Originally released on Apple Arcade, South of the Circle is an emotional narrative experience from the BAFTA-winning studio State of Play that tells the story of Peter, a Cambridge professor-to-be who is working on his research paper on the clouds. Unfortunately for him, his paper isn’t going anywhere until a young lady named Clara enters his life. The story cuts between Peter’s time with Clara doing research together and getting to know her better under the harsh political climate of the Cold War, and Peter’s present, stranded in the middle of Antarctica where something strange is going on. I went into South of the Circle knowing very little about it and to preserve that same naivety for you, I won’t say much more about the plot other than the fact that it is not a remake of the hit sci-fi horror classic The Thing and that the story is a captivating one that remains intriguing despite very little player interaction.
On that note, South of the Circle‘s gameplay can be stated as a mix of Firewatch and Telltale’s The Walking Dead, though in all honesty, it actually has less real gameplay than either. You do move Peter forward while he’s stumbling through the snow in Antarctica, and you can control vehicles at certain points in the game but the control you are given is very limited. You will also turn a few dials to tune to the right frequency and press X (on PlayStation) to interact with certain objects, but the real gameplay loop is pressing button prompts to progress story conversations. This is where South of the Circle does something really interesting and in order to talk about it, I have to go into spoilers. So please skip the next paragraph if you have not yet played South of the Circle.
At the end of the game, you go through one final conversation with Carla where she leaves you, stating that the promises you made were broken. I was very confused by this because I was making “pro-Clara choices” the whole way through. Then, after seeking out answers on the internet, I was made aware that South of the Circle isn’t letting you change Peter’s life, after all he’s already in Antarctica at the start of the game, so instead, you get to decide how Peter remembers his life. Whatever you think you did is not the truth because there you are, clearly having broken the promise you made to her, impacted by the numerous voices in your ears. The reason why I had to explain all that is that from that context, the limited gameplay is given more depth. There aren’t standard three dialog options in South of the Circle, just floating circles with emotions that the game essentially programs you to understand at the start. This means that every time you make a decision, Peter isn’t saying reading a dialogue you picked, he’s responding with the emotion you selected.
Now that the spoiler paragraph is out of the way, let’s talk about visuals. South of the Circle has a striking visual pallet that is reminiscent of paper art. Every frame feels like it could be in a picture book. A very mature and dark picture book, yes, but a picture book, nonetheless. At almost every step of the journey I was captivated by the presentation, audibly saying, “damn, that’s pretty” multiple times in my three-hour twenty-minute playthrough. My only real problem with the game visually is when the characters interact with 3D objects. Be it a pen or a pile of papers, every time a character holds something, it looks awkward, as if the object is floating in the general vicinity of their hand. This may not have been as noticeable on a smaller phone screen, but you can’t miss it when you play it on a monitor like I did.
I have no such gripes with the audio, however. The game is fully voice acted and the actors do a wonderful job with their characters. To me, their voices were all distinct and contained enough of their own unique personality to make them stand out in the game’s small cast. Accompanying that is great music as well. From suspenseful tracks that feel like they’re from a Christopher Nolan movie to more dreamy tunes, the sound is used well to push the story forward and give the player a sense of urgency when all they’re doing is walking Peter up a snowy hill.
There are a few miscellaneous things I want to cover before wrapping up the review. Firstly, the game did freeze on one occasion when Act 3 started. I opened my trophy alert to see what it was, and the game automatically paused, which happened every time I did that, but on that particular occasion, the game didn’t respond to any inputs and gave me a blank screen that didn’t let me return to the game. This required a restart, and I lost a few minutes of progress but, thanks to frequent autosaves, it wasn’t a huge problem. Speaking of trophies though, the game has 10 total and I unlocked all of them without the use of a guide. Just be thorough and they should all pop by the time you finish. I do wish this game had a Platinum, but that’s a topic for another day.
In the end, South of the Circle is an intriguing Cold War love story that is best when experienced without much prior knowledge. I recommend playing through it in one sitting like I did. It’s a little over three hours long, with a few minutes of cushion depending on if you explore everything or not, and the impact of the decisions you make and the story you witness is much stronger when there aren’t days separating them. That being said, I know not everyone has time to play a game like that, but even if you can’t, I still recommend checking it out if you’re a fan of immersive narratives. South of the Circle is out now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and GOG. A code for the game was provided by the publisher for review. If you want to see the game in action, click here to see my live playthrough of the game. As a fun side note, the game does have a Deluxe Edition that comes with the short novel that was written before the game to help develop characters and plot.
