Children of the Sun Test

Teasers

In the German indie title, you play as a sniper and take down a cult. Only one ball has to knock down all opponents and this actually creates puzzles rather than shooting fun.

All screenshots and game scenes come from GamersGlobal
Short tests are our format to provide you with compact information about games that might otherwise be overlooked.

In the puzzle shooter created by German developer René Rother Children of the Sun You slip into the skin of the “girl”, as the protagonist is only called in the game description. Children of the Sun itself has little text. Above all, short, wordless mini-cutscenes give a clear idea why she has a score to settle with the Children of the Sun cult and especially its leader. This forms the loose framework for the over two dozen levels in which you always eliminate all opponents with a sniper rifle. The special feature: In each level you only have one shot. However, the protagonist has supernatural powers and can use it to fire the bullet at a new target after hitting a target.

This trick reveals the true face of Children of the Sun. As René Rother himself said in the GamersGlobal interview: “It's a puzzle game, but I hide that it is one.” In this short test I reveal why the positive impressions from my preview were confirmed.

Use the middle mouse button to mark cultists or other valid targets such as gas tanks.

Suspected of cult

You won't get close to the goals. You can only move to a limited extent on a given path, mark cult members, zoom in and pull the trigger. Even if the girl's crouched position is reminiscent of stealth shooters: enemies cannot detect you and raise the alarm. The actual consideration goes into planning the trajectory, since you can't be left without a line of sight to the next “stop” for your ball. If the projectile bounces off the level boundary or an object, it is called “Failed” (or in the German version “Verkackt”) and the level starts again. In this case, all enemies hit or marked still have an icon above their head. Since some of the enemies are moving, it's not just about finding all the targets, but the timing and order are also relevant for success.

This slim gameplay core remains interesting, among other things, through three powers that you gain over the course of the campaign: You will soon be able to hold down the right mouse button in flight to deviate the dead straight trajectory a little in the direction you want. Later you can even simply do 180 degree turns, but to do this you first have to collect energy by hitting glowing body parts of the targets.

The environments are also becoming more complex: in a church or an apartment block, opponents are positioned both inside and outside. Just later, I flew the ball from one end of the compact map to the other more than once in search of the last cultist. Helpful: birds as well as exploding gas canisters and gas tanks from cars are also legitimate stopovers. Sooner rather than later, the last cult member will be found on a map (really all of them have to be met in order to continue). Fans of Suda51, like the author of these lines, also come across allusions to the work of the Japanese game designer. For example, the name of the section “It's Open Mic Night in Hell” is a direct quote from No More Heroes.

Back to the game mechanics: In addition to skills and environments, the gameplay remains interesting with new types of targets. Armored cultists force you to rethink: You can only crack their armor if the trajectory is long enough, while at the same time you figuratively turn on the afterburner for your bullet with the third ability, but you can't correct the trajectory like you can with standard targets and children of the sun with a ballistic shield you will often do. In addition, there is a fourth type of enemy in the final sections, which I don't want to anticipate here.

There are quite a few targets in this multi-story complex. The cultists from the cloning factory stand out thanks to their yellow clothing and the search for targets that weren't so obviously placed wasn't too much for me.

The scope

With all the targets in view – often enough you can't see all of them from your starting position and find the rest on the fly – it's not particularly difficult to find a valid route for the ball through trial and error. After around three to four hours you will have seen all the levels. However, one thing initially stopped me from experiencing the end: Every now and then, Children of the Sun loosens up the campaign with slightly different levels. However, one of them in my review version has a bug. Because of this, a mini-game simply never stopped. However, another colleague didn't have the problem and the level also worked as expected on the editorial computer. Otherwise I didn't encounter any serious errors.

After the end, you can complete your collection of achievements by meeting any unfulfilled, vaguely formulated requirements. There is such a challenge in every level. “Two in One” means that you should find a way to kill two targets with one stroke.

When you realign the ball, time passes extremely slowly, and when you correct the trajectory you experience the world in a reduced low-poly style in Bullet Time.

High score hunting season

For some types of players, Children of the Sun only really gets going with the high score list for each level. The points system shines with clever details. Some examples: After a hit, the time as the ball realigns continues extremely slowly. If others nearby see the bizarre fountain of blood spewing from their ex-cult colleague, they understandably run away. Good thing, because then they become a moving target and that gives bonus points. Speaking of which: Head hits also give the most points here, when it comes to records, there is also the consideration of whether you only pick glowing heads to charge the free change of direction or at which point you sacrifice a few points because you have a glowing arm or torso instead of the head.

Last but not least, it should be noted that when you realign the ball, a timer for the hit multiplier ticks down, which adds a nasty dose of stress, because in order to get a massively better point return, you have to implement the painstakingly sophisticated ball schedule under time pressure. However, this becomes a bit difficult, at least with the standard settings of the controller control. Although it works well, it is much slower than the mouse control in terms of stick sensitivity. Thanks to the slim design, Children of the Sun can be controlled with just the mouse, then you move the protagonist by moving the mouse to the left or right, which worked very well in practice.

If you want to find out more about the creation of Children of the Sun: René Rother was a guest on the weekly podcast.

Author: Hagen Gehritz (GamersGlobal)

CHILDREN OF THE SUN PC

Conclusion: Hagen Gehritz

I feel understood by Children of the Sun because the longer the ball travels to the target, the more points you get. In other words: When it comes to high score hunting, the most complicated solutions are the best, which is exactly how my brain works in real life!

All joking aside: I had a lot of fun with the unusual puzzle gameplay in a shooter guise. The three powers, the increasingly winding level design and the other enemy types let the concept above the something more als three Stund Sgame time nocht lantemporary becomen and I also had fun solving certain levels more effectively, even if after the release I'll certainly end up in the five-figure range again, as I did in the demo. The one optional challenge in each section also motivated me, but I would have liked more incentive to dive back into the levels; Additional objects that react to my ball might have gotten even more out of the mechanics or even served as nice Easter eggs.

But that also shows that I would have liked to have stayed in the world of Children of the Sun longer – even though you shouldn't expect a lot of story that ultimately remains an afterthought. But Children of the Sun creates a dark and yet strange atmosphere with the idiosyncratic style, the sometimes flashes of humor, the use of colors and blood, the slow motion, of course music and sound but also the mini-cutscenes. And I enjoyed this atmosphere as much as the entertaining ballistic puzzles.