CIRCLE Entertainment Game Reviews
Review Karous -The Beast of Re:Eden- (3DS eShop)
Not exactly the beast
The "shmup" genre is relatively niche but is also, among its devoted fans, one of the great pleasures in gaming. It's a difficult genre to create games for, however, as the nature of the gameplay is rather limited and simple, with innovations being hard to come by. After all, there's only so many ways one can pull off...
Paper play
We don't all claim to be linguists or experts on Japanese language or culture here at Nintendo Life, but being the dedicated journalists that we are, we're always willing to do a bit of research. It turns out that origami, the art of paper folding, has a very interesting linguistic background. When broken down, "ori" means to fold or...
Review Adventure Bar Story (3DS eShop)
Will battle for food
Adventure Bar Story sees players taking on two seemingly disparate roles: a chef/restaurant manager and a monster-slaying adventurer. Though these two sound like they would make a questionable mix, the result is actually quite charming and addicting; the ultimate challenge for this quirky RPG is to satisfy the appetite of...
Review Quell Memento (3DS eShop)
Worth remembering
Creating a working puzzle takes a certain level of skill, even more so if you wish to make it interesting. The Quell series really seems to pay a special mind to the puzzle as a form of craft, presenting its challenges to the player while also attempting to build a serene journey through them. Quell Memento, the latest iteration to...
An Ys-y purchase
The RPG genre is still rather popular, with several big-name releases arriving every year. While these are usually grand spectacles, Fairune keeps things quite simple. As with many "retro-esque" games these days, it attempts to emulate the look and feel of a classic '80s game, and that comes with matching game mechanics. Combat is...
Review Castle Conqueror Defender (3DS eShop)
Just another castle to conquer
CIRCLE Entertainment's Castle Conqueror series has seen a healthy number of instalments in its release history, so it's no surprise when a new game hits the Nintendo eShop. The series has stuck to a simplistic RTS (real-time strategy) style of gameplay for the majority of its entries, but the developers decided to...
Review Castle Conqueror EX (3DS eShop)
Back to basics
Four years ago, at the time of the original Castle Conqueror title's DSiWare release, we made a somewhat snarky remark in our review about the absence of Real-Time Strategy games on the Nintendo DS. With its touch controls and capability to display information on one screen and action on the other, the dual-screened console seemed...
Review The Legend of Dark Witch (3DS eShop)
Just short of legendary
As both a developer and a publisher, CIRCLE Entertainment has been paramount to the rising indie games scene on Nintendo handhelds. Starting on the DSiWare digital service and eventually moving forward to 3DS eShop titles, CIRCLE has managed to have its hand in around 40 releases since 2010. With that many games in its...
Review Demon King Box (3DS eShop)
Put a lid on it
Prolific publisher CIRCLE Entertainment’s latest eShop effort takes players down into the world of demons, where the once mighty Demon Lord now sits boxed up and bodiless. Unable to reconquer his kingdom alone, he enlists the help of several of the underworld’s finest fighting spirits; that’s where you come in. While it’s...
Review Glory of Generals (3DS eShop)
Inglorious
The 3DS is no stranger to war games, and CIRCLE Entertainment has been a particularly prolific profiteer, with World Conquerer 3D, European Conquerer 3D and this latest effort, Glory of Generals, all hitting the eShop within the last year. A turn-based strategy game set in World War II, Glory of Generals attempts to stand out from the...
Review European Conqueror 3D (3DS eShop)
Go ahead, mention the war
European Conqueror 3D is a title that might inspire a bit of déjà vu in observant eShop gamers, coming less than a year after the release of CIRCLE’s slightly more ambitious-sounding World Conqueror 3D. Like its predecessor, this is a turn-based strategy game that takes cues from tabletop classics like Risk and Axis...
Review Parking Star 3D (3DS eShop)
Back it up and dump it!
There are so many driving games on the market today, we've been oversaturated with choice; whether you want a hardcore racing sim, a lighthearted arcade game, a futuristic hovercraft racer, or all your favourite corporate characters go-karting together, there's something out there for you. But you know what the driving game...
Review I Am In The Movie (DSiWare)
I am in disbelief
Have you ever wanted to be a film director? Have you ever wanted to capture life through the lens of a camera and use it to craft your own cinematic masterpiece? Do you have even a fleeting interest in special effects? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, now’s the time to leave all of your hopes and dreams on the...
Pixel-by-numbers
Tappingo is a game for those who enjoy methodically teasing order out of an apparent mess. Really. When you begin one of the 100+ puzzles, the upper screen that displays your goal in progress looks like an NES sneezed on it. Yet by working out the numbered blocks on the grid below, colours and form fill in until you’re rewarded...
Review Quell Reflect (3DS eShop)
A rainy day delight
Puzzle games are masters of covert time consumption. Some, like Tetris, keep players on their toes with an unrelenting pace and an addictive “one more try” appeal. Others, instead, offer a calmer, more contemplative experience, letting the player move at his or her own pace as they descend into the logic and rules of the...
Review World Conqueror 3D (3DS eShop)
Tanks, but no tanks
Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell of the British Army once said that “war is a muddle” and, quite frankly, we couldn’t agree with him more. The conflict he described was that of World War II; that's the very same that World Conqueror 3D strives to simulate, with messy results. No more than an overcomplicated clone of...
Review Brunch Panic (3DS eShop)
Piece of cake
Brunch: a late-start, laid-back, Sunday morning meal where carbo-loading is king, and it's perfectly acceptable to pile as many waffles onto your plate as physically possible. Panic: a state of uncontrollable fear and anxiety; also an excellent Sega CD game. These are two worlds which don't often collide, perhaps — but they come...
Easy to learn, difficult to pronounce
What if the Rubik’s Cube only had one side? It seems this question has kept the ironically named developers at CIRCLE Entertainment up all night, and those sleepless hours have resulted in a quality puzzle game that relaxes and taxes simultaneously. Wakedas is a straightforward affair that slowly ramps up the...
Review Swords & Soldiers 3D (3DS eShop)
Finally facing its Waterloo
Four years ago, Swords & Soldiers made its debut. WiiWare has always been a mix of titles ranging from brilliant to terrible — with a thick middle section of "mediocre" — but Swords & Soldiers immediately established itself as a must-have. We awarded it a much deserved 9, taken as we were by its charm, its...
Review Publisher Dream (DSiWare)
This game development biz is confusing...
CIRCLE Entertainment has published a good variety of games on DSiWare, covering almost any genre that can feasibly work on the ageing service. Its own take on the sim style began with Bookstore Dream, which while owing much to similar smartphone games was a solid effort. Unlike that book publishing title,...
Review Color Commando (DSiWare)
Mini-masterpiece
Quirky, innovative puzzle-platformers are becoming something of a calling card for Goodbye Galaxy Games, and this latest release fits nicely into that oeuvre. The final panel in a DSiWare triptych that includes the Flipper series and Ace Mathician, Color Commando similarly revolves around manipulating the environment — here via...
Review Witch & Hero (3DS eShop)
A curse upon the eShop
CIRCLE Entertainment has been a prolific publisher on DSiWare, bringing to the fore its own titles and also helping small developers share their work with the DSi/3DS audience. With so many titles against its name there are some that are excellent, as well as others that we'd sooner forget. Witch & Hero arrives on the 3DS...
You jelly?
Aside offerings such as I Must Run!, there haven't been a huge number of endless runner-style games on DSiWare. CIRCLE Entertainment's latest title, Goony, aims to fill that gap a little, while also proving that you don't necessarily need legs or a baffling amount of stamina to star in the genre – if you're a creature made of jelly, you...
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
Over the past few years, the DSiWare download service has seen some incredibly strange games with bizarre plots and titles. Ah! Heaven is no exception to this. Simply put, this a vertically scrolling platformer that has you taking control of a spiky haired, sunglasses wearing, nameless soul who just wants to ascend to...
Review Castle Conqueror - Heroes 2 (DSiWare)
Another heroic effort
Just over one year ago CIRCLE released Castle Conqueror - Heroes for DSiWare. We weren't stingy with the praise in our review, awarding it a solid 9 out of 10 and holding it up as the strongest title in a very strong series. Now we've received a sequel, and we couldn't be happier. For those who haven't played the first game,...
Review Crystal Adventure (DSiWare)
In which "adventure" is revealed to be a relative term
If there's one thing RPG fans enjoy, it's a good story. The quest should be epic, the characters should be interesting, and there should preferably be a few surprising twists along the way as well. Here is the story of Crystal Adventure: you get bored quickly and delete it. Okay, you caught...
Review Come On! Dragons (DSiWare)
Blowing smoke
Come On! Dragons arrives on DSiWare with the promise of delivering a combination of tower defence and arrow firing action, much like its predecessor Come On! Heroes. Like the original title it succeeds to some degree, but its positives are weighed down by some disappointing flaws, meaning that it's not as hot as the title may suggest...
Dungeon crawler
18th Gate is not a game for the easily bored. It's a fairly basic strategy RPG that has you edging through – yes – 18 dungeons to the magical portal gates at the end, with the caveat that you only have a limited number of turns to escape from each maze. Each turn can be an attack, a spell or a single step to an adjacent hexagonal...
Review Bookstore Dream (DSiWare)
Let us tell you about this game, fair reader
Bookstore Dream, to be clear, has about as much book-selling realism as the Call of Duty series has to real warfare. Ultimately though, it is just a game, and this one draws much of its inspiration from a series of smartphone resource management games from developer Kairosoft. We won't complain about...
Review The Lost Town - The Jungle (DSiWare)
Lost in translation
It’s rare for a sequel to a well received game to be released with little to nothing in terms of new content. Usually, a sequel calls for a fresh plot which ushers in new characters and gameplay elements to keep the familiar franchise fresh. Sometimes though, a sequel gets released that is essentially just a re-skinning of the...
