Children of the Sun Understands The Soul of Hotline Miami
Violence is simultaneously callous, cruel, and uncomfortably familiar to many of us. It’s no coincidence so many stories over the ages have centered on violent conflict as the primary means of expressing division, yet far fewer that try to be poetic about it without glorifying the act itself. To have artistry while disturbing is an intensely hard tempo to match. Which is why Dennaton Games’ Hotline Miami was so incredible.
Hotline Miami is greasy. Crass. Disgustingly vicious. However its arcade sensibilities, paired with an equally vivid yet abstract story of small-scale massacres, still results in an engaging game. It’s not the sort of game traditional press will brag about to their dads to say “see, games ARE art!”, even if it’s arguably far moreso than Naughty Dog’s critical darling “Murder Is Bad: Remastered Part II”. Because Hotline Miami is deeply discomforting art. It wants you to really think about more than the violence, but what it symbolizes, and your role of being this relentless murder machine.
Do you dig deeper to solve the conspiracy? Do you introspect over why such graphic violence is acceptable when it’s pixelated? Or do you just turn your brain off and enjoy the pure, chaotic catharsis like you’re mainlining a hit of digitized cocaine? Because there’s plenty time to think between the moment to moment bouts.
To get far into Hotline Miami, you have to be methodical, figuring out each level. It’s less an action game, more a puzzle box — one full of enough bloody dismemberment to make Jigsaw blush. And it’s something even Dennaton Games struggled to iterate on with the much more divisively received Hotline Miami 2. If anything, we’ve been waiting for a true spiritual successor, but that game is soon upon us. That game, is Children of the Sun.
Children of the Sun simultaneously manages to perfectly capture the vibes of Hotline Miami while being even more mechanically divergent. The easiest way to describe it would be a rail-shooter sniping game, except you only fire one bullet, able to psychically alter its path once it hits a target, chaining into between every target. The nameless heroine, scarred by the cruelty of a cult that cost the lives of her family, dons paper mask as she unleashes destructive murder upon the cultists through a variety of scenarios.
Like Hotline Miami, there are points for being creative, efficient, and relentlessly brutal to your opponents. Also in step with Hotline, Children of the Sun is a small-scale passion project published by Devolver Digital. Yet what seeps under your skin is the fact that murdering the titular Children of the Sun cultists doesn’t feel vindicating. It’s incredibly fluid, compelling challenging, and mechanically tight as a drum — but you feel dirty, all the same.
This isn’t the story that leaves you feeling righteous. You’re playing a broken person inflicting one last spree of revenge, at whatever the cost, no matter the carnage. And I love that. I played the majority of the Children of the Sun NextFest demo. I can say with certainty that it’s incredibly compelling — but I’m not sure if I’d ever want to touch it again, for all the right reasons. Rarely does a game feel haunting while you, the player character, are in no danger; even rarer still, for you to be the danger.
This isn’t to say our lead is some Walter White-esque villain who just happens to be the protagonist. Her cause has justification. Her trauma is real. Yet every accurately rendered ragdoll of each enemy amid geysers of blood doesn’t fill you with satisfaction.
For that brief moment, you are the horror and the horrified — a willing participant in a Sniper Elite-ified twist on The Last House on the Left with a pinch of Stephen King’s Firestarter. Drenching this all in sickly yellows and reds against stark shadows of night makes it all the more disconcerting. Children of the Sun doesn’t simply lean into the uncanny valley — it sets up shop there, eagerly twisting your expectations just enough.
I could tell you about the more complicated mechanics at play in each level. How clever the puzzle systems are. Yet these alone are just the tip of the iceberg for the experience Children of the Sun promises to deliver in the near future. Will I play it through to the end when it releases? I’m not sure. What I do know is — I’ll never forget what I witnessed already, and that’s a testament to Rother’s talents.
Children of the Sun is available April 9th on Steam.
Press E For Everything is an ongoing column covering all manner of geeky/nerdy topics that you can support through Patreon! Its author, Elijah Beahm, has covered games and other entertainment mediums for over a decade for sites and channels such as Unwinnable, Dualshockers, The Escapist, GameCritics.com, Boss Level Gamer, and Unabridged Gamer.
