Hands on with Children of the Sun - Preview
Whenever Devolver Digital get involved with a new game, there is a far chance its going to be something different. However in Children of the Sun, different doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what is going on here, part Sniper Elite, part Wanted, a dash of Killer 7 and even somehow even weirder, this is one shooter that really makes you think.
The story that was provided in the demo I had access to is told in random chunks, so you put it together the more you play. You play the role of The Girl, who seeks revenge for how her life turned out, but this is not someone just mad at the world, but rather mad at a cult who brainwashed her mother and mutilated her father. The scenes you discover take place before each of your missions and as they don’t play out in a standard order, it does get a little confusing, but maybe in the full release, there will be an option to see them in order. That is all the story explanation that I can offer, as again it was a demo and there was only a limited number of missions to enjoy, but enjoy them I did.
The games main hook is that you have to taken down all the members of the cult in the area, with only a single bullet. Once you kill someone, you can then readjust the angle of the shot and send the bullet flying away again. Of course you won’t just shoot blindly, your first step is to recon the area. Whilst doing this you move around the perimeter, scoping out (literally) where the enemies are, marking them whilst you do. Once you have them marked, you need to locate the best place to take your first shot from, because once you shoot you are committed to seeing your plan through. This might sound fairly easy and the first few stages I had were quite so, however it does get trippier when trees, rocks and even cars that didn’t seem to be a problem at first, block your shot.
Cars may not be the end all, as of course they are filled with petrol and if you shoot the fuel tank, they go boom, and blow up any targets within the vicinity. Now this isn’t a shooting gallery, the moment you pop someone’s head off, anyone close enough to see it happen will duck and cover, but thankfully this does happen in slow motion. The later stages in the demo had me trying to line up shots through buildings, around car wrecks and more. This is where things got tricky, at one point I had no clear shot out of a barn that I had managed to find myself inside, but I was convinced it was the only route. In the end and after a half dozen attempts, I found myself using the bird visible through the skylight to get back out.
While I thought I was doing really well there, at the end of each stage is a leaderboard, which tracks the score you earn compared to everyone else. The score is made up of things like how long you took, how many bullets you re-fired and more. When I saw that my score in that barn stage put me at 57th, I was sure there wouldn’t be that much of a difference between my place and 1st and was I wrong. I don’t know how but they were thousands of points ahead and while part of me wanted to rage that it wasn’t fair, another part was saying I could just try again. Failure actually happened to me quite a bit, usually as a result of my rushing to fire the gun, before the target was lined up properly. When you miss, you just get to enjoy the bullet flying towards the edge of the map, without any way of stopping it.
Children of the Sun is a unique game, its sniper elements are going to appeal to some, however its cult storyline may not. Where the fun came in for me was solving each stage in multiple ways, just to see if I could. How the game shapes out once the full version is released, is hard to say at this point, for now though, I am very eager to reload for another go.
The game is currently only for PC and aiming to release sometime in 2024.
