REVIEW : Circus Electrique (XBOX Series X)
Zen Studios comes to mind when I think about the top pinball games on the market. There isn’t a single game in my Steam library that I’ve played more than Zen Pinball 2, and it’s still a regular part of my daily Steam Deck gaming regimen. Zen Studios has created more than just pinball games; titles such as Dread Nautical and Castlestorm demonstrated the developer’s ability to experiment with many genres. Circus Electrique is now available: a challenging RPG with real circus management features.
Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian London, the city is in danger when the majority of its residents begin mindlessly attacking one another. Amelia, our hero, is a reporter investigating this phenomenon who unwillingly accepts assistance from her uncle’s circus after realising the danger on the streets.
Amelia grew up at the Circus Electrique, where her mother was the main attraction. Then, one night after a disastrous performance, Amelia’s mother suddenly died, leaving Amelia alone and angry.
Amelia and her ringmaster Uncle have understandably bad blood, and their relationship is explored in fully voice-acted cutscenes throughout the game. The individuals’ connections, combined with the ominous happenings of ancient London town, provide a fascinating backdrop to the RPG action.
Combat in Circus Electrique is turn-based, with a squad of four circus performers facing off against (typically) four rowdy Londoners. The importance of your position, though, distinguishes battle in this game.
Each of your employees has six movements available to them, but they can only be used in specific locations in the party lineup. The same is true for your opponents, and when you throw in strikes that move characters around, you get some pretty chaotic clashes.
The various classes in Circus Electrique are as charming as they are distinct. Clowns are tanks/healers with a few status effects under their sleeves (along with a very long handkerchief), Strongmen inflict massive damage but struggle to take it, and Snake Charmers utilise poison on opponents and can lift your party’s spirits with exotic dancing.
As you go through the game, you’ll be able to unlock a variety of different classes, each of which is unique.
A character can be eliminated from battle by exhausting their health bar, but they can also be eliminated by lowering their devotion to zero. This blue metre represents how devoted each performer is to the squad, and it impacts both opponents and allies. You’ll want to keep your party happy if you want to keep them around, especially because characters with high devotion are more accurate, more likely to land critical attacks, and are given positive status benefits.
How do you keep all of your performers happy? Of course, by allowing them to spend the night performing in the big top rather than fighting indoctrinated citizens. In Circus Electrique, you’ll need to run the circus between fights, which involves giving jobs to everyone. Anyone in pain can spend a night or two in the sleeping car, slackers can be sent to the practice tent to level up, and a select few will be chosen to perform in the following day’s concert.
Setting up an exciting show is more difficult than you might believe. Each of your party members has four distinct skill points that influence how they entertain the audience. Some excel at music, while others excel at humour or dangerous acts. To star in the show, the performers you choose must total particular point values, but to achieve the most stars (which equals money and experience for the circus), you must organise them appropriately.
You can see that each of your performers has a preference for the position they play in the show as well as who they perform with.
You may have a clown who prefers to open the show and have a firebreather follow him or a strongman who prefers to be the main attraction and despises walking out after an escapologist. Only by putting the right people in the correct places will you be able to acquire the most stars to upgrade your base of operations.
After putting on enough enjoyable concerts, the circus will level up and you’ll be able to upgrade each of its separate components. Upgrading the sleeping car allows more people to sleep, but investing significant money and resources in upgrading the Artisan unlocks strong new consumables and shows craft advancements.
Every time you return to the circus, you will face a slew of decisions, which may be intimidating for some.
Whatever is going on at the circus, you’ll need to have a healthy party of four ready to explore the streets of The Big Smoke. When you exit the circus, you’ll be confronted with a sprawling network of nodes, and you’ll need to determine the best path for your team. You might wish to choose a road that leads to a loot crate, but the conflict that follows will be a nightmare for your fire breathers.
Every one of these decisions has the potential to bring the circus riches or result in the permanent death of a performer, so don’t take them lightly.
Yes, permadeath is present in Circus Electrique. If a character runs out of HP, they are gone for good, and if they run out of devotion, they are likely to go as well. Circus Electrique, modelled after games like Darkest Dungeon, wants you to know that there are consequences to your choices, and will gladly kill off your favourite clowns and ventriloquists if you’re not cautious. Unlike other more harsh RPGs, though, filling up your sleeping rooms with substitute performers of comparable strength levels isn’t too difficult if a major encounter wipes you out.
I’m not afraid to admit that I had entire teams of characters taken away from me after particularly difficult scraps, and it hurt. Some boss fights, in particular, do not play fairly, and if you are not using all of your powers to enhance and position your team effectively, they will likely take some of them down.
There are numerous additional mechanics and concepts that I haven’t even addressed in Circus Electrique. There’s the mighty Amazemeter, which steadily builds up between encounters and can save your bacon by unleashing a large heal, buff, or assault at the opportune time.
There are also a variety of activities on the map, such as street concerts or penny slide mini-games, which spice up the loop of battle and show organising with a little fun and a chance to win rewards.
Circus Electrique has a lot of things I like about it, but it does have a few flaws. Perhaps the one that kept me from playing for hours at a time is the frequency with which a circus show must be organised. You’ll need to figure out which performer to put where between each battle (until you unlock the harder two-day concerts), and because you’re punished for performing the same show twice, you can’t even repeat one you’ve already set up.
As much as I enjoy the punishing difficulty, I believe that several components of the game are plain unbalanced. There were times when I’d load into a fight only to see four fire foes in the rain who could barely hurt the team, and others when I’d load into combat only to see four fire enemies in the rain who could barely damage the team. The consistency just does not exist.
