless quest for retribution.

While open to analysis, the game doesn’t bury its blunt motivations. The Girl is enraged, weaponizing abilities she never understood alongside an infinitely restocked supply of piping-hot rage. Each hand-drawn interlude between missions captures her apoplectic fury more vividly than any amount of voice acting could. We see the snarling contortions of her mask as warm spurts of crimson blossom across the frame. She is an unrepentant force of telekinetic destruction.

Despite its svelte story, Children of the Sun masterfully sells its protagonist’s single-minded mission by showing, not telling. The girl’s rampage seems less like cold, calculated murder and more an extension of primal anguish. Each bloody massacre is as cathartic for us as it is for her. We share in the venting of trauma’s agonizing weight.

One Deadly Shot

While its narrative leans into transgressive symbolism, Children of the Sun’s gameplay core is shockingly simple yet endlessly engrossing. Each level tasks you with exterminating every last cultist using a single bullet fired from The Girl’s high-powered rifle. This isn’t a twitch shooter though – it’s an intricate, bullet-bending puzzler inspired by supernatural sniping.

With time slowing to a crawl post-trigger pull, you wield telekinetic abilities to steer that solitary round through a sprawling murder ballet. Ricocheting it from target to target, you’ll advance by mapping out sadistically satisfying bullet paths that eviscerate entire enemy compounds. Sometimes you’ll need to get creative, detonating explosive gas tanks or slamming into pigeon statues to redirect momentum. Other times, sheer precision is key as you thread an impossible needle between swaying hostiles.

Children of the Sun’s brilliance stems from its steadily expanding arsenal of bullet-bending techniques. You’ll start by simply riding your bullet in a straight line, pinballing between foes. Before long, subtle trajectory nudges are introduced, allowing you to gently curve shots around obstacles or track mobile targets. The real brain teasers arise when you unlock abilities like velocity boosts for shattering armor or weak point strikes that bank extra trajectory shifts.

Pulling off these feats demands carefully mapping out each zig-zag in your bullet’s sanguine flight path. You’ll need to account for not just spacing and timing, but the unique requirements of different enemy types. Basic cultists merely need pulped, but armored behemoths require building up severe momentum from a distance. Psionically-gifted foes can deflect your shot without a well-aimed weak point hit to bypass their defenses.

The environmental puzzles too are devilishly creative, from setting off a chain reaction of explosion to banking ricochets off somersaulting vehicles. One particularly devious scenario has you reflect your bullet off a flock of birds to scout out hidden targets. With each new ability and obstacle, the potential for Galactic Cerebral matter splattered across the screen compounds dramatically.

Just when you think you’ve mastered every telekinetic trick, Children of the Sun evolves again. One late-game level builds to a jaw-dropping crescendo where you have to juggle multiple mechanics simultaneously, riding your bullet through a blistering slo-mo gauntlet of swerves, speed shifts and re-directs in one nonstop, brain-melting symphony of destruction. It’s absolutely euphoric when you finally solve these devious deathtraps.

A Stylized Nightmare

While its gameplay exhilarates with a novel high-concept, Children of the Sun’s aesthetics are equally arresting. The game’s visuals drip with a surreal, gritty style that perfectly encapsulates its nightmarish tone. Thick inkblot shadows drench hostile territories in deep blacks and purples, their inky miasma pierced by jarring slashes of blinding neon.

This psychedelic palette simultaneously lures and repulses. Lurid splashes of yellows and crimsons ooze from fresh bullet wounds. The piercing glows of swaying street lamps and crackling flames seem to flicker with unearthly menace. It’s a hellish fever dream, all the more discomfiting when juxtaposed against the game’s grimy backdrops of derelict motels, shadowy forests, and urban blight.

Reinforcing this austere ambiance is Children of the Sun’s haunting, minimalist soundscape. The discordant echoes of creaking metal and wailing sirens mingle with an uneasy ambient hum that ratchets up the dread factor. There’s no bombastic score to dilute the harrowing atmosphere – just the wet crunch of shattered bone accompanying each laconically stuttered gunshot.

This restraint in audio and visuals coheres into a singularly oppressive experience. Color and sound become extensions of your bullet’s arc, with bellowing smoke trails and ricocheting noise marking each gut-churning impact. By employing such an evocative style with chilling understatement, Children of the Sun distills its grim premise into a visceral onslaught for the senses.

Embracing the Highscore Chase

While Children of the Sun’s compact campaign lasts just 4-6 hours, the game’s scoring system and online leaderboards inject ample incentives for replaying its devious killing fields. Each level awards points not just for completing objectives, but for factors like accuracy, efficiency, multi-kills, and even specifically targeted body parts. Did you cap that cultist directly in the groin for maximum indignity? Congratulations, bonus points!

This scoring granularity means no two playthroughs will net identical numbers, driving perfectionists to keep retrying for higher ranks. After completing a level, you can watch a striking visualization of your bullet’s full sanguine flight path – a strangely hypnotic reward in itself, but also revealing potential optimizations for next time.

While leaderboard supremacy is a solid motivator, it’s really the only major incentive for repeat playthroughs beyond improving your own scores. Some unlockable rewards or gameplay modifiers could have added longevity. But for score-chasers hell-bent on leaving no cultist un-pulverized, Children of the Sun is an undeniably replayable “one more go” indulgence.

A Polished, If Imperfect, Bullet

From a technical standpoint, Children of the Sun delivers a smooth, well-optimized experience with only minor hiccups. The game’s striking visuals maintain a solid frame rate even when the action gets particularly kinetic. Loading times are also snappy, keeping you immersed in the supernatural violence.

That said, there are a few niggling issues worth mentioning. While hardly game-breaking, the lack of full controller support can hamstring players wanting to tackle Children of the Sun’s more cerebral mini-games and menus with a gamepad. You’ll likely need to swap between mouse/keyboard and controller on the fly.

More bafflingly, the developers made the odd choice of depicting bullets in slow-motion as full cartridges, complete with casing and primer still attached. It’s a minor graphical nitpick, but one that shatters immersion every time you linger on the clearly un-aerodynamic projectile tumbling through the air.

These quibbles are relatively small potatoes compared to the overall level of finesse on display. While not quite completely polished from end-to-end, Children of the Sun looks, runs, and feels impressively refined for a concise indie project – even if the bullet physics could use a brief refresher course.

A Bloody, Brilliant Masterstroke

With its audacious supernatural sniping mechanics and brazenly stylish presentation, Children of the Sun is that rarest of experiences – a title that genuinely feels revolutionary. From the moment you start psychically choreographing your first bullet’s sadistic dance, the game ensnares you in an intoxicating, gore-soaked trance.

The sheer ingenuity of guiding a single shot through entire enemy encampments via steadily accrued telekinetic abilities is endlessly engrossing. Just when you think you’ve mastered every grisly technique, Children of the Sun throws new brain-teasers like armored psychic enemies or multi-layered environmental puzzles to solve. Each resolved conundrum delivers a perverse rush of satisfaction.

But the game doesn’t just captivate on a gameplay level. Its eerie, neon-tinged aesthetics and haunting atmospherics coalesce into a singularly oppressive tone that reinforces the narrative’s bleak premise. The Girl’s plight is communicated with staggering emotional heft conveyed through sparse, disturbing vignettes and an indelible artistic flair.

While its compact length and lack of substantive endgame content may dull its replayability factor beyond score-chasing, the core experience is utterly unmissable for anyone craving a refreshingly novel romp of sadistic sniping. Splattering goons has never felt this cathartic – or this mind-bendingly creative. Like the best cult classics, Children of the Sun leaves an indelibly visceral impression.

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