Designing a clunky combat system on purpose in Crow Country

People will often say Crow Country has 'clunky' aiming and shooting controls. Clunky combat in general. Sometimes it's a compliment, other times a complaint, other times just a neutrally stated fact. But whenever I get the chance, I like to call them up on it and ask what exactly they mean, because I'm honestly curious. What is Crow Country not doing that it could or should be doing? What makes it clunky?

One of the most common answers I get is 'Well, you can't move while shooting. You have to stand still.' So, there you have it. I guess that must be one of the core pillars of clunky survival-horror style combat. So much so that I didn't even consciously decide to build it that way, it just felt default to me. It would never occur to me to do the opposite and make an aiming system where you can walk around with your gun raised. I'd have considered that to be flashy and complex, like something from an envelope-pushing Metal Gear Solid game or something. I guess 'clunky' exists towards one end of a spectrum, with 'flashy and complex' on the other end, and where your 'default' falls is down to personal preference and experience. For instance, even today I play as many PlayStation 1-era games as I do PlayStation 5-era games. I spend so much time around games that, from a modern perspective, would be considered 'clunky' that I'm just acclimatised to them, they still feel pretty normal to me.

This isn't to say I wasn't aware of what I was doing when I made the Crow Country combat system. I was always more-or-less following the lead of the first few Resident Evil games, and standing still to aim your gun is consistent in those. And I'm fully aware of why such things work well in horror games. When engaged in combat, you decide to move to a spot, decide to stop, decide to raise your gun and shoot. But the enemies are always edging closer to your character. And now you have to make decisions - do you keep aiming and shooting, hoping to take them all down before any of them reach you? Or do you bail, lowering your gun so you can move backwards and make some more space? Is there even any more space behind you? Are you about to run out of ammo? If your player is feeling these feelings, your survival horror game is functioning - it's all about restricting the player's options so they're forced to make decisions in the heat of the moment.

Speaking of running out of ammo, something else I passively built into Crow Country that works in its favour is the absence of an auto-reload. This is to say that if you press the shoot button with an empty gun, it'll just make a 'click' sound, and nothing will happen – and you'll have to remember press the reload button instead. Some modern games might have the character reload when you attempt to shoot an empty gun, because why not? But obviously that 'click' moment of attempting to shoot an empty gun is fun and cool – how many times has that happened in a movie? It works great for a horror game especially! And it leads to that little moment of panic where the player frantically tries to remember what the reload button is as the enemy takes a step towards them.

In direct contrast to what we've gone over already, people will sometimes say Crow Country has 'smooth' aiming and shooting controls. Smooth combat in general. Don't scoff, it's true! It's mainly just because, unlike Resident Evil 1, you don't auto-aim onto enemies when you raise your weapon. Instead, you're allowed to freely aim your gun at anything you like – like Resident Evil 4! This means you can choose to go for a head shot, which is a smaller target but does more damage, or a body shot, which is a larger area but does less damage. Decision making! It also means you could miss entirely, and waste a bullet. This kind of thing isn't even remotely new, but people are sometimes surprised to see it in Crow Country because it contrasts with some of the other more old-fashioned systems the game has. And this mixing of smoother modern mechanics and clunkier old-fashioned mechanics has become one of the defining characteristics of Crow Country. But to be honest, it actually wasn't any kind of mission statement on my part, I just made the exact game I wanted to play – which happens to be a game where you have to stand still to shoot, but there's no auto-aim. I was happy to embrace all this as something to mention in the elevator pitch, ('It's a classic-style survival horror with modern quality-of-life features!') but only after other people had mentioned it first, which brought my attention to all these design decisions I had apparently made.

One system that actually was a fully deliberate inclusion was the weapon sway. Her ID card might say 'firearms expert', but Mara's not actually a great shot - there's a decent amount of sway when she has her gun raised. And it's fully randomised (both in terms of angle offset and the duration of each movement) so the player can't predict its movements, they just have to factor it in and adapt. For the most part, I added the weapon sway because it just felt appropriate, there was something overly cold and robotic about a perfectly held-still laser sight. But it's also there to encourage the player to stand closer to the enemy – because the further away you are from your target, the more the weapon sway will effect your aim. That wasn't something I added, that's just how trigonometry works! When you're standing point blank, and the weapon sway swings to the right, a head shot will most likely still be a head shot. But if you're a screen apart from the enemy, that same head shot is going to miss. In addition to this, I made it so bullets do more damage when you're standing closer to your enemies. This one isn't especially realistic, I don't think a 9mm handgun would lose much power over a few metres, but I really didn't want players to try and snipe enemies that were standing at the edge of the screen - I wanted them to risk going up close! Because that's more scary, and it's more fun. So now there's a basic risk/reward in place – get dangerously close to your enemies for a quick kill with only a few bullets, or slowly snipe them from a distance with several more bullets. If you combine this with the variable of getting head shots or body shots, killing a basic 'Guest' enemy can take anywhere from 3 to 10 handgun shots – and it's all down to the decisions the player makes.