South of the Circle Review

South of the Circle is a narrative adventure game about, Peter, a Cambridge academic who finds himself fighting for survival in Antarctica during the 1960’s Cold War. You must cross desolate terrain to reach British, Norwegian and Soviet Antarctic bases. As you do you discover a story about life at university and his relationship with a fellow lecturer, Clara.

It's visually striking through its emotional realism and well acted by the likes of Oscar winning Bohemian Rhapsody (Gwilym Lee), The Woman in White (Olivia Vinall), Belgravia (Richard Goulding), Game of Thrones (Anton Lesser), Chernobyl (Adrian Rawlins) and Downton Abbey (Michael Fox). But it's your choices and interactions that are most affecting. You control Peter’s emotional reactions which are played out through symbols and the game's cinematic environments.

"You can't change the past, but we can learn from it. Before we fool ourselves into remembering it too kindly," says a character at one point.

What results is a game about memory, survival, and the consequences of not dealing with the past. The unforgiving landscape is a backdrop for equally desperate attempts to come to terms with his past as the line between real and imagined blur in the snow.