Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue

You are a prisoner for a crime you don't remember committing, and your only chance of escape is to draw a square circle.

Kafkaesque is a word many have used to describe this game, and indeed a sense of claustrophobia pervades the entire escape attempt. The writing is solid and sometimes witty; most visible objects were implemented. It was, however, marred for me with imperfect line breaks and the occasional "infodump".

Balance between story and puzzles was probably a tough call here. There is plenty of both, which provides for a rich playing experience, but the delivery of major plot points was often delivered as an uninterrupted chunk of text. Reading the 'infodump' like that broke the flow of the story and, for me, lessened the impact of the most major twists. The puzzles were well-hinted with contextual hints, and there are multiple solutions to some of the puzzles. Despite this, the puzzles are not easy. For me, solutions weren't immediately obvious and I often referred to the hints. I found it hard to find that moment of enlightenment when solving the puzzles, partly because there wasn't enough material with which I could experiment. Also, it seems to be possible to put the game into an unwinnable state, probably meriting its Nasty rating on the Forgiveness scale.

Conversation in Square Circle also merits some mention, with most topics of conversation given an appropriate response. As with Blighted Isle, Eve also includes some natural-sounding responses to topics for which the NPCs do not have an answer - a thoughtful, and also playful, gesture.

Square Circle is technically strong, with a well-thought-out story and interesting puzzles. There is a good twist towards the end, and perhaps could adopt a more strongly consistent tone, but well worth playing.

Playing time: ~5 minutes

Styled as a spoof fantasy adventure, complete with wise old sage, you play a hero venturing in search of the titular Sacred Staff of Deck Koji. True to the spirit of the thing, the obstacles you face are silly. The writing is competent and the game isn’t buggy, but it was a rather unmemorable game - it felt more like a test game - but the ‘Making Of’ section included in the game is worth reading.

I just have one quibble, though given the size of this game, it may be a trivial one - many decision points have choices which result in dead ends. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason why this should be, which made it, in the authors’ words, ‘mildly irritating’. ...Was this intentional?

So, is it fun? Er. Hardly. I had more fun reading the ‘Making Of’ than playing the game, so… your mileage may vary, I guess. Two stars for functionality: it works, and I didn't spot any bugs or typos.