Developed by René Rother, published by Devolver Digital, the game was released on April 9, 2024.

Bizarre

The game starts with a small cutscene, which already shows us the horrifying story that is about to unfold. The art style was the first thing I noticed, very striking and expressive, but not revealing much at first glance.

When I actually started playing, I thought, "what craziness is this?". Basically, on a screen that seemed to be showing me the basic mechanics of the game (for me to practice and get used to), I was actually shown how to run, shoot, and "install" a virus in people's heads. What is happening here?

I started to want to understand what the purpose of this title was, and if it would leave me more or less intrigued as time went on. Despite being a crazy idea, I continued out of curiosity to discover what I was doing and what I needed to do to reach the end.

That's why I didn't read or watch anything about it before starting my adventure, and I must say I was really impressed. I love Devolver's games, and all the ones I have experienced have taught me something about life, from games that don't directly tell me anything to games that make everything clearer than ever. Will Children of the Sun also bring a lesson to me?
 

Broken Home

Like many Devolver titles, as a standard, the games have no dialogue. They are much more visual and sensory, with the intention of making you feel the message instead of just reading and knowing what it's about right away.

It is more focused on the advancement of the story, where you discover the game's objective right away. In Children of the Sun, this is even more intense. From what I could gather, the narrative revolves around a girl who for some reason wants to kill people with just one shot. We don't know the reason for her anger, we only see it through the traumatic situations she has been through and how she is dealing with it.

Through cutscenes, and upon completing levels, moments the protagonist went through are shown, with the aim of "justifying" her behavior. There are some heavy situations, that even give a bad feeling just to imagine, and it seems that because of that she acts the way she does.

In a way, it is indeed an excuse for her to want to kill these people this way, which makes me think about the innocence of these people and what they may have done to "deserve" this. It's not just about killing, the protagonist seems to want them to pay for what they did and go through what she went through.

At first, our mechanics are quite basic: walk, run, aim, and shoot. As we progress through the puzzles, all of this is made easier, but still quite challenging. It's a type of puzzle I had never played before, one that took me a while to get the hang of due to the difficulty (and having to think about each step to execute the tasks).
 

It all starts when the girl walks around looking for this "cult" of people. When she finds one of them (which is easy to spot, as they glow in gold), she needs to stop at a strategic location, aim, and only then shoot (preferably in the head, and with just one shot).

From that point on, when she pulls the trigger, it's as if our camera (and ourselves) become the bullet from the rifle. Yes, it's quite confusing! But that's exactly it, and when we reach the character's head, that becomes our "checkpoint", needing to hit others nearby to finish the level.

All of this, with just one shot for each person and having to think very carefully about who to shoot to change the checkpoint. Many times, you may shoot a person and they are very close to an object or scenery, and then, because of the new camera perspective, it becomes very difficult to see and impossible to finish the puzzle.

Indeed, it's quite cool to have to think about everything so that it happens as planned, and this doesn't change throughout the game. I found the puzzle mechanics interesting, even though it was difficult at first, and I continued to have a lot of fun with the game, as bizarre as it may be.

But something that started to bother me a little was the repetitive style, always doing the same thing. Even though new things come up, like special rifle abilities and new cultists (who have shields, armors, and psychic powers), the game has the same objective every level and revolves around that.

One positive point that I really liked was being able to use the environment around the girl to our advantage. Since the checkpoint changes with each bullet hit (considering she is still moving and the level hasn't ended), we can look for animals, explosives, and objects to divert the bullet to a better location, making it easier to aim at the targets' heads.
 

Burning of the Files

The girl, the protagonist, had her life turned into a living hell because of the Cult. The Cult promised families a better life, away from the chaos of the modern world, and lied to everyone. Because of this, the girl wants to take revenge on this cult by taking everyone down with her.

With a rifle, she seeks out these people to end their lives, especially the Cult Leader. And, with this melancholic theme, the game always shows an extremely dark and striking color palette, with strong and expressive drawings and even more striking animations.

I would say it's a somewhat uncomfortable game at the beginning, because we don't really know its narrative and the reasons behind the protagonist's actions. As we adapt to the gameplay and the work, it becomes clearer what is happening there and why all this horror.

With that, the game's soundtrack and background sounds were essential to maintain this atmosphere. I felt almost tense all the time, except for the moments when I was focused trying to remember where the other Cult members were, in order to successfully complete the level.

In addition, the sounds are extremely unique, making each person, object, or animal hit significant. It was something I noticed a lot, especially because I used many "shortcuts", like the cars that caught fire when hit, and that sound stayed in my head for a good few seconds.

Considering that the game requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM, an Intel Core i5-2500 processor, and a GTX 760 graphics card, and I played on a PC with 16 GB of RAM, an Intel Core i5-9400F processor, and a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, I didn't experience any bugs or glitches, the game ran perfectly.

We thank Devolver Digital for providing the key for Children of the Sun for PC.