A big top, a troupe of performers, and a card game trying to hold the whole thing up.

The community verdict is blunt and it pulls no punches. Fun is the harshest line: The Amazing American Circus closes the pack, sitting ahead of almost no other game on that question. Controller feel, connection, rediscovery and sound environment stay right at the bottom too. Art direction does slightly better without ever taking off, and desert island is low as well. No criterion rescues the picture. Most of these lines rest on two to seven votes, so nothing is carved in stone, but the consistency is striking: when everything points the same way, it is rarely an accident.

The game lands on very crowded ground, the campaign deckbuilder, where every rival has been polishing its loop for years. Its setting is genuinely fresh, Gilded Age America and its travelling circuses, but an original backdrop does not compensate when the question is the raw pleasure of playing.

So, who is it for? For you if the theme really speaks to you, if you want to run a troupe, recruit performers, feel a period come alive. Much less so if what you want first is a card system that snaps and keeps you up until 3am.