WOE AM I!!!
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” – Goethe
Journey of the Broken Circle puts you in control of a simple shape: a circle with a missing wedge, an eye, and a mouth. The resemblance to Pac-Man is obvious, but superficial. This is not an arcade game—it is a game with a message, and it makes sure you never forget it. Over the course of its three-hour journey, it insists on exploring loneliness, love, and the paradox of feeling incomplete both alone and together.
Developed by Danish studio Lovable Hat Cult, the game is a 2D sidescroller bound by gravity. You can roll, jump, and—by absorbing different shapes, framed as romantic or emotional partners—gain new traversal abilities. A pine cone lets you climb walls. Other companions add momentum, protection, or stability. Mechanically, this works well enough.
As a platformer, Journey of the Broken Circle is competent. The controls are responsive, the physics readable, and the level design generally clear about what is expected of you. Hazards like heat invert your controls, and progression is often about mastering momentum rather than precision. Visually, the game uses a restrained color palette that makes paths and obstacles easy to parse, and the minimalist soundscape supports a calm, meditative tone.
Had the game stopped there, it would have been a perfectly pleasant—if unremarkable—experience.
Unfortunately, it does not.
The broken circle must be filled. The circle needs companionship. Loneliness is bad. Dependency is complicated. We are told all of this, over and over again, often in language that feels curiously condescending—simple enough for children, yet addressing themes clearly aimed at older teenagers or adults.
The result is not emotional resonance, but irritation.
As a protagonist, the circle is difficult to tolerate. It latches onto every passing character, absorbing them with little regard for their own boundaries, and reacts poorly when rejected. Some brief encounters—an owl, a fir tree—offer philosophical reflections, but the circle largely ignores them. If the game is attempting to critique emotional dependency, it succeeds. If it wants us to empathize with the circle, it fails.
Controlling the character often feels like babysitting someone who refuses to take a hint. The comparison that kept returning to my mind was the Adoring Fan from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion—a presence that is intentionally irritating, but not in a way that deepens the experience.
And because the character’s flaws are so overt, the arc becomes painfully predictable. There is little room for discovery when the destination is obvious from the outset.
The theme of loneliness is further undermined by the game’s structure. You are rarely alone. New companions appear constantly, replacing one another in quick succession. And during the brief moments of solitude, the circle loudly wallows in self-pity, never giving the player space to project their own feelings onto the experience.
At its most heavy-handed, the game flirts with imagery of suicide, followed almost immediately by a literal manifestation of Angst—a dark, serpent-like boss that chases you down. Subtlety is not the game’s strength.
Later, the circle finds comfort in a moss-like companion, and together you endure some of the game’s most frustrating platforming sections, involving unreliable, imprecise launch mechanics. These sequences test patience rather than skill, and the constant self-recrimination from the protagonist makes them exhausting rather than cathartic.
The game leaves interpretation technically open, but functionally constrained. Is this about romance, friendship, codependency, or something else entirely? Are certain sequences meant to be literal or metaphorical? The game gestures toward ambiguity, but undermines it by overexplaining every step.
It becomes hard to read between the lines when the game insists on drawing lines between the lines.
I was surprised to learn that Journey of the Broken Circle received multiple awards for narrative design. Not long ago, I played forma.8, another minimalist game about a circle navigating an indifferent world, which conveyed loneliness and insignificance entirely through visuals and mechanics—without a single line of dialogue. That experience stayed with me.
Journey of the Broken Circle does the opposite. It tells you what it is about, repeatedly, but never earns the emotional weight it claims to carry. I never identified with the protagonist, never felt its pain as my own, and never found meaning in its journey.
The platforming is functional, competent, and forgettable. The narrative layered on top of it is what lingers—and not in a good way. Instead of deepening the experience, it suffocates it.
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