I often stay away from mobile games. I know it’s more mainstream than ever, but as a gamer growing up, there’s always been that stigma that mobile games are inferior. That is a conversation for another day, but with the title of South Of The Circle, a game that was released almost 2 years ago on Apple’s OS, this game is pretty amazing, I’m a little bummed that I waited until this week’s console release to finally check it out. Published by 11 bit studios and developed by State of Play Games, who are known for doing only mobile games, I’m happy to see they branched off to re-release this to a broader gaming ecosystem.
The story revolves around the politically charged academia world of the Cold War conflict, and you play as an academic named Peter who is a big cloud enthusiast. He’s been stuck writing a paper about cloud patterns for multiple years, but after receiving a telegram from his professor he embarks on a journey to go back to Cambridge. On his way he meets a fellow instructor named Clara, who is also a big part of the story. That’s not all though, these are actually the stories flashbacks, the present time is actually set in 1964, Peter has survived a terrible plane crash due to a snow storm in Antarctica. Him traversing the snowy landscape trying to survive is just the beginning.
The gameplay, itself, is very simple, for a game that originally was on mobile, it never had physical buttons to press until now. There isn’t much to it, basically it consists of pushing the controller forward and selecting objects to slowly read notes or responding to dialogue. With the dialogue sequences you are often given one to three options to choose from, each reaction you give is usually a calm, panicked, or a confident response, sometimes something else. Unfortunately, the biggest issue for me is the dialogue choices ultimately don’t matter, all the scenes and end result will be the same, it’s just the game tries to make you feel like you have more control than you do. If you’re someone that likes to experience story-based games multiple times this at least gives you a slightly different flavor than what you previously had.
The art style itself is absolutely amazing, I was doing some research online, the best way to define it would probably be “geometric abstract expressionism,” which is pretty great since it’s the complete counter art style to the soviet realism style, given that this is a Cold War period game, this was an awesome choice in direction. The character’s faces are nearly nonexistent, it heavily relies on its strong writing to convey emotions you wish to interpret. Not only is the writing absolutely stellar, but so is its British voice cast of actors/actresses I’m sure you have seen in plenty of films.
South Of The Circle is a very moving experience, weaving between surviving for your life in intense snow to getting a nice peak of academia life in Peter’s younger years, the story on its own is a great one to witness. The common criticism or complaint could be that it is essentially a video game movie, where there is very little for the gamer to do, but I am loving the way developers are exploring the video game medium in such different ways. Most video games are just stories, just experienced and told in their own unique ways after all. While this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I highly recommend giving it a try, even on mobile if you have to!
For more information, visit: https://southofthecircle.com/
Related: Nick Navarro Reviews
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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