Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Features

Children of the Sun turns sniping into a pitch-black puzzle game

Giovanni Colantonio
By
A man holds a sniper in Children of the Sun.
Devolver Digital

I’ve played a whole lot of puzzle games in my life, but I can safely say that I’ve never played one as pitch-black as Children of the Sun.

Published by Devolver Digital, the newly announced Children of the Sun is an unholy hybrid between a shooter and a spatial reasoning game. It follows a lone wolf with a sniper rifle on a bloody quest for revenge against an evil religious cult. He has to take out swaths of zealots one bullet at a time. It’s as dark as video game premises get, but one that’s steeped in a clever genre fusion. After trying its challenging and bloody first levels, you can consider my curiosity morbidly piqued.

Recommended Videos

One shot

Children of the Sun wears its tone on its sleeve. Cutscenes between levels tease out a bloody cultist story in a wordless motion comic complete with raw illustrations. At first glance, it comes off as a little overly edgy. “Evil religious cult” has become one of gaming’s most overused clichés at this point — three of the last four games I’ve played this year use the trope. Fortunately, developer René Rother seems to be going for more of a tone piece than a deep story here. It nails that aspect, using dark visuals and oppressive electronic music that give the world a creeping sense of dread.

Related

More successful is the core gameplay loop, which is an ingenious blend of genres. The core concept is easy enough:snipe every enemy in a small level. That’s handled in a way that’s unlike any shooter I’ve ever seen, though. When I load into a level, I can move my character left and right in third-person. They can circle around an arena and scout out enemies. By looking through my scope, I can mark foes and tools like gas tanks that could be helpful during my run. Once I’ve cased the joint and am ready to pull the trigger, the grotesque fun really starts.

A bullet travels towards a man in Children of the Sun.
Devolver Digital

The twist is that I have to kill everyone with one single, metaphysical bullet. When I hit a target, time slows down and I can redirect the bullet somewhere else. The goal is to bounce between enemies and environmental hazards in one go. If I miss or hit the ground, I have to start again.

That idea starts simply enough. See four guys out in the open? I bounce between them with ease. The puzzle hook comes in when Children of the Sun starts peppering in spatial logic problems. I need to figure out the correct path I can take in some levels so I can hit every target. In one stage, that means strategically shooting through windows to hit a target and bouncing out the front door to hit someone else in view. Another level has zealots milling around a trainyard, and I need to aim through moving trains to thread the needle.

In the first 15 levels I played, it was clear that Children of the Sun knows how to keep that twist fresh. Sometimes I’ll see birds flying over head, which are a perfect way to get an aerial view of the level without breaking my chain. An even tougher one has me trying to hit moving targets in cars, which requires some precision timing.

A bullet travels towards a gas station in Children of the Sun.
Devolver Digital

That might sound a little difficult, but it’s made much easier than it sounds thanks to some assists. When I fire the bullet, I’m able to slow it down in midair and tweak its direction within a certain range. Later, I gain the ability to more fully redirect a shot if I hit enough enemy weak points and build up a yellow meter. With that worry out of the way, I can focus my attention on clever routing instead of exact precision.

There’s really nothing like it, but the best comparison I can draw at present is Superhot by way of the Sniper Elite series — and perhaps with a dash of Killer7 thrown in for good measure. It’s the same kind of shooter deconstruction that trades in fast-paced action for critical thought and planning. The jury’s out on whether or not its overwhelmingly grim story will hold my interest in the long-run, but I’ll be ready to pick up the scope again and inspect it closer when the full game launches.

Children of the Sun will launch on PC in 2024.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Giovanni Colantonio
Giovanni Colantonio
Section Editor, Gaming
Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
KarmaZoo turns Super Mario Bros. into a chaotic 10-player 2D platformer
karmazoo hands on impressions first look key art

One of my favorite multiplayer experiences of all time revolved around one wild night with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It was my Junior year of college and a room full of friends all got together to try its four-player mode, passing Wiimotes around between deaths. It was the most chaotic thing I have ever experienced, with everyone screaming at one another and slowly descending into madness. That experience has always left me hungry for more cooperative 2D platformers, filling the role that shooters normally hold as my go-to friend games.

KarmaZoo answers that prayer and it does so in a way that’s somehow more functional and more chaotic. A seven-year passion project from Pastagames (and published by Devolver Digital), the multiplayer game is a unique platforming roguelike that’s all about teamwork and spreading love. Players work together to complete platforming levels before a timer runs out, helping one another progress by solving team-based puzzles and utilizing their avatars' specific animal powers. Sounds simple? Imagine how much more hectic that gets when 10 players are on screen at once.

Read more
Move over, Wordle: The New York Times has a new puzzle game
top tech stories of the week 7 24 2015 new york times starbucks deal

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle's continued success -- and it's all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today's puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team's process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it's worth moving into a more active development phase "where the game is coded and the designs are finalized." So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn't get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits' beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games' website

Read more
Escape Academy’s competitive escape room mode is the Mario Kart of puzzle games
A plaza in Escape Academy.

Last year, I fell in love with Escape Academy the moment I first played it. I was instantly smitten by its well-constructed digital escape rooms, which were accessible and intuitive without being too easy. Though I adored the core gameplay loop, the package around it was a little lacking. It was over in a few hours and there wasn’t much reason to go back – there’s no fun in replaying a puzzle box you’ve already solved. Developer Coin Crew Games have worked to remedy those issues in the past year with additional DLC, but its upcoming Tournament of Puzzles DLC feels like the last missing piece.

Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles is a free update coming to the game sometime this year, after its second paid DLC launches. It adds a new multiplayer mode to the game, which has two players competing to solve escape rooms. That makes for a tense puzzle race that its developers hope will inspire Mario Kart-style trash-talking. Though the most exciting feature is that rooms will have a procedural element to them, potentially solving the base game’s biggest weakness.

Read more