Last year I played and loved Subsurface Circular. It was one of my favorite games I played that year. Quarantine Circular didn’t quite hit me in the same way, but I still really enjoyed it. I think maybe I picked kind of a weird route? Some things didn’t quite line up in the plot and that got me a bit confused, which can happen in narrative driven games, but the basic themes of human mistrust and what to do when a disease affects all of humanity were certainly relevant in the time of COVID. One thing Bithell Games, the developer of both games, does incredibly well is they show as much as they tell. Quarantine Circular again felt like an interesting snapshot amidst a larger crisis, one I could immediately feel within a few minutes of dialogue. How they pose their characters in scenes and how their dialogue trees play out really feels like a My Dinner With Andre scenario. You feel so focused in on that conversation even though it’s discussing much greater things.
If you like visual novels I definitely recommend Quarantine Circular and it’s predecessor (that is unrelated other than style) Subsurface Circular. They’re both very interesting and high quality additions to the genre that feel closer to scenes in a televised play than a game or a novel. I may go back and replay this one to see if I can get a different ending or try out some dialogue trees I may have missed. Really enjoyed it overall and the more I think about it, the more I like it and remember concepts or ideas that stick with me.