South of the Circle

released on Oct 30, 2020

South of the Circle is an emotional narrative experience exploring the relationship between Peter and Clara, Cambridge academics caught up in the political conflict of the Cold War. The story focuses on the weight of life choices - between career, true love and the desire to keep our promises.


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Holy hell, what a beautiful and tragic story. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was blown away!

Overall I really liked it. I think the ending could've used better closure but the story for the rest of it felt so natural like a moment picked out of time.

South of the Circle tells a well-written, affecting story of the relationship between two university academics, relived in the memory of the protagonist after a plane crash on the way to a research expedition to the Antarctic, alongside also following his attempts to find rescue from the crash. Gameplay is mostly very light, with the core mechanic being dialogue choices through choosing the 'mood' of a response rather than specific lines (for example, fear, empathy or enthusiasm). It's a system that works better than I honestly expected, though only a handful of these choices are actually meaningful to future events.

While it's perhaps disappointing that a greater degree of branching isn't possible, that's arguably outside the scope of what the game aims for and at the overall end, even if the differences in events don't account for much of the time that we see them playing out, they still feel quite deeply meaningful. This isn't a game with particularly lofty aims, but what it attempts it makes a laudable success of.

historia muito foda e atuação incrível.
o gameplay é meio monótono e o final confesso q foi um pouco frustrante (apesar de ter motivo)
só q toda a narrativa fez valer a pena jogar

This review contains spoilers

Loved the game up until the ending, which was a real let down for me.

Good voice acting, good characters, good story. I also didn't mind the fact that choices didn't really make any difference in terms of how things went: what I liked was the chance to see what the character felt, through those choices. In a way, it is something that only this medium can do through some simple game design ideas. What I didn't like though was the ending.

One aspect that the game explored well in the first two and a half hours was the relationship between power, toxic masculinity, and how these two elements ultimately shape the mind and behaviors of an individual. They determine to what extent one can prioritize oneself over others. The historical context of the Cold War is excellent, and the inclusion of a discourse on women's rights is highly fitting in addressing the theme of power.

Unfortunately, for reasons I'm not quite sure of, the decision is made to undermine the connection between choices, attitudes, power, culture, and social relationships by revealing that the protagonist lies to himself even within his own memories, trying to remember his past under a different light (maybe a better one). Apparently, what is said and done never corresponds to the truth. Yet, this is something that has no impact on the entire game, is not significant for any of the themes explored, and I absolutely do not understand the significance of this kind of unreliabilty. In the last half hour of the game (quite a significant slice, considering the game is barely three hours long, and very short at the same time since it develops suddenly and too fast), the focus shifts completely, destroying everything that was being built up to that point. I can't help but think that perhaps the protagonist behaved, throughout the many events in which we were involved, modeling himself after his father or something like that; unfortunately, even if that were the case, the execution is horribly superficial. And it's a shame, especially considering that there are some moments where the transitions are truly impactful in revealing the character's past: in my opinion, they could have been the real strength of the entire game and yet they were not explored enough