Children of the Sun Review: One Bullet, One War, One Exact Puzzle

Children of the Sun gives you exactly one bullet per level, and it is enough. René Rother’s 2024 action-puzzle game, published by Devolver Digital for PC, turns a sniper rifle into a puzzle piece. You fire once. The camera follows the round. You reaim it after every kill. Clear the map on that single shot or start over.

Trailer, via DevolverDigital.

A Vantage Point and a Marked Map

The setup is spare and grim. The girl is hunting a mysterious cult and its leader. Each level begins with a vantage point. You survey the ground and mark where the cultists stand. Then you fire, and the game hands the bullet to you.

From there Children of the Sun works like a puzzle, not a shooter. The bullet slows after it strikes a target, and you redirect its path. Every enemy must fall to the same round. You map the whole flight before you commit, because the level ends when the shot does.

The bullet can also trigger environmental hazards. That widens the puzzle. A shot is not just a kill; it is a tool for reshaping the space around it. Rother rewards players who see the level as a chain rather than a list of targets.

Mid-Flight Correction and the Online Leaderboard

Progress unlocks new abilities. The most useful is a small mid-flight correction, letting you nudge the bullet’s trajectory after it is already moving. That skill turns a near-miss into a plan. It also raises the ceiling on what a clean run looks like.

Each level hides a challenge beyond the main objective. The game records your performance and lets you compare results with others through an online leaderboard. Ruthless precision is the point, and the leaderboard makes that precision public.

The tone matches the mechanics. The girl is burning with anger, waging a one-woman war against the cult, cultist by cultist, until she reaches its leader. Along the way she uncovers the order’s atrocities, committed in their master’s name. The game does not soften that.

Where the Single Shot Earns Its Keep

Here is what matters most about Children of the Sun: it commits to its constraint. One bullet is not a gimmick bolted onto a shooter. It is the whole structure, and the levels are built to test it.

The best moments come when a single shot does three jobs at once. Kill a cultist, trigger a trap, open a path to the next target. That is the game at its sharpest. Taking down the cult is satisfying. Doing it with style is better.

The weaker stretch is the early game, before the mid-flight correction arrives. With fewer tools, the puzzle has fewer answers, and a level can feel like a single correct line rather than a choice. The hidden challenges help, but they are optional, and the main path carries most of the weight.

A short list of what the design gets right:

1. The one-bullet rule, which forces every level to be a plan rather than a firefight.
2. Reaiming after each hit, which keeps the player active during the shot instead of watching it.
3. Environmental hazards, which make the level itself a weapon.
4. The mid-flight correction, which adds precision without removing the constraint.
5. The leaderboard, which gives a clean run somewhere to go.

What the Girl’s War Adds Up To

Children of the Sun is a small, exact game. It knows what it is and does not pad the idea. The girl’s war against the cult gives the violence a target, and the puzzle structure gives it a shape.

It is not a long game, and it is not a generous one. It asks for precision and punishes sloppiness. That is the deal, and it holds up. The cult falls one bullet at a time, and the game makes each of those bullets count.

Children of the Sun · Devolver Digital · indie game review · PC games · puzzle shooter · René Rother