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Narrative Adventure Game 'South of the Circle' Out Now on Apple Arcade

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New adventure game "South of the Circle" arrived on Apple Arcade today. Made by State of Play, developers of developers of "Kami," "INKS," and "Lumino City," the title is notable for its unique aesthetic inspired by mid-century screen printing.


South of the Circle has a narrative focus set in 1964 in Antarctica. Following an aircraft crash, Cambridge academic Peter must fight for survival as he crosses desolate terrain in an attempt to reach British, Norwegian, and Soviet Antarctic bases. As conditions deteriorate, the past and the present blur together, and Peter is forced to come to terms with survival, reality, and the consequences of his past.

State of Play used full 3D motion capture for added realism, and the game features a host of award-winning actors such as Gwilym Lee, Olivia Vinall, Richard Goulding, Anton Lesser, Adrian Rawlins, and Michael Fox. South of the Circle is out now on Apple Arcade with controller support, and comes as a 2.3GB download on iOS.

There are now more than 125 games available on ‌Apple Arcade‌, with Apple adding new titles regularly. ‌‌Apple Arcade‌‌ is priced at $4.99 per month, and that price point allows the whole family to play games without ads or additional in-app purchases. In a currently running promotion, Apple is also offering new iPhone 12 owners three free months of Apple Arcade.

Article Link: Narrative Adventure Game 'South of the Circle' Out Now on Apple Arcade
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/10/30/adventure-game-south-of-the-circle-apple-arcade/
Wow, the graphics style and motion seems really cool!
If the gameplay is as good or better, it should be an amazing game.
 
^ The Amiga was amazing, and probably one of the most amazing computers ever made, which will never get anything like it made today as the money men rule the tech people.

However all that said, not sure 2020 iPhone with the graphical power of the 35 year old 1985 Amiga is a good selling point :)

Just a shame Commodore mis-marketed the Amiga
What an amazing world it might have been if the Amiga won over the PC as the computer that dominated the world.
 
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Yeah, I’ll try it out. Better than the typical puzzle game that seems to be overwhelming the Apple Arcade lineup recently
 
Piggie said:
^ The Amiga was amazing, and probably one of the most amazing computers ever made, which will never get anything like it made today as the money men rule the tech people.

However all that said, not sure 2020 iPhone with the graphical power of the 35 year old 1985 Amiga is a good selling point :)

Just a shame Commodore mis-marketed the Amiga
What an amazing world it might have been if the Amiga won over the PC as the computer that dominated the world.
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Can you imagine how much further along the computing world would be today if only the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST / TT / Falcon had managed to gain dominance? They were both easily ten years ahead of Apple and PC machines at the time.

South of the Circle looks interesting. I enjoy games with an interesting and clear aesthetic like that, as well as story-driven narrative games. It's a bit harder to get those in RPGs anymore, with so many of them going "action," so it's good to see something like this. (I enjoyed the Life is Strange series quite a bit too.)
 
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Big Amiga fan here! I have Flashback for Switch... it's aged quite a bit, but there were so many amazing games on the Amiga. Oh those beautiful gradients...
 
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panjandrum said:
Can you imagine how much further along the computing world would be today if only the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST / TT / Falcon had managed to gain dominance? They were both easily ten years ahead of Apple and PC machines at the time.

South of the Circle looks interesting. I enjoy games with an interesting and clear aesthetic like that, as well as story-driven narrative games. It's a bit harder to get those in RPGs anymore, with so many of them going "action," so it's good to see something like this. (I enjoyed the Life is Strange series quite a bit too.)
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Too bad for Amiga. At the end of the day, I went with a b/w MacSE...
 
R10k said:
Big Amiga fan here! I have Flashback for Switch... it's aged quite a bit, but there were so many amazing games on the Amiga. Oh those beautiful gradients...
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Same here! Xenon... Demos with plasma effects... Octamed... Captain Blood... happy days! I still have my old A500 up in the loft with a box full of games. Had an Amiga emulator for Mac some time ago which worked pretty well.

Oh, and the game looks good too!
 
fishmongerer said:
Too bad for Amiga. At the end of the day, I went with a b/w MacSE...
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Yeah, that's the power of marketing. We are all subject to it, even those of us who actively try to be aware of what's going on. I was definitely in the market for a Mac at the time (would have been a 512Ke or Plus at the time) but lucked-out and was introduced to the Amiga and ST line of computers. Let's just say "mind blown." What a difference having such advanced capabilities and speed made during college. But if you can't market it rarely matters how good a product you have (and, if you market well, it often doesn't matter how crappy your product is in comparison). Don't get me wrong, Apple came out with the Mac II, and that was more powerful in certain ways, but it wasn't actually any faster in real usage scenarios (was generally slower, sometimes much slower) and cost untold fortunes.

It was a great and creative time though, that's for sure, when the devs behind the games had to really push the envelope of what was possible with the hardware. Something we don't see a lot anymore (I remember reading the original system requirements for Disco Elysium for example, and just laughing. It's an isometric game that should run on darn near anything, and yet the CPU that powers my Pimax 5K+ VR HMD barely met the recommended spec! Now that's a company that didn't bother to optimize their code! Holy smokes!)
 
panjandrum said:
Yeah, that's the power of marketing. We are all subject to it, even those of us who actively try to be aware of what's going on. I was definitely in the market for a Mac at the time (would have been a 512Ke or Plus at the time) but lucked-out and was introduced to the Amiga and ST line of computers. Let's just say "mind blown." What a difference having such advanced capabilities and speed made during college. But if you can't market it rarely matters how good a product you have (and, if you market well, it often doesn't matter how crappy your product is in comparison). Don't get me wrong, Apple came out with the Mac II, and that was more powerful in certain ways, but it wasn't actually any faster in real usage scenarios (was generally slower, sometimes much slower) and cost untold fortunes.

It was a great and creative time though, that's for sure, when the devs behind the games had to really push the envelope of what was possible with the hardware. Something we don't see a lot anymore (I remember reading the original system requirements for Disco Elysium for example, and just laughing. It's an isometric game that should run on darn near anything, and yet the CPU that powers my Pimax 5K+ VR HMD barely met the recommended spec! Now that's a company that didn't bother to optimize their code! Holy smokes!)
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The Amiga was a very specific set of hardware graphical designs. It didn't scale for 3D.
 
thedocbwarren said:
The Amiga was a very specific set of hardware graphical designs. It didn't scale for 3D.
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sure, but there was quite some time between the heyday of the amiga and the first 3dfx cards for PCs. Even Wolfenstein 3D came out a year after the last Amiga500 was produced.
 
Unami said:
sure, but there was quite some time between the heyday of the amiga and the first 3dfx cards for PCs. Even Wolfenstein 3D came out a year after the last Amiga500 was produced.
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True but the greatest strength of the Amiga (and do love them so) was bitplan bitblt and rasters. The problem is that is bitmap, beam chasing through custom chips. That limited them in the end as chunky graphics and accelerated 3D came along (ala Jaguar and Falcons from Atari.) All of which went bye-bye. Cool era for sure, but given the change in tech (and Sony hiring and absorbing Pygnosis) this would not have been really that possible on the Amiga.

Anyway just enjoy the discussion of retros.
 
I had an A500 before I upgraded to an A1200. I really miss Turrican 2, Gods, Beneath A Steel Sky, Flashback and Alien Breed.

I hated that terrible Doom knock off - Gloom. Ran like mud even on an A1200 with an FPU.
 
Biorunner said:
I had an A500 before I upgraded to an A1200. I really miss Turrican 2, Gods, Beneath A Steel Sky, Flashback and Alien Breed.

I hated that terrible Doom knock off - Gloom. Ran like mud even on an A1200 with an FPU.
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Yeah that kind of stuff needs all CPU and given the bus speed was limited to sync up to analog video so it slowed memory access down. That and the planer memory. If you used only one plane you likely could speed stuff up and keep it simple, but you still run into cpu contention. It's why 3D stuff was faster on the ST since the memory model was simpler and didn't have the custom stuff till later. But they never used planer memory. That, of course, was an advantage to the Amiga for parallax scrolling.

End of the day things changed and even consoles were out of date that used the bitblt tech (like the Genesis.)
 
Can someone help me with the controls? We connected our Xbox controller, as we saw options for A/B/X/Y buttons. But it looks like you can move a directional stick to choose what you want to do before hitting Y, but we can't figure out how.

Also sometimes you get an option to choose a rectangle or a circle. What is the difference? I need a tutorial lol.
 
jonnysods said:
Reminds me of some of the artwork from Another World or Prince of Persia on the Amiga 500 (anyone remember how awesome those were?)
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Wow...the original Prince of Persia....many years ago! Also, downloaded the game to iPad and started playing...I like so far....
 
Rob9874 said:
Can someone help me with the controls? We connected our Xbox controller, as we saw options for A/B/X/Y buttons. But it looks like you can move a directional stick to choose what you want to do before hitting Y, but we can't figure out how.

Also sometimes you get an option to choose a rectangle or a circle. What is the difference? I need a tutorial lol.
Click to expand...

I'm having the same problem. My assumption is either:
1. I'm too stupid to play this game;
2. There's some controller convention for similar games that I'm not aware of.

Here's what I've done to attempt to figure out the controls: Press and hold the "Y" button when prompted, then try the directional pad, the left joystick, the right joystick, the left trigger, the right trigger, the left bumper, and the right bumper. I've been unable to select one of the text options, any help from smarter people would be appreciated.
 
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