Children of the Sun Review – One Chance to Rule Them All

That’s how you can simply sum up the essence of the new indie canapé Children of the Sun, in which you have to kill as many as nine people with one shot. Sounds like an action movie? Or maybe a stealth shooter? The genre may surprise you: it’s actually a puzzle game.

• Platform: PC (Steam)
• Date of publication: April 9, 2024
• Developer: Rene Rother
• Publisher: Devolver Digital
• Genre: Puzzle shooter
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Data for download: 4GB
• Game time: 6+ hours
• Price: $14.99

Each level is a new puzzle, each level can give you a lot of trouble. Your heroine with a broken soul, but also a sharp eye, is on the path to revenge. She takes revenge on those who were closest to her, and those who were supposed to protect her. The story is ultimately not so important and very meager – your goal is to kill the leadership of the cult responsible for the death of your family. A girl with a strange grinning mask on her face goes around the places where she looks for cult members, and with a rifle at gunpoint kills the entire group with one shot.

Is it impossible? If you are looking for a realistic sniper shooting simulator, then definitely look elsewhere. Children of the Sun uses shooting rather as an original mechanic to solve de facto logical problems.

At the start of each level, you’ll take a close look at the scene and assess the situation. Ideally, your goal is to find all the enemies and tag them. But you only move in a certain circle – you can zoom in on everything thanks to the scope on your rifle, but if a cultist is rummaging through a closet and his body is hidden by a wall, you’ll have to find him “on the run”. Once you pull the trigger, there’s no getting it back. Each successful hit on a helpless body will stop your shot, and you’ll be able to look through it and continue on your way. You’re a metal bullet, capable of endless killing. You don’t have to hold your breath, you don’t have to close your eyes. You just fly through the air and bounce off soft tissue like a pinball until you’ve turned them all into rag dolls.

Children of the Sun is a memorable game that doesn’t use many words, instead speaking through unpleasant short cutscenes with very aggressive graphics and loud sounds. When it comes to some of the texts, they usually sound like a nightmare. Which is what the game itself is de facto: the darkness that accompanies certain levels and the exploding heads of cultists look like something out of a bad dream. Not everyone gets used to them, but they are important for the finish.

Every hit, every level you complete will make you feel delighted. The further you go, the more enemies there are, they are more cleverly hidden and have magical, impenetrable barriers on their heads and around their bodies. New mechanics are also added – for example, the game turns into a kind of variation of the film “Wanted”, and you bend the trajectory of the bullet. You will have to shoot from a greater distance to “load” your shot, plan more accurately and react faster. And you are happy when everything works out. Like a titled sniper, you will enjoy death in front of you, shooting at nameless people and animals. Killing becomes a game.

Go kill and become a hero

There’s nothing to dig deep into in Children of the Sun. It’s a seven-hour piece of work, and you can easily focus on just the individual puzzles — but you’ll lose a lot of money. The use of a generic video game theme (like going out to kill hundreds of people and still thinking of yourself as a good guy) that leads to something uncomfortably satisfying is refreshing.

The scoring of individual levels, which you always see at the end, is very helpful. You get points for hitting different parts of the enemies’ bodies, but also for completing the entire action quickly, for killing two cultists at the same time, for blowing up cars and many other variables. So you can repeat each level until you pass out, improve and compare yourself with other players. In most cases, you will also get some kind of hidden task, cryptically described by an effective sentence like “The virus is in their heads”. If you manage to unlock it and complete the mysterious task, you will feel good again.

Children of the Sun is the work of a small team of developers led by René Rother and backed by Devolver Digital, a publisher that increasingly signs deals with interesting indie games. This one isn’t perfect either. The only minor flaws are the unnecessary minigames that sometimes disrupt the narrative. Or the fact that some levels aren’t as fluid as they might seem, limiting replayability. But the talent of the developers and the originality of their idea are undeniable.