Children of the Sun has one of the best levels of 2024 so far

For a year now filled with great games, Children of the sun stands out as something truly special. Developed by René Rother, this psychedelic puzzle shooter plays like a spiritual mashup of Elite sniper And Super hot with Suda51's chaotic noise sensibility, casting players as a vengeful masked assassin on a one-woman trail through a surreal version of the American South to kill the leader of an army of cultists.

The core concept of the game is relatively simple: You have exactly one bullet that you must use to take down every enemy in each level. Luckily, your character has powerful telekinesis, allowing the player to control the shooting bullet between your targets like Yondu's whistle-controlled arrow in Guardians of the galaxyforge a path of death and destruction through each of its 26 levels as you hunt for your ultimate goal.

The result is a chaotic, viscerally engaging experience that gradually becomes more challenging as it introduces new and more innovative techniques to your psychic arsenal. You can slow down the speed of bullets to bend the trajectory of your shots in real time, or speed them up, allowing you to penetrate heavily armored enemies but at the cost of accuracy. You can target specific weak points on an enemy's body to unlock the ability to re-aim your bullet while shooting. You can even shoot pigeons in the air to get a better vantage point of the battlefield.

You'll have to rely on all of these maneuvers, as well as quickly improvise some others, to take down the cultists. Although each level offers its own surprising challenges, Children of the sunThe 18th level of, “Open Mic Night in Hell,” stands out as one of the most satisfying levels I've played in any game this year so far.

Image: René Rother/Devolver Digital

This level takes the player to the outskirts of an office building complex that has been taken over by cultists. To complete your mission, you will have to come up with a way to destroy every member of the upper outer floors of the building, as well as a group of cultists holding an impromptu concert in the courtyard between the two buildings. home. After taking out the cultists in the courtyard, I found myself confused as to how to get back outside the complex to take out my remaining targets.

I tried to aim the bullet at the building itself and then aimed again to take out one of the guards outside. I attempted to kill the cultists on the outside of the building before heading inside, along with a few other approaches from different vantage points; each attempt was more frustrating than effective.

After racking my brain, I finally came up with a solution. I would need to redirect the bullet through a hallway that opened to the outside of the building, activating my ability to re-aim my shot in mid-air, turning a complete 180 degrees to guide the bullet in line with one of the cultists. cult and accelerate My shot passed through the body of an armored cultist before doing so again.

Image: René Rother/Devolver Digital

Stumbling upon this technique was nothing short of a eureka moment, eventually becoming a regular trick in my personal repertoire, helping me get through the tough second half of the game. Children of the sun is full of these moments, but this one in particular felt like a breakthrough in the way I approached the game by forcing me to utilize the powers at my disposal as well as the layout of the terrain.

The beauty of Children of the sun This solution is completely optional. There are virtually a dozen different possibilities that players can take when approaching this same problem. However, the only thing in common is that, whichever way you go about completing your mission, the end result will be sick.

Children of the sun was released on April 9 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed using a pre-release download code provided by Devolver Digital. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information about Polygon's ethics policy is here.