What do you get when you get 2 brother’s together with a passion for gaming, 20+ years of experience and a breakout family fun hit in the early days of the Nintendo Switch? You of course get indie studio SFB Games and their upcoming Survival horror game Crow Country.

If you haven’t heard of SFB games, you’ve likely heard of their hit game in collaboration with Nintendo, Snipperclips. The studio, which is made up of brothers Tom and Adam Vain are based out of London, England. Since then they’ve gone on to create another hit indie game Tangle Tower and now they are once again back with a new game, the original PlayStation inspired Crow Country.

We were lucky enough to catch up with Adam who is the Creative Director at SFB Games and ask him about Crow Country (which is due out May 9th on Xbox, PlayStation and PC), what the decision was like to go from something so family friendly as Snipperclips to the horror genre and much much more. We hope you enjoy our interview and go out and support this great looking game!

After pumping out Games yearly you guys took quite a bit of time between games with Crow Country. What is it about Crow Country that needed the extra time, was it just a case of new hardware and pandemic?

So our last two games, Snipperclips and Tangle Tower, were developed around the same time. We started Tangle Tower, then took a break to make Snipperclips, then went back and finished Tangle Tower. So the end result was that we released two games in fairly quick succession, which is pretty unusual for a small company!

And then we were doing a lot of work porting Tangle Tower to different platforms – it’s now on just about everything. Meanwhile, I was busy prototyping new ideas – I made so, so many prototypes. Some of them I’ve posted on my Twitter, some are still secret.

And eventually we got started making the follow-up to Tangle Tower. Those games take years of pre-production, but it’s now been announced – it’s called The Mermaid Mask. We released a demo for it late last year.

I’ve been working on Crow Country since 2020. I made the actual game largely by myself, and I was teaching myself a lot of skills and tools as I went along, so it took a while. It started as a simple hobby project, and accidentally grew into a full size game. It’s still very surreal to me that it’s finally finished and people have played it!

Your studio is likely most known for the Switch Hit Snipperclips which is obviously quite different from the horror type games you've made ever since. Is horror the passion genre for you guys?

Survival horror is a passion of mine, but it doesn’t represent a new direction for SFB Games in general. We’re still working on mystery detective games, and we’d love to make more colourful co-op puzzle games like Snipperclips. There are several other genres I’d like to hit as well – as well as some game ideas that don’t fit into any genres!

Crow Country looks to be your most ambitious project yet. Can you talk a little bit about what the game is for people not familiar?

It’s a classic-style survival horror game with some modern quality-of-life features – so it should appeal to old-school survival fans as well as general audiences.

The game is set in 1990, in an abandoned theme park called Crow Country. You play as Mara Forest, a young woman who breaks into the park looking for its missing owner, one Edward Crow.

Crow Country’s gameplay is a mixture of exploration, puzzles, combat and story elements. We think it should be about 8 hours long, for a first-time player.

Can you talk a bit from the technical side of things, what engine you are using, any benchmarks you are looking to hit such as fps?

The game is made in Unity – specifically using both the Playmaker (visual scripting) and Probuilder (3D modelling) plugins.

The game is running at 60fps without too much trouble.

It supports PC Keyboard controls but we heavily recommend using a controller, such as a PS4, PS5 or Xbox controller. You’ll have a much better time!!

When originally announced Crow Country was only announced for PlayStation and Steam but you've since added Xbox for launch which I personally am excited for. Can you give a sneak peek behind the curtains on what it's like getting your game to these platforms, especially as an indie developer?

It’s a lot of work! You have to make sure your game works on those platforms – which means it works with the controllers, the various achievement/trophy systems, user save data stuff, and so on. And then you have to submit your game for certification, which can take a while to get through.

But ultimately, it’s all worth it. Steam is a massive platform and incredibly important to us as developers, but we’ve learned that it’s best to get your games on as many platforms as possible. Plus, Crow Country is right at home on consoles – given the games that inspired it.

Any final remarks?

I just want to thank everyone who’s taken the time to play the Crow Country demo, shared it online or with a friend, streamed it or made a video about it – we really, really appreciate it!

One thing I’m really hoping for after release... is for speedrunners to pick up the game. I’d LOVE to see Crow Country completely destroyed in a speedrun somewhere down the line.