South of the Circle review

South of the Circle review

South of the Circle is a story experience brought to us by the development team State of Play and was released as an exclusive Apple Arcade experience in October of the year 2020.

The game presents a simple artistic direction and is far from pretentious, but it is mixed with excellent depiction of the different scenes and their environments, with care that we did not expect from the effects, especially those related to snowfall, and the developer has done well in choosing the appropriate soundtrack for the events.

The story of the game focuses on Peter, who wakes up after the emergency landing of the plane he was traveling in to the South Pole, despite reaching his goal, his companion Floyd, the pilot, broke his leg and their landing site is far from the base they were going to, and here begins Peter's struggle to find someone to help him and his companion on Survival in these difficult weather conditions.

The story of the game will begin by moving between the past and the present to learn about Peter's history as a lecturer at the prestigious Cambridge University and his work on his research paper that led to the trip to the South Pole. Peter's academic and emotional life, which shows some of the negative aspects of academia, his way of thinking, and the result is interesting and attracts attention throughout the experience.

The game’s focus on the narrative aspect and its release first for smartphones explains the limited gaming experience, except for some parts in which you use the joystick to walk and preview some elements of the environment. To interact with dialogues, it is the anxious, shy or serious response, and there is also the enthusiastic response, and finally the sympathetic response.

The events of the story develop in an excellent way and strengthen your connection with the character of Peter and your sympathy with him and what is happening to him, but the ultimate disappointment is that your choices to interact with the dialogues do not affect the events of the story and some of the details that will be based on your decisions that you hope will be influential will eventually be thrown out the window It's a big question mark, in the end the game deludes you that you've made Peter's choices and values, but it will force you into a specific scenario.

The lack of influence of your decisions on the events of the story kills the ability to re-experience, which is a great negative. The other negative is the end of the story, which we felt was not as well thought out and elaborate as the past events and seems to have been written in a hurry, as many details were neglected and given a confusing ending, which is very unfortunate, We finished the game within 4 hours, and as we mentioned, there is no actual value to re-experiment and the end of the story was not satisfactory, the experience was good overall, but the developer's decisions that highlight the end of the experience are what deprived us of the end we were waiting for.

South of the Circle

Beautiful artistic direction accompanied by excellent photography - excellent choice of music - excellent story construction and deep characters.

Your choices during the dialogues do not affect the events which kills the value of the experience for replay - the story ends in a confusing way with many details neglected.

South of the Circle is a short story experience with deep characters and interesting events that ends in a frustrating and bewildering way, adding to that the experience's short lifespan and lack of replay value.

Publication date: 2022 - 08 - 03

Developed by: State of Play

Publisher: 11 bit studios