Journey of the Broken Circle
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Publisher: nakana.io
Developer: Loveable Hat Cult
I knew nothing about Journey of the Broken Circle before purchasing it a few months back. All I knew was that it was a game published by Nakana.io, publisher of indie games like Lydia, and EQQO and that was enough; it was also being offered at a 90% discount which is why I bought it when I did.
I will be honest with you. I have only a 55.47% idea of how to talk about this game. On one hand, this is a simple platformer where you roll and jump the character of Circle through various stages. On the other hand, this is a game about the intricacies of relationships and the complexity of the self. I am somewhat qualified to talk about the platforming aspect of this game, but I am certainly not qualified to act as interpreter and/or therapist to Circle's journey from one relationship to the next and all of the hoops that Circle jumps through both internally and metaphorically between those relationships. I mean sure, I have been in relationships over the decades where I ended the relationship and others where it was the other person who decided to end the relationship so I guess I am remotely qualified to talk about that aspect of the game, but I do not feel comfortable talking about it in a way that would not come across as a rambling mess.
You start the game as Circle, who as a player, we are told that Circle has a longing for something, that something seemed to be missing from Circle's life. Circle looks like Pac-Man as in a circle with a notch cut out that looks a lot like a mouth, but there is no waka waka swallowing of pellets and power pellets, just rolling and jumping. However, due to the notch-mouth-like gap in Circle, the rolling is not 60 fps smooth (so some people might find the game unplayable). During the initial stage, Circle does admit that because they are not a complete circle, that they do not roll as smoothly as they would like, so they are on a journey to fill that void, a hole that only a relationship can make whole.
Throughout Circle's journey, they come across several characters who Circle sees as either what they might be looking for to complete themselves or the exact opposite of what they want. There is Sticky that sticks out from Circle's gap that gives Circle a lopsided appearance and roll, but allows them to stick to the sides of the environment. Gameplay-wise this similar to Ryu in Ninja Gaiden clinging to a wall but unable to climb. Like a relationship, getting used to Sticky's mechanic and gameplay took a bit of time, and while I did get used to the rolling/bounce and the sticking to surfaces to help access additional and hard to reach areas that Circle would otherwise not have been able to reach, this relationship ended when Sticky had reached the end of their journey but Circle still wanted to move on. It was interesting from a gameplay and narrative standpoint when Sticky left because by that point, I was used to their gameplay mechanic and once they left, I felt hampered at no longer being able to stick to walls and such. Like Circle, I now felt incomplete.
After each of Circle's relationships is over, they go through a dark and visually contrasting stage compared to the previous ones you play through. This is where Circle faces their inner conflicts with a cloud that periodically chases them while lobbing comments of doubt and self-deprecation. Because Circle is always again on its own during these stages, you are back again to only rolling and jumping. No additional mechanics or abilities to help you out. I also noticed that frequently in these stages, while you are being chased by the cloud, you end up backtracking through the level then doubling back through a passage that was previously unopen to you, or opened up because of destruction to the environment caused by the cloud. There is probably something to be said about the way these levels are constructed in how they relate to relationships, how after a relationship you might look back at everything you felt you did wrong, but if you continue down that path you will not progress in your life and in the present. Maybe something like that.
The next relationship Circle entered was with Balloon, who was part of a larger cluster of sentient balloons who talked a lot about I have forgotten what. The point is Balloon needed some alone time and Circle came around at just the right time for Balloon to feel liberated. This relationship made me a little sad because it felt like both characters were rebounding. Circle had just been broken up with Sticky and feeling down, Balloon wanted to experience the world without being tied down to a single entity or place. Mechanic-wise, Balloon allowed Circle to float and jumping between clouds. In these stages, Circle and Balloon were hovering (sort of) in the sky, and only when they were in clouds would they be able to jump to help regain altitude. There were some additional new gameplay elements that added to the move right and jump formula in these stages, with obstacles like wind (gravitational pulls really) that require you to jump towards this spinning environmental hazard to build up speed to then slingshot to another wind-swirly-thing.
The last relationship that Circle joined was with Perfect, a green pie-piece that fit perfectly within the hole in Circle. Perfect was definitely a Type-A personality with a LetsDoEverythingAsQuicklyAsPossibleSoWeCanDoEvenMore attitude that got tiring pretty quickly. With Perfect attached to Circle, you could now roll much faster and make long jumps across the screen. Gameplay-wise, I did actually enjoy the abilities that Perfect gave you, but these were easily the most annoying levels in the entire game. In this stage, there were a number of lakes that you needed to get through by building up speed to get you through to the other side, but these lakes were filled with hydra-like creatures that would pull Circle and Perfect into their gaping maws of inescapable death. Let me show you not one, not two, but six times in the span of 30 seconds.
What made swimming difficult and difficult to swim away from the hydra-creatures was that you had little control over your direction once you entered the water. You could move in any given direction once you entered the water, and while in the water, but it was almost as if you had to complete the move in that direction before you could move again. Also taking cues from the environment in the above clip as to how the developers expected you to pass through the water and up the opposite side seemed confusing, to me at least. Judging by the timestamps on the pictures/videos I took during this section, I spent 13 minutes trying to make this one jump, thinking about five minutes into it that this was where I would end up quitting the game. Something about the size of the hitboxes (or at least the perceived size) felt ridiculous and that nothing this frustrating had happened yet in the game was troublesome. Maybe I was just approaching the jumps and the water wrong? Whatever the reason being for this section giving me so much trouble, I made it through.
This time around it is Circle who breaks up with Perfect which I was pretty thankful for because, by the end of those stages, the relationship with Perfect was feeling one-sided and toxic. It was only experiencing what Perfect wanted to experience and none of how Circle wanted to see the world, which then made me feel bad because it seemed somewhat reminiscent of Circle's relationship with Sticky. Thoughts., sending them again into the cave level for a final showdown with the self-doubt cloud. This culminated in what felt like another situation that I was not expecting with the cloud trying to convince Circle that the only left for them to do was jump off the precipice they were rolling towards. In a video game sense, this was kind of heavy, but thinking of this in terms of a relationship and the inner dialogue was so much more than where I thought this adorable game about a 3/4 circle looking for fulfillment was capable of going. There was a moment when the cloud was asking questions and you had the option of giving different answers but I do not know if the cloud's reactions are predetermined or if there are other endings (I'm thinking that there is only one).
The ending of the game, I was very happy with it narratively. It fit well within the story that was being told both in terms of gameplay and relationships. I think that is all I am able to say after all.
There were two extra game modes, one I spent some time playing and the other only for a few minutes and stopped because it was referencing the end of the game which I had not finished at that point. The Bad Trip is an interesting level that was based on the punishing game, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, which in turn was based on the game Sexy Hiking. In this bonus game, you play Circle with an extending mushroom protruding from their gap and have to climb a mountain using the mushroom to grapple onto objects to pull yourself up as you roll. Maybe playing with a mouse would have been easier, but playing with a controller was overly difficult. I probably spent about 10 minutes in one section (around 1:10 in this playthrough), but I really dug whatever the music was that was used there that sadly was not included on the soundtrack. I did love though that there was a text-commentary
Lastly, I want to touch on, briefly, the music composed by scntfc, who also wrote the music for Oxenfree among other games. Most of the music was pretty and ambient, fitting well with the art and the gameplay. There were a couple of more energetic standout tracks like "Nine" which was used during the levels with Balloon. The music along with the gameplay reminded me a lot of BIT.TRIP Runner, which tells me either the music was edited to be dynamic along with the player movements or the level was edited to match up with the music. I probably should have tried playing that section again and failing to see what the music did, but I was just so exhilarated by what was happening (and I managed to snag that floating mushroom; mushrooms unlock access to bonus stages) that I just kept playing. I guess that is just the sign of a good game (except that damn 13-minute jump section with Perfect).
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
A Golden Sun Is Shining Down On Me
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