Madness has covered the gloomy London of the Victorian era - the inhabitants suddenly went crazy and shout out only one word, "Die!" Tactical RPG Circus Electrique combines combat from Friv2Online Studio, circus management mechanics and a pinch of visual novel - we tell you what kind of mixture it turned out.

Circus Electric has a story, and a pretty good one. In the center of the story is a young journalist Amelia, who finds herself at work at the re-opening of the Elektrikum circus, which belongs to her uncle. Together with the scientist, the uncle prepared an unforgettable performance and showed the public a huge electric Pillar of Power - however, as soon as it worked, the crowd went wild.

With burning eyes, people began to kill each other, and almost got to Amelia, but she was saved by circus performers led by her uncle. What is happening, and most importantly, how to get everything back - this is what we have to find out in alliance with the artists.

In the presentation of the plot, there is a similarity between Circus Electrique and a visual novel - however, you cannot choose the answer options in the dialogues. From the first lines, Amelia's pain is conveyed to us - the girl is deeply offended by her uncle and blames him for the death of her mother, therefore, in addition to the global mission, we still have to deal with the feelings of the heroine. Although the story does not claim to be a Golden Globe, it has become a skeleton for the entire game, and it is interesting to follow it.

Darkest Dungeon fans will see many familiar mechanics in Circus Electrique - in particular, the combat is almost entirely copied from this roguelike . They are also tactical , and also turn-based, and the members of a squad of 4 fighters in battle are located one after another.

Each character has its own set of abilities and has a similar “stress” indicator of “loyalty”, and the battles turned out to be difficult, because you need to remember about negative and positive effects, the placement of fighters plays a role, and a sudden miss or critical damage can override the outcome of a deliberately successful or not very brawl. In general, Circus Electrique can scare away hardcore, but in this case, the developers allow you to choose between easy, medium and high difficulty levels.

Unless in this game we manage to manage not ruthless mercenaries , who have blades under their pillows, but ordinary circus performers - fat clowns, mustachioed strong men, escapists, fire tamers and other heroes. There are 15 archetypes in Circus Electrique, which will definitely make it possible to create a motley and ideal squad.

The developers could have made Circus Electrique a boring game by highlighting the mechanics of battles and sending the player to monotonously clear London of various villains. This part of the gameplay is here, and there is nothing interesting in it - we walk around the city point by point, we stumble upon battles or random events, sometimes we have fun in mini-games and enjoy chests with valuables, and at the end of the location we talk nicely with the boss .

Much more attractive looks what happens between brawls. The whole circus becomes our refuge, where you can hire new artists, craft something from the items found, send a wounded soldier to the infirmary and look into other tents that are not standing here for beauty. These "buildings" can be upgraded and receive various bonuses, and in this Circus Electric is similar to a simple economic manager .

And in the circus there is an arena where you can and should perform. Every day, before the battle, we have to put on a performance. This is not done in one click, as it is a whole bunch of small mechanics: you need to choose a program, decide on the characters (and the characters can be friends with each other or conflict , which also affects the result), allocate resources to achieve the desired result ...

The management of the circus is an unusual part of the gameplay that makes Circus Electrique stand out, although it gets boring pretty quickly.

You can find out about the results of the performance from the evening newspaper - they will definitely write in the column whether the audience was delighted, or whether those sitting at home on the couch did not lose anything by not coming to us. The reviews turned out to be funny, and other interesting information is written in the newspaper - about the state of the circus, about what is happening in London.

The authors of Circus Electric should be commended for the development of the LOR - thanks to newspaper notes, text on loading screens and other information, you really believe that such a circus existed in reality. Unfortunately not - we checked.

The number of variables is amazing in the first hours of the game - we have not yet talked about a ton of resources that the troupe finds in their adventure, the character attachment system (they can build relationships and receive bonuses) and other little things that we are literally dipped into. However, this heap is not difficult to understand, and somewhere in the middle of the passage of Circus Electrique there is nothing to offer.

As for the picture - here the taste and color. On the one hand, the chamber style in gloomy shades emphasizes the atmosphere of Victorian London, which is going through hard times. On the other hand, the 3D character models turned out to be frankly weak.

Despite the flaws, I don’t want to scold Circus Electrique - well, where else will we be allowed to develop our own circus, and between performances to plunge into complex tactical turn-based battles, where a fat clown and a strong man are bludgeoning the distraught policemen and aggressive fibs of London ? For courage and a competent approach to the implementation of the world and gameplay mechanics, we like the game, and we recommend playing it not only to fans of roguelikes in the spirit of Darkest Dungeon, but also to everyone who is in search of something unusual.