Children of the Sun would love to take over your mind. In the six hours it took to reach the credits, I ardently mastered its simple but wonderfully executed central mechanic. At first, taking down dozens of cultists with a single bullet was a fun gimmick to tinker with. As time went on, I became obsessed with pushing the tools I used to their limits, constantly using humans as target practice until I came up with a satisfactory killing plan .
Introduced as a puzzle shooter, Children of the Sun lets you take on the role of a young woman who lost her family after getting involved with the strange cult of the same name. Using just one bullet from your sniper rifle, you make your way through more than 20 levels by connecting kills until you've taken everyone down in a quick sequence. As you progress, the platforming will become more complex with special enemies that require different strategies as well as some abilities around the bullet.
It's easy to see influences from games like Killer7, Sniper Elite, and the later Hitman games. But there are also echoes of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, which infuses inanimate objects with a mysterious force to interact with the environment and the human body, to your benefit.
That being said, when you start a level, you only get a limited view of the entire map. Ideally, you want to tag each cultist before pulling the trigger, so you can plan ahead – similar to scanning a room at Hotline Miami before kicking in the door. Usually you need to kill a few of them first just to tag the others or get better visibility at the far end of an area. It makes for an engaging exploration phase that doesn't discourage you but also encourages you to fail until you've gathered all the visual information you need.
Time slows down when you move the bullet. It also stops completely when you hit the target. This gives you some breathing room and a chance to get a different perspective. For example, you can shoot birds to gain altitude or gas tanks to find the angle that allows you to continue chaining targets. However, you will be rewarded through a scoring system for pulling off a kill with style and ferocity. It acts as a perfect contrast to the discovery phase, forcing you to see if your plan can be implemented quickly or if you need a different strategy. There's a leaderboard at the end of each level that encourages you to do your best to achieve this brutal ingenuity, as well as vague clues about challenges to uncover.
Children of the Sun's creepy tone blends well with the human game. Shooting an arm gives you 25 points. Instead, shooting in the groin will score 50 points. The excessive violence becomes gratuitous after seeing the text “I just killed a man, now I'm horny” before playing a Pac-Man style mini-game in a special level. The abrasive tone never comes off as window dressing simply for the sake of shock but thrives on its offensiveness.
Both the visual and sound design work create haunting sensory stimulation. There were times when I felt like I was underwater, rushing from one corner of the ocean to the next as bullets passed from one end to the other, like waves colliding. The effect of the late-game ability, which allows you to increase your rate of fire, sounds like a distorted electric guitar with an effects pedal.
Children of the Sun is a prime example of an experience born from a simple premise and then repeated over and over again for just the right amount of time before it lost its appeal. At times, the center fielder just couldn't keep up – I missed more than a few tough shots that should have landed, forcing me to try again. But once you successfully execute a strategy and complete a level, the satisfaction is incomparable. You then seek to recreate the feeling on subsequent hunts, completely alienated by the chaos of your actions as you chase higher scores.
