Children Of The Sun Review – Bullet Time

I don’t think I’m ever going to get over my love for Devolver Digital games.

Children Of The Sun is a brand-new title developed by René Rother and, as you may have guessed, published by Devolver Digital. Like other such games I’ve reviewed in the past, it is a beacon of originality and so fun to play. In this case, Children of the Sun feels like it was built from the ground up around an interesting gameplay mechanic, and each step along the way to the completed product was utterly creative, leading to a game that is definitively original.

Children of the Sun follows The Girl, the victim of a rapidly growing and insidiously powerful cult that ruined her life. Thankfully, our vengeance-seeking protagonist developed a special kind of telekinesis somewhere along the line, allowing her to move objects with her mind. Using this power and a trusty rifle, she takes action against the cult, slaying its members as she kills her way to the top, and she only needs one bullet to do it.

The defining gameplay mechanic of Children of the Sun is something between Sniper Elite and pinball.

Loaded with just one bullet, your mission on each level is to kill all of the members of the Children of the Sun cult, identified by their bright yellow clothing. Levels can range from two to three to over fifteen cultists to kill, and few of them spend their time hanging out around conveniently placed explosive barrels.

Once you find an ideal position to take out your first target, you take aim and fire. This is where your telekinesis power comes in; once your bullet hits a body, you can fire it again from the position it’s in, bouncing it between soon-to-be corpses like a seriously one-sided game of table hockey.

The level fails if your bullet hits a wall. Once launched, it continues heading in its current trajectory until it hits something. The trajectory can be slightly altered left, right, up, or down, but not severely. Certain objects, like gas tanks, propane tanks, or birds, allow you to get your free aim back, just like hitting a cult member, and in the case of the explosives, they can also wipe out a few bad guys for you.

As the game goes on, certain twists in mechanics create more interesting murder puzzles, and the inclusion of more enemies and far more closed spaces make for a greater challenge. At some point, you get the ability to freely aim your bullet in the air after hitting several weak points, basically allowing you a free hit on difficult-to-reach targets. Armored enemies also begin to appear, which require you to ramp your bullet up to penetrating speed, forcing you to create distance between your shot and these targets and locking you out of course correction (which would then slow the bullet back down.)

The paths your bullet will take to complete a level are unpredictable, and tracing the shots in the end leads to some crazy-looking patterns.

While I certainly had a few retries, there was never a level that felt overwhelmingly hard. Overall, the balance of each puzzle felt fair, and there was nothing I couldn’t figure out by doing more than getting a new perspective.

This isn’t to say that the game is too easy, either. If your goal is simply to progress through the levels as fast as you can, you can do so, and overall, the game should take you around five hours to beat if this is your approach. However, each level has multiple approaches and a high score to fight over, challenging you to replay your missions in search of better ways to kill the Cult and rack up those points.

However, Children of the Sun is so much more than just a clever mechanic. At the start of most levels, you get the privilege of viewing some remarkable, hand-drawn pulp-comic style cutscenes depicting the story of The Girl and the Cult’s effect on her life. These cutscenes are gorgeous, and the story is fantastic. It has a dark, gritty noir style that reflects the phenomenal style of the game as a whole.

My biggest and perhaps only complaint with Children of the Sun is that these cutscenes are way too short. They last no longer than 30 seconds and often end abruptly and awkwardly. It almost feels like the game wanted them to be longer but had to cut them short, perhaps to meet the publication time.

I love the color scheme that persists between the levels, giving everything an eerie, pulp-fiction (if you pardon me for repeating the comparison), and somewhat supernatural feeling. I love the character designs, which feel grounded with just the right amount of dramatic flair. I love the musical score and the strings that play when you move or score a hit on a cultist.

Overall, I simply love Children of the Sun, and I want more. If I could say one thing to the developer (Developers? I believe one person made the game), it would be that you’ve done a fantastic job and should look into creating a standalone comic book companion for the game. I genuinely believe that Children of the Sun, with its style and story, would do fantastic in the format, and maybe if the game receives some well-deserved success, we can see that become a reality.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Children of the Sun is available on Steam.