Circa Infinity (Switch eShop) Review

For centuries, the circle has left indelible marks on our culture: Wagner’s Ring cycle; Dante’s hell; Pythagoras theorem; Dominos Pizza. And now Kenny Sun’s Circa Infinity comes to Switch to distract us from all of them, except maybe pizza.

New to console, this indie action-puzzle platformer hit the PC in 2015, causing a stir with its unique concept and stunning visuals. You control a small pixel person who runs around the outside of a circle that fills the screen. There is a circular segment of the circle that can be entered by standing on your bow and pressing jump. As you enter the circle, your person turns to run around the inside of the circumference. Another small circle is floating around the middle of the one you entered, and can be reached by jumping when in range. The screen then zooms in so that this new circle fills your view and the process repeats. As you progress through the game, new enemy types, behaviors, and patterns are introduced; contact with the bad guys results in failure.

The difficulty certainly increases, but what sets Circa Infinity apart from other ‘good idea’ standalone games is the level design, which does a perfect job of teaching the player the necessary skills and then prompting creative thinking with what has been learned. The difficulty curve is as smooth as the circles round, giving the feeling of a wise martial arts mentor who would be delighted to be defeated, but will not let you win. Rather than awarding a set amount of lives and deducting them as punishment for failure, the game allows you to try as many times as you like, but it pushes you out a stage each time you die. This feels fair and requires a cool head – if frustration creeps in, then it’s very easy to chain a series of kills and find yourself back at the beginning of the level.

We can make comparisons with all kinds of games: the action on a single screen, the immersive play area and the pixelated graphics are reminiscent of the arcade classics of the golden age like Asteroids and Defender. Rhythmic deception feels like sometimes Super Hexagon and sometimes like VVVVVV. The color-coding of enemies as they switch between lethal and benign, coupled with frantic reading of reflex action patterns, feels like Ikaruga. Suffice it to say, Circa Infinity offers everything you could get from its simple formula, and it does so with style and an incredible soundtrack.

While it translates well on Switch, the pixelated graphic style doesn’t pretty read as deliberately on the handheld screen. On a larger OLED screen, this is particularly true. OLED gamers will also be well aware that blacks are not pretty black, and your screen will glow grainy grays instead of absorbing light in bright darkness.

Circa infinity is a game where form follows function and function follows form. If the image of a bold circle on the screen was the chicken, then the mechanics of an immersive platformer was the egg. The constant deception of its concentrated concentricity is disconcertingly circular, but once you’ve accepted the premise, it makes perfect sense. The player-friendly level design and a well-calculated difficulty curve allow fluid complexity and diabolical challenge to shine through, while its distinctive appearance will leave an indelible mark on your mind.