Executes on a really fun and creative idea with its short runtime. Controlling a bullet in the air to shoot your way through an entire group in slow motion never stops being an engaging challenge where you must building an understanding of the game's puzzle box like three-dimensional spaces. The pacing is amazingly done, the game knows exactly when to throw a new mechanic into the mix or give a curveball minigame level and it ends just as the main concept feels as though it is being stretched as far as it can go without breaking the fun. The presentation is stylish and evocative, the visuals rarely dropping the deep, moody blues, pinks and purples it is drenched in, while the bright yellows of the enemies aid the clarity of the player's view. The cutscenes and audio both have a scratchy, grimy and distorted quality that gives the game a uniquely harsh outer sheen while the gameplay remains as clean as ever. Really glad I picked it up.

Solid, short puzzle game that explores its design space well. The aesthetic is really impressively put together, sound and visuals both really selling the setting. It feels like it takes some definite cues from Killer 7, which is an aesthetic that I feel has been getting picked up more often of late.

WARNING for anyone considering it:
Other than the heavy themes of family death, violence, cult indoctrination and sexual abuse that you might expect... this is a PUZZLE GAME. If you go into it expecting it to be sniper elite, you may very well be disappointed.

I feel like the title might be a reference to an old Rage Against the Machine song. Which is an odd choice, if so. The song is about the indigenous liberation movement of Chiapas so equating the subject matter with a cult might not have been the best choice! I highly doubt this was intentional by the dev however, so it's mostly an academic observation.

Overall, I can recommend giving this game a go. It wasn't terribly expensive, the game has a very unique vibe that really works for it and I've played anything quite like it in terms of mechanics. It feels a little like if you were to cross together Killer 7, Sniper Elite and Superhot, yet still kept it all your own in terms of mechanics and aesthetic. Definitely a game that's worth your time.

Sniper Elite on drugs.

Pros:
- Ni siquiera el pacifista más practicante podría negar la satisfacción que produce acertar entre ceja y ceja con un rifle francotirador a un muñecote en un videojuego. Si a eso le sumas el placer culpable del tiempo bala, tienes un juego que difícilmente podría salir mal.
- Tiene una duración perfecta. La mecánica, pese a ser muy disfrutable, no es excesivamente compleja, por lo que una duración mayor la hubiera vuelto repetitiva.

Contras:
- Quitando un par de niveles, la mayoría son demasiado simples y no invitan al jugador a buscar las rutas más óptimas para la bala.
- La estética no ha casado conmigo. Todo se ve igual de principio a final, sin que haya ningún nivel que intente salirse de la norma.

Children of the Sun é uma brincadeira interessante, a mistura de uma gameplay meio sniper elite, obviamente mais simplificada, com puzzle faz desse jogo algo bem único, não vou mentir que a estilização do jogo ajuda essa experiência a ficar mais única e divertida. O tempo de jogo é na medida certa, eu zerei ele em 4 horas e achei o tempo certo pra isso mesmo, já que a gameplay é mais baseada em erros, aprendizado, novas estratégias etc, se tivesse muito mais contéudo eu não dúvido que eu me cansaria desse jogo. Uma das paradas que eu mais curti foi a OST dinâmica, que só é muito genial, não tem muitas músicas que eu ouviria o tempo todo, mas sim temas ambientes que vão se moldando com certas coisas acontecendo no jogo, é só muito bacana.

A a história é legalzinha, sei lá esse é só um joguinho pequeno bonitinho, barato e bom, nada pra falar dms

played the demo for this a while ago because it looked really unique and interesting and that's exactly what it is! The visuals are beautiful, the music and sound design are beautiful, and each level is a satisfying puzzle to figure out. I usually get frustrated at games like these once the difficulty starts to ramp up but even when this was tough I was always having fun with it, figuring out different routes and strategies and trying to work in each level's hidden challenge. It's fairly short but I can see a lot of replay value here in optimising each level and getting all the challenges, it's absolutely worth your money and your time either way.

A single person developed game that takes an interesting idea and runs with it. You would think being a line puzzle for a runtime greater than 30 minutes is gonna get boring, yet children of the sun actually stays fresh the whole playtime (about 4 hours).
The meat and potatoes here is the concept: you are a sniper who can bend bullets and re aim at kills , a gory join the dots puzzle. The pacing is classical and perfect, abilities and difficulties rising to a crescendo as you progress.
The story is certainly barebones but told in a cool way, the sound design is terrifying in the bloodlust it can bring in me and has a commanding presence to the game.
There are very few genuine holes in this awesome, sweet and short experience, but I would like to acknowledge that the price is on the higher side for a very short and simple game at >10euros. Luckily, the quality of the experience still makes it absolutely worth it and I would say it is one of the better games of the year so far! Totally worth a try.

6.5 — O puzzle do jogo ser baseado em onde e quem atirar primeiro é muito interessante e foi divertido pra mim. A medida que as fases passam, tu ganha novas perspectivas para passar de cada puzzle com a adição de mecânicas, e acho que isso ocorre de maneira bem orgânica. Não é um jogo difícil, possui poucas fases e consegue ser zerado em menos de 2 horas. Então, se tu curte joguinhos de puzzle diferenciados e quer dar aquela rapidinha de cria, apenas jogue. Eu particularmente não me importei muito com a história do jogo, a narrativa dela é muito confusa e tem um ritmo rápido que só o cacete. As cutscenes são no geral o que contam e te dão a base do que tá rolando, tem algumas poucas fases que também são mais focadas em história que são minigames bem bacanudos. Acho que a pira do game é mais a leaderboard do que qualquer outra coisa, que é você conseguir ganhar a fase com a maior quantidade de pontos e combos. Sinceramente, joguinho bacana, nada demais, nada marcante, mas divertido. Gostaria de também dar créditos ao desenvolvedor solo René Rother que programou o jogo, deve ser loucura estruturar uma coisa dessas sozinho, baita projeto pra alguém solo.

Children of the Sun es un juego único en su especie, una mezcla imaginativa de shooter y juego de puzles que funciona a la perfección, una obra de arte en donde sus gráficos nos hacen ver el mundo con una perspectiva y colores muy disonantes, como si estuviésemos en una mente torturada y al borde de la locura. Es adictivo y sumamente divertido, exigente pero muy gratificante cuando logras el objetivo de eliminar a todos los enemigos del escenario con una sola bala.

La historia de Children of the Sun es la de la venganza de una chica contra los miembros de una secta y su despiadado líder, una narrativa que está rodeada de una atmosfera lúgubre y enfermiza pero que te enamora desde el principio. Un título con una personalidad aplastante y que merece la pena jugar, ya que es una de esas experiencias que difícilmente podrás olvidar.

Leer análisis completo en Retro & Pixel Press: https://retropixelpress.blogspot.com/2024/05/analisis-de-children-of-sun.html

a fun puzzle shooter for you to rack your brain over for a couple hours. there's enough added complexity to keep the pretty simple gameplay interesting and continuously improving throughout, i think the last level was my favorite.

the aesthetics of this game are its strongest asset in my opinion, they have an eerie PS1 survival horror quality to them which create an appropriately oppressive vibe for the subject matter.

there's a leaderboard for you to compare your scores with your friends and other players so you could squeeze some more enjoyment out of that, but i prefer goals that are a bit more concrete, such as a Trackmania-like medal system for example. Either way by the end of this i felt like i was done, it's fun but doesn't reach the heights of a Hotline Miami where it makes you wanna just keep playing until you've mastered it.

oh and the story was there i guess, in reality the aesthetic and music do all the heavy lifting to invest you, the narrative itself is just sort of superfluous in my opinion, you're killing bad guys cause they were bad to you, that's all you need to know, and honestly you didn't even need to know that, maybe keeping it more ambiguous could've added a layer of intrigue to it.

Children of the Sun's hyper-stylized visuals and visceral soundscape serve as a great juxtaposition to the surprisingly methodical puzzle-solving; the likes of which do a fantastic job of encouraging creativity and improvisation from the player. While a couple of the more challenging levels occasionally felt a bit frustrating due to the amount of trial and error they required, they were well worth persevering through as the satisfaction of finally discovering that perfect route was near unmatched.

very fun and engaging short experience (maybe a little psychologically terrifying too)... the gameplay mechanics all feel pretty fleshed out for the small amount of variation they have, bullet time is something ive never been too fond of in games but the way COTS does it speaks to me. I think that there is some due frustration to be expressed over the physics of the moving bullet, ESPECIALLY in the car chase level.. sometimes the shot just doesnt go where its supposed to go.
The jarring sound design, frantic cutscenes, and "ugly" graphics may be offputting to some-- the cutscenes certainly do flash by far too fast. but it is in these decisions where you can see the beating heart inside, i cant help but think thats beautiful

Children Of The Sun is a highly stylised puzzle shooter that takes the bullet time moments from Sniper Elite and develops the idea into a full game. Most levels consist of scouting the location and marking enemies before executing a Wanted style bullet bending blood bath.

The story is one of revenge that sees the protagonist taking her anger out on a cult that left her family in ruin and death. Children Of The Sun presents its story via brief comic style cutscenes providing short insights into the history of the main character and their relationship to the cult. Most levels are separate from the story and just see you taking down stronger and stronger outpost as you get ever closer to the cult leader. Occasionally however there will be a level that directly progress the story but these are few and far between and only near the end of the game.

Gameplay wise Children Of The Sun strives to take a small idea and stretches it as far as creatively possible. This leads to some fun and unique concepts that don't overstay their welcome. With the core mechanic being bullet time this idea develops and introduces bullet redirection, slow-mo and high caliber speed to tackle a variety of different enemy types and scenarios. Latter gameplay becomes more of a puzzle game as you try to solve who to kill first and who to keep alive for a latter redirection. I did find this to become quite tedious in particularly the last 2 levels as I got relative stuck for extended periods of time due to either poor puzzle execution or long distance aim (I was playing on my Steam Deck and may have had better luck with a mouse).
One of the biggest drawbacks I found was the mini games that were randomly thrown in. These were not good and felt really out of place. Thankfully there wasn't many and only 1 was particularly difficult, but I feel it would have been a better experience with the removed completely.

The mood and atmosphere for Children Of The Sun is great and can be particularly satisfying at times. However there doesn't seem to be much keeping me engaged. You can battle other players for a high score but apart from that Children Of The Sun feels very one and done.