Something is seriously wrong out in this murky, backwater of rural America. A cult has entrenched itself in the area, killing all who oppose it, and seemingly possessing its followers with some kind of mysterious energy that makes their eyes glow yellow. Strange lights and anomalies warp the skies, while rocks, cars, and other objects sometimes hover ominously above the ground. Meanwhile, a creepy-masked sniper circles the compounds of the Children of the Sun cult, setting up that perfect shot to kill all enemies in sight with a single bullet.
But this isn’t any old bullet. For reasons that may later emerge through Children of the Sun’s wordless grindhouse-style story, this bullet is imbued with magical properties. Namely, when the bullet splatters someone, it can fire itself again from the point where that person died, letting you direct it to the next enemy, and the next one, and the next one, until all enemies are dead and you get to witness a satisfying scrawl showing you your bullet’s zig-zaggy journey through the flesh of your enemies.
Super-Shot
This is Children of the Sun, and in its closest analog is probablySuperhot—another game that puts a puzzly twist on the shooter genre, and relies heavily on slow-motion as well as acute awareness of enemy positionings which, after plenty of trial-and-error, you come to master. Just like in Superhot one hit kills you, here it’s Game Over if your solitary bullet hits a surface instead of an enemy (with a few exceptions, like car gas tanks and critters like birds and fish, which you may then use as fresh launch points for your precious bullet).
Make no mistake though, Children of the Sun is its own beast, with an smooth synthy soundtrack and dark, distinctive aesthetic that falls somewhere between Killer7 and the underrated ultraviolent neon-soaked Nicholas Cage flick, MANDY, with a nod to those warbly PS1-style graphics that are all the rage right now. It’s a bit of mood piece, in other words.
Children of the Sun has plenty of potential to scratch that compelling, ‘one screw-up and you’re out’ itch of classics like Superhot andHotline Miami.
Your actual character can only move left and right, circling around enemy compounds so that you can mark enemies, get a sense of the layout, and figure out the best spot from which to take the first shot. After your bullet leaves your gun, you essentially become the bullet. For the first few missions, after you launch the bullet following a kill, you need to aim true as it only flies in straight lines, but a few missions in an interesting mechanic gets introduced where you can slightly alter the trajectory of the bullet, letting you, say, fire a shot out the window on a higher floor, then curve it down towards an enemy on the ground. And it’s super-satisfying when you land one of these impossible shots.
You’ll inevitably fail a lot at first, and there is a bit of frustration in the fact that from the character’s perspective before that first shot, after a few levels you can’t possibly know what the best first shot to take is. There’s just that bit less visibility than with comparable games like Hotline Miami and Superhot, and hopefully that’s something that can be addressed down the line.
But once you get to grips with things, the loop is great fun, and it’s extremely rewarding when you nail that perfect bullet run. My standout moment (recorded in the clip below) was actually almost entirely improvised. On a level with around six enemies hanging around outside and inside a barn—some of them praying to Lord Knows What god or force that’s causing all the chaos around here—I marked several enemies, but then accidentally fired off a bullet at an enemy’s head before completing my reconnaissance.
So I rolled with it. My bullet darted through enemies' skulls around the yard, and flew into the barn to take out a couple of praying ones. But the mission didn’t end, because it turned out that there was still an enemy remainingsomewhere, unbeknownst to me. A hot moment passed when I wanted if it was time to hit the ‘Restart’ button, but then I saw that a bird I marked earlier was about to fly past a small upper window in the barn. I managed to curve my bullet out there to hit the poor birdo, from where I had a clearer view and could see the final enemy hiding inside the barn. I fired the shot, and that was it; it was a rewarding, beautiful moment of thinking on my feet in a game that by and large is focused around careful shot planning.
Another layer that popped up later in the preview was building up the ability to completely re-aim your bullet mid-flight. Later enemies have certain weakspots, and if you hit those on two enemies in a row, you’ll get one chance to completely change your bullet’s trajectory mid-flight, as opposed to the usual slight redirection.This will be the only way to complete certain challenges, and in one level where I took out a guard behind a riot shield, I then fired the bullet straight out the window, right-clicked, then got it to do a full 180 to go straight for the skull of an enemy who was on the level beneath the one I’d just killed.
Surreal Snipefest
Children of the Sun has plenty of potential to scratch that compelling, ‘one screw-up and you’re out’ itch of classics like Superhot andHotline Miami. There’s a leaderboard system, so you get to see how well you do compared to other players, and also what looks like a stylish if sparingly told graphic-novel-style story that pops up between missions, giving some context for your mysterious magical hero’s revenge quest. Oh, and there’s an utterly bizarre level at one point that’s kind of like a Pac-Man mini-game, prefaced by the words, “I just killed a man, now I’m horny.” So expect the unexpected.
Children of the Sun is definitely a weird one, but the right kind of weird. There’s no release date yet, but keep tabs on it if you like your fever-dream violence and dream of being a bullet (we all have those, right?).
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