Children of the Sun offers one of the most challenging, satisfying levels of 2024 so far
In a year already stuffed with terrific games, Children of the Sun stands out as something truly special. Developed by René Rother, the psychedelic puzzle-shooter plays like a spiritual mashup of Sniper Elite and Superhot by way of the anarchic noise rock sensibilities of Suda51, dropping players in the role of a vengeful masked assassin on a one-woman warpath across a surreal version of the American South to kill the leader of an army of cultists.
The game’s core concept is relatively simple: You have exactly one bullet that you must use to take down every enemy per level. Fortunately, your character is a powerful telekinetic, allowing the player to guide the bullet mid-shot to ricochet between your targets like Yondu’s whistle-controlled arrow from Guardians of the Galaxy, carving a path of death and destruction across each of its 26 levels as you hunt down your final target.
The result is a chaotic, viscerally engaging experience that incrementally grows more challenging as it introduces new and more inventive techniques for your psychic arsenal. You can slow the speed of the bullet to bend the trajectory of your shots in real time or speed them up, allowing you to pierce through heavily armored foes at the expense of accuracy. You can target specific weak points on your enemies’ bodies to unlock the ability to re-aim your bullet mid-shot. You can even shoot pigeons in midair to gain a more advantageous, bird’s-eye view of the battlefield.
You’ll have to rely on all of these maneuvers, as well as improvise a few others on the fly, in order to take down the cultists. While each level offers up its own unique set of surprising challenges, Children of the Sun’s 18th level, “Open Mic Night in Hell,” stands out as one of the most satisfying levels I’ve played in any game this year so far.
The level places the player on the outskirts of an office building complex that’s been taken over by the cultists. In order to complete your mission, you’ll have to devise a way to
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