The Amazing American Circus

A deckbuilder with a neat thematic twist that soon becomes mired in repetition and drawn-out encounters.

The Amazing American Circus takes you on a romantic romp through the American frontier. It offers an innovative take on card duelling games that feels like a step in the right direction towards the experience it really wants to be.

Making it to the big top is a mechanically sound journey with a lot of great characters to choose and varied enemies making each combat fun. Unfortunately, the journey to each combat is fraught with graphical gaffes, sound repetition, and story doled out in odd intervals.

Overall, The Amazing American Circus has a good premise but the execution fell short for me. I walk away from this game an unsatisfied audience flinging tomatoes at the performers. You’d have to really be interested in this game to want to buy it.

The Great American Circus' strengths lie first and foremost in its family friendly premise and presentation. That smart lure roped me in to a well fleshed out card match game with a leveling system that doesn't quite grab me. If that and an uphill climb for making a comeback in a performance doesn't deter you, then there's a lot of fun to be had in this upcoming attraction.

An interesting implementation of the deck-building mechanic troubled by tedious shows and some balance issues.

The Amazing American Circus blends deck building, management and a delightful theme to create something truly special.

I wanted to like The Amazing American Circus. The idea of a card battler game that isn’t necessarily about combat sounded appealing, and its 1800s travelling circus theme makes a rather interesting backdrop. But its gameplay just isn’t fun, and its systems are convoluted and often make little sense. Chances are you’ll get so fed up of long-winded, unsuccessful performances that you’ll give up long before you make any sort of meaningful progress. The bottom line? There are much, much better games in the genre, so play something else instead.

‎That card games are part of the entertainment of any culture, at different points in history, is undeniable. That over time these have been transformed and have lived in constant evolution no matter what culture, too. And, in this present of hyperconnectivity, where the digital age reigns, it is increasingly common to enjoy card games of different types. The Amazing American Circus is the result of all this, but it's also ‎‎a look at the classic and contemporary circus,‎‎a show created and directed by multifaceted artists who give away smiles emitted from the heart.‎

I did not care for this title. But I feel like most of my ire was centred on the weird Native American folks and the addition of the slur “g*psy.” It’s really easy to just say “fortuneteller” instead of insulting an entire population of humans that have been oppressed for generations. Also, the tutorial was brutal; with a few changes, this could actually be a fantastic game. It has the makings of an interesting title if there had been just a little more care taken in the execution of the game.