Circus Electrique Review - An Electrifying Steampunk RPG at Its Finest -In this Circus Electrique Review, we are going to explore another city’s alternate history. But instead of the rise of automatons in Paris that we see in Steelrising, we are going to embark on a journey to defeat the bloodthirsty killers of Victorian London. Circus Electrique’s obvious inspiration for its core combat system is the classic Roguelite Darkest Dungeon yet how similar are these two titles in terms of execution? Is the game worth playing on day 1? What other features make it unique? We will answer these questions and more in this Circus Electrique Review!
Circus Electrique is developed by Zen Studios and published by Saber Interactive. It will be available on August 09, 2025, via PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
Circus Electrique Review - An Electrifying Steampunk RPG at Its Finest
Circus Electrique Review - Story and Setting
Circus Electrique is a Steampunk,Tactical Turn-based RPGthat takes place in Victorian London in the 1800s. The circus, which will give P.T. Barnum a run for his money, has recently re-opened. This story is being covered by journalist, Amelia Craig, who hopes to seek revenge against the owner and her uncle, the Ringmaster. Suddenly, Londoners such as the Bobby Police and Posh Girls turn into ruthless murderers due to the strange and inexplicable event known as the Maddening. And the only ones exempt from this transformation are the circus performers themselves.
You play as all of these performers combined in a bid to clash against the Vicious who intend to get in your way. While plunging into the depths of London, you must meet unlikely heroes and villains to gather as much information as possible to ultimately stamp out the Maddening. This will open up new classes and characters whom you can recruit to build a powerhouse of talents to save the day.
Circus Electrique’s story is presented in a linear fashion where you get to explore the city and uncover plot points. Amelia will then step in to communicate with characters you encounter to understand their roles in this catastrophe. Moreover, you will not be making choices to change the course of the narrative. This is not an issue considering that there will be a lot of decision-making involved in the actual gameplay, which I will be discussing next.
Circus Electrique Review - Gameplay Mechanics
Circus Electrique has several mechanics up its sleeve to keep you busy and entertained. At the start of each day, you will need to prepare for the Circus Show by assigning performers. Their capabilities will have to match certain Act Attributes to see whether they can elicit a sense of fun, thrill, amazement, and laughter from the audience. For instance, the Illusionist Willis can cut others in half, making for an incredibly amazing act!
Next, you will have to assign others to the buildings they belong to so for those who need immediate medical care, sending them to the Sleeping Cart will give them a day’s worth of rest. And then finally, you must embark on a dangerous journey on the streets of Victorian London by preparing an Exploration Team of 4. Here, you will participate in random events, fight against the Vicious, and collect additional loot.
At the end of the day, you will be greeted by the London Voice Newspaper, detailing what has transpired. Topics concerning the main character’s relationships with others, thoughts on the most recent circus performance, and side stories will all be summarized for your enjoyment.
That being said, it can get pretty rough at the beginning because you are fed with an overwhelming amount of information. But once you grasp the mechanics to raise the reputation of Circus Electrique as well as its talents, you will be in for a wonderfully, albeit quite bloody, ride.
Classes and Skills
Circus Electrique features 15 classes such as the Strongman, Escape Artist, Fire Blower, Clown, and Illusionist, to name some. Every character has a set of Attributes, Gadgets, Status, Circus Acts, and Skills to maintain. In this section, we will discuss the Attributes, Gadgets, and Skills since they are the ones affecting combat.
Attributes refer to the character’s HP, damage, and hit accuracy. It also tells us about their initiative to determine their turn in combat. Gadgets are random drops that are equipped to improve these stats. For instance, you may assign the Heart Pendant to an Illusionist to boost their max HP. Remember, however, that these special items can be lost when the character who is wearing them dies, much like in Darkest Dungeon, so you need to be careful.
Next are the Skills. No two characters of the same class have the exact set of abilities. There is always going to be a single skill that makes them unique. For example, Clement the Clown can execute Knockback, which is a Poison Attack that lets him push a target to the 4th slot whereas Cecil has Ball Throw to notably decrease the enemy’s Devotion. These variations are an exciting way to keep the game fresh while adding a bit of tension since these characters can permanently die or flee from your company, taking their precious skills with them.
Devotion Mechanic
In the previous section, we talked about Devotion or morale so what exactly is this? Every character has a Devotion Meter, which is similar to Darkest Dungeon’s Stress Mechanic. If their morale is high, their chances to hit and the damage it subsequently deals becomes greater. Otherwise, they are not as effective because they also cannot trigger powerful skills that consume Devotion. Should this meter reach rock bottom, affected characters will run away from the group for good.
Thankfully, some classes like the Clown have abilities to buff Devotion to a certain percentage. If you do not have them in your party, you can drink Cola instead.
Circus Shows
Progression in Circus Electrique is not limited to gaining XP after successful combat encounters. Rather, you will need to assign the rest of your characters to perform in shows. This features deep mechanics that not only boost the circus’s reputation but also encourage the player to strategize better to get the most out of every act.
As mentioned earlier, characters have associated Status and Circus Act cards. Status pertains to their current activity or mood. They can train in the Practice Tent to gain XP or investigate London as part of the Exploration Team. The important thing is to keep these characters engaged, otherwise, they end up losing morale when they are not preoccupied with anything.
Circus Act, on the other hand, refers to the performer’s attributes showing how entertaining they are. In the Circus Tent, you will first draft the day’s show. The rule of thumb is to keep shuffling them around based on their corresponding Novelty because no audience wants to keep seeing the same performances twice in a row! Next, choosing characters who are compatible with one another is important to yield high Performance Stars so mixing and matching them based on the classes they wish to work with should be a part of your strategy.
Remember that performers who have higher Devotion will significantly increase the probability of the show’s success. Once you have their Act Attributes, Devotion, and Chemistries in place, you will finally be able to distribute Performance Stars accordingly. The factors to consider are the Audience, Entertainment, and Complexity, which determine the Shillings you earn, the circus’s infamy, and the XP of your performers, respectively.
The Exploration Team
The City of London is bustling with activities and items such as mini-games and loot crates, to name a few. It is always a treat to explore in Circus Electrique because you are not really prepared for what you are about to encounter or find. Mini-games are especially delightful since they give you a breather from the complex mechanics the title has to offer. For example, the goal of Circus Enthusiasts is to surpass an assigned number or attribute after choosing a character and spinning the wheel of fortune. Doing so will yield rewards to boost your circus’s popularity, gain additional XP, and obtain resources to craft consumables.
When selecting the right talents to be part of the Exploration Team, you will need to keep their skills in mind due to specific Battle Conditions, which can render them ineffective. For instance, fighting the Vicious during the night gives a 25% boost to fire attacks, making it essential to bring at most two Fire Blowers to efficiently slay these enemies. However, when it is raining, bringing the same class is a bad idea since Fire damage’s potency is cut by 50%. Electric damage is boosted so you should instead consider the Illusionist who has an electric ability called The Saw.
Circus Management
Circus Management follows similar mechanics asKing Arthur: Knight’s Talein that you spend resources to upgrade buildings, which will then grant benefits to your performers. Progress happens gradually after the tutorial section where more structures open up as the circus gains popularity. For instance, you can recruit new and powerful talents from the Train and even craft items from the Artisan.
One building that will help you in combat is the Workshop. Here, you can combine 3 Superskills, which you are able to use when the Amazemeter hits the right levels. This increases as you delve deeper into the city and upon successfully beating the Vicious.
Circus Electrique Review - Combat and Difficulty
In addition to the intricate gameplay mechanics, Circus Electrique’s combat far from disappoints. The game’s tactical turn-based RPG is executed extremely well because of the elements that come together seamlessly to create a challenging and fair experience. For starters, combat is not just about whittling down enemies’ health bars down to 0. You also have the option of destroying their Devotion with various demoralizing hits. When a unit’s Devotion reaches 0, they will flee from combat, effectively leaving their team behind. However, they can equally target your characters’ Devotion, transforming your brave heroes into whimpering zeroes.
The main draw of Circus Electrique is that it is inspired by Darkest Dungeon when it comes to movement and positioning, which are key components in fights. There are a lot of actions you can do such as moving backward and forward or even messing with your opponents by pushing or pulling them to a slot where certain skills will be rendered unusable. Furthermore, some abilities perform better depending on the performer’s position.
So placing the Strongman in the first two slots will allow him to perform Stunning Attack whose echoing thunderclap can probably be heard by the rest of London. Skills like these feel extremely painful because of the audio and visual feedback as well as the animation, especially when it is able to land a killing blow. However, there are attacks that do not feel as weighty. While Circus Electrique mimics Darkest Dungeon’s style by highlighting the characters involved, the latter is able to execute it a bit more effectively because the attacks have impactful hit-stop effects even if the actual images are just static sprites.
Additionally, the game might feel less tense but the challenges certainly ramp up depending on the Battle Conditions you come across as discussed earlier. One of the more nerve-wracking experiences was triggering the Bobbery Alarm at night due to the noises we have been causing for a prolonged period. After defeating the final Vicious during that encounter, 4 Bobbies arrived, thereby resetting the encounter against three of my remaining performers.
Although these conditions are stated beforehand, you wouldn’t know what to expect because it depends on how the combat escalates. And it makes matters worse when your favorite and highly cared-for characters permanently die or leave you behind.
In Circus Electrique, you’re able to choose from three difficulty modes, namely Doorkeeper for easy, Artist for normal, and Ringmaster for hard. As the difficulty increases, lesser rewards and resources are given, enemies grow in strength in terms of dealing damage and evading attacks, and Circus Shows become more stringent, making it tougher to fulfill requirements to even start a show.
Circus Electrique Review - Audio, Visuals, and Design
Circus Electrique captures the stunning vibe of Steampunk Victorian London from its old-school film grain design in cutscenes to the very stylistic and color choices of the circus itself. Everything feels deceptively magical in nature as we are treated to the city’s industrial revolution. In a similar vein, characters are all visually distinct in terms of silhouette, skillset, and looks. Enemy design is just as whimsical, including Park Keepers with their mechanical drones and Bobbies on their STEEMwheels.
However, the User Interface may benefit from improvements as these are overly done and therefore cluttered. One example is the combat itself with constant moving gears, electrical pulses, and flashing bulbs. Everything fuels in perfectly with the Steampunk aesthetic but it can be overwhelming due to the number of animated elements. Another is the confusing arrangement of the London Voice Newspaper, which does not immediately paint a clear picture of the day’s happenings. Instead, you will need to click through a few menus to see what has changed with your roster, your circus performance, and the game’s story.
In terms of the audio, I am amazed by how wonderful the voice acting is. Every character who speaks has this heir of charm, wit, and bravado, which are thematically in line with Circus Electrique’s setting. As mentioned earlier, the sound effects of powerful skills are convincingly impactful, making the overall experience much more captivating. Meanwhile, the soundtrack is delightful to listen to because it sounds like it came from a gramophone so the classic vibe is present with somewhat muted notes.
From a technical standpoint, I did not experience any framerate drops or visual and audio glitches throughout my playthrough. There were also no crashes or game-breaking bugs whatsoever.
Replayability and Pricepoint
Circus Electrique can last 20 to 25 hours. This will increase depending on your chosen difficulty and how fast you clear multiple districts. Experimenting with a combination of classes and discovering initially locked-out areas when you choose other pathways are definitely something you can do again in your next playthrough.
Although no official price has been disclosed as of this review, it does state on Nintendo’s eShop that the game costs USD 19.99, which is the best bang for your buck considering the entertainment value it provides.
Final Thoughts
Circus Electrique spins a known and tested formula from Darkest Dungeon to forge a new identity in the tactical, turn-based RPG space, and it does so triumphantly. From the strategies required in choosing your performers to consistently put on excellent shows to the meticulous planning of your every move in combat. It is impossible to run out of steam since you will continue to uncover more surprises as you progress further.
You can only compare the game to Darkest Dungeon up to a certain point because it is a unique beast on its own with elements that cohesively work well together. The level of tension is different and certainly not as punishing but there are still a lot of worthy challenges ahead. Circus Electrique is a refreshing surprise and is definitely a day 1 purchase.
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Even though it doesn’t feel like you are going to lose everything when you make mistakes in Circus Electrique, the Steampunk RPG continues to keep a firm grasp on the audience. Not only do you take a plunge into the crazy yet charming streets of dystopian London but you also experience tough encounters, which will not hold your hand. If you have been searching for a challenging yet forgiving alternative to Darkest Dungeon that will keep you immersed for hours, then Circus Electrique is the right game for you!
