Some games are to be enjoyed like a fine wine. We don’t want to rush them: the quality of the profession is too good for that. So we take our time and admire them while they last.
BAFTA pay attention, because South of the circle – in a few categories – comes close to being best in class. Give yourself a few hours to play it and see if you agree. We wonder if there’s a game coming out this year that surpasses it in its naturalistic dialogue, voice acting (oh me oh my, the voice acting) and sound design. Congratulations, state of affairs, in this respect your game is superlative.
South of the Circle started life as an Apple Arcade game, and it’s finally donning its snow boots to travel to other platforms. lots of walking in South of the Circle. But you also have conversations with people, choose dialogue options and look at the consequences of those choices. It is a narrative game and there is very little other gameplay to color it in.
It tells the story of Peter, a quiet and reclusive climatologist, who works as a professor at a university in Cambridge. He feels pressure from his immediate boss to be put on paper: to publish something that draws attention to the college. But Peter is a perfectionist and a worrier, and that won’t happen in the near future.
Buzzing in the background are the affairs of the period. South of the Circle is set in the 1960s, with the Cold War on everyone’s mind. There is talk of the ‘Cambridge Four’, a group of spies who conspired with the Soviet government. The radio is buzzing with news of the Antarctic Treaty, a pact of non-aggression and non-competition in Antarctica, with Russia potentially breaking that pact. There are allusions to college as a boys’ club, and the associated impossibility for a woman to be successful there.
Peter seems adrift until he meets Clara, a fellow professor, in a train car. They agree to attend each other’s lectures and a friendship develops that quickly turns romantic. She urges him to complete his paper – a study of cloud paths and the radiation levels in clouds – and soon they are working together. Peter is doing well.
What makes South of the Circle fascinating is that we just described the flashbacks, rather than the core of the game. Because these are all moments from the past as Peter travels through Antarctica. He crashed with an Australian pilot and Peter is the only one who can find help. So he travels from camp to camp, seeking rescue, fantasizing about the moments that led him there.
South of the Circle is a beautiful game, but in a modest way. It looks like painting by numbers, with simple watercolor blocks. But it is in the animation that South of the Circle sings. Keeping things simple allows the characters to move in an extremely realistic way, which is only possible through motion capture. There is clearly humanity in everything Peter and the rest of the cast do.
But as said, it’s in the script and voice acting that we have to take off a hat. Clara and Peter in particular are simply sublime. Played by Olivia Vinall (The Woman in White) and Gwilym Lee (Bohemian Rhapsody), these are two of the best performances we’ve come across, capturing an intensely repressed British character. The supporting cast is also brilliant, but it’s these two, coupled with their stripped-down but effective facial animations, that make the emotions sing.
With all this gushing, you’d be forgiven for wondering why there’s only a 4 at the end of this review. If BAFTA has to take it into account, why not a perfect 5?
It’s not why you would think. Walking simulators like South of the Circle get bad press for a lack of gameplay, but that’s not why we have any reluctance to give South of the Circle the big points. It’s in the dialogue choices and overall plot that we found some real flaws.
To make a choice in South of the Circle, you don’t pick exact lines of dialogue or even small summaries of that dialogue. Instead you do’a bit of a fable‘, and choose from simple icons intended to represent the choice. There is a blue square, a small drop, a sun, a red dot. There is an undeniable advantage to reducing it this way: you can quickly choose an option and the dialogue flows perfectly naturally. That’s not so awkward Telltale pause while the other character waits for you to read the options to you.
But South of the Circle goes too abstract. It takes some time to figure out what each icon represents, and we’re still not convinced we’re in control of it. The blue square, we think, is a logical, practical response, while a blue drop is a gentle one. We could be wrong. All too often we felt betrayed by our dialogue choices. When a character wants a simple binary answer, yes or no, suddenly seeing a water ripple and red dot doesn’t really help. You can choose no if you meant yes. maybe there is never used to be a yes.
But it’s the plot that sticks. Somewhat appropriately, you could plot our involvement in the story on a graph and it would look like a mountain. The opening moments of South of the Circle are looking for a topic, jumping back and forth between different topics and not quite deciding what it finds interesting. But it’s the ending that disappointed us the most. For a game that barely meanders with its choices – there aren’t many deviations here – it shoots right at the very end, undoing the few choices we’ve made. We don’t want to reveal much more than that, but it had the effect of making everything that preceded it cheaper.
But – oh – that middle part. When the top of that mountain arrives, south of the circle is stellar. It finds the threads it wants to pull, including some that are political, others that are still relevant today, yet more than imbued with feeling and emotion. While there are many people with rose-colored glasses for the post-war era, it was clearly a terrifying time to live through, especially if you weren’t a middle-class white, straight man in Cambridge or London.
For all our criticisms of the pick-bright and skittish plot, South of the Circle is a serious recommendation, especially if the words “walking simulator” don’t make you run for another round of war zone. It is sensationally acted, beautifully written and an evocative period piece. For much of his short run, he has his icy grip around you.
Oh, and remind us never to go to Antarctica. At least, not without a lot of alcohol, a map and a shotgun.
You can buy South of the Circle at the Xbox store for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
Some games are to be enjoyed like a fine wine. We don’t want to rush them: the quality of the profession is too good for that. So we take our time and admire them while they last. Look out for BAFTA, because South of the Circle – in a few categories – comes close to being the best in its class. Give yourself a few hours to play it and see if you agree. We wonder if there’s a game coming out this year that surpasses it in its naturalistic dialogue, voice acting (oh me oh my, the voice acting) and sound design. Congratulations, State of…
South of the Circle Review
South of the Circle Review
2022-07-30
Dave Ozzy
Advantages:
- Give the voice actors a price now
- Extremely natural dialogue
- Effective, simple artwork
- The middle part is a treat
cons:
- Beginning and end meanders
- Dialog system is too vague and confusing
Information:
- Thank you very much for the free copy of the game go to – 11 bit studios
- Formats – Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, PC, Switch
- Version Reviewed – Xbox Series X
- Release Date – July 3, 2022
- Introductory price from – £TBC
TXH score
4/5
Advantages:
- Give the voice actors a price now
- Extremely natural dialogue
- Effective, simple artwork
- The middle part is a treat
cons:
- Beginning and end meanders
- Dialog system is too vague and confusing
Information:
- Thank you very much for the free copy of the game go to – 11 bit studios
- Formats – Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, PC, Switch
- Version Reviewed – Xbox Series X
- Release Date – July 3, 2022
- Introductory price from – £TBC
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