South of the Circle Review (PC)

I watch as Clara talks with a college colleague about demonstrations, mutually assured destruction, and the possibility that life on Earth will end in nuclear fire. My version of Peter is a bit reserved, unable to openly talk about his feelings, and focused on getting through situations with as little conflict as possible. I make him say something bland about the need to focus on his work rather than on anti-war marches. I suffer the withering reply coming from Clara’s college and hope that I will have a chance to explain myself and my actions. But the game pushes forward, leaving me as the player feeling that it has missed something important, and pushing Peter back into the snow and ice, fighting for his survival.

South of the Circle is developed by State of Play and published by 11 bit studios. I played on the PC via Steam, with the game also offered on the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and S, and older platforms from Sony and Microsoft. The focus is on the narrative, with a small set of gameplay mechanics to keep players occupied.

The protagonist is Peter Hamilton, who crash lands in the middle of a frozen landscape in Antarctica. The small plane's pilot is injured, so our hero needs to trudge through the snow to find help. But the focus is not on icy challenges. Peter quickly begins to reminisce, reliving important moments from his life. The focus is on his relationship with Clara, a girl he meets on the train. His research, centered around the way clouds move, is another important element of the narrative and everything takes place in 1964, with Cold War tensions always in the background.

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There are twists and turns as the narrative moves forward, with the core elements of Peter’s life intersecting in some surprising ways. There’s a lot of writing in South of the Circle, especially during the flashback moments that follow Peter and Clara. I found it to be a little too forced and emotional at times, but it manages to convey the inner lives of these two characters.

South of the Circle is very limited in the gameplay department. Players will mainly have to watch for symbols that define emotional states and choose one to get Peter to say or to do something. But one can simply sit back and let the game choose. A few more meaningful choices pop up along the way. And there are sequences where players have limited control over the protagonist, moving him from place to place awkwardly while they wait for a new scene to appear. The game adds a few other direct control moments towards the end, but they fail to be satisfying.

South of the Circle suffers from the choice to make Peter the protagonist when Clara is clearly the more interesting individual. The choices that players will make about his emotions are not varied enough to feel like they are playing their own version of the character. And the gameplay sequences linked to Antarctica are too long for their own good.

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A somewhat shorter, tighter game, with more of a focus on relationships, would have packed more of an emotional punch. The game should also have given Peter a wider emotional range if they wanted gamers to take ownership of the character.

South of the Circle looks great at times, with an art style that’s designed to match the story's tone. The team does a lot with a little, using color and simple lines to depict locations and characters. There’s no UI, with small circles used to introduce the limited player interactions. After a while, the minimalism becomes tiring, and it becomes easier to see the problems with animations and the dead time in some sequences.

The game is fully voice acted and that’s a plus most of the time. The two main actors do a good job of communicating emotion, but the secondary cast is uneven. The rest of the sound design is decent, although the soundtrack should stay in the background more, rather than striving to underline every important moment.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion