Which is kind of the problem: the turn-based battling is all that Circus Electrique has, at least in terms of meaningful gameplay.

It’s something we have played umpteen times before, whether that’s in Final Fantasy-style JRPGs, pure turn-based games, or deckbuilders. Perhaps the situation demands a healer or the removal of debuffs, or your carefully planned configuration is disrupted by an enemy who shuffles your team. Attrition wears down you and your opponent’s health bars, and you choose to focus on particular units to clear them out first. Still, it offers some strategy: which of the two health bars do you target?Īnd that’s it, really. Having two bars to manage is a reasonably neat deviation, but not one that’s particularly new, having been used recently in We Are the Caretakers. Those moves attack one of two stats: the characters’ Health or their Devotion, effectively their physical or mental health. So, you’re choosing from a list of moves that get reduced by the unit’s placement. Those moves are dependent on where the character is within your formation: some of them are only possible when in the front row or back, for example, and equally they might only target the front or back row of your enemies. It’s always four-vs-four, with your team ranked on the left, and the opponents on the right.Įach unit has a couple of passives that are always in play, and six possible moves.

The board game screen (more on that in a moment) propels you into combat with hypnotised policemen, mimes and civil servants, and you are bringing your team of four performers into battle with them. The majority of Circus Electrique’s gameplay is in some good old turn-based battling. Somehow, it all coalesces, a moody lens on circuses that reminded us of the Carnivale TV series. And when in battle, it’s stylish, a mix of cel-shading, crosshatching and neon lights. When fiddling about with its systems, it’s an expensive board game. In conversations, it looks like a dark Alan Moore-like comic book. Graphically, Circus Electrique swings and hits. The steampunk (electropunk?) aesthetic invigorates things further, and the plot has all the potential of going to wild places. We don’t often get to be militant clowns or knife-throwers who are aiming to hit their mark, rather than lodge a knife around them.

Free for mac instal Circus Electrique