Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Game
Game2018
Gift of Parthax
Developer Foldergeist Studios
Gift of Parthax is a 2D top-down action-arena game of gladiatorial wizardry! Customize your arsenal of countless spells, duel the masters of the arena with their mythological beasts, and rescue your friend Veleus from the powerful mage, Parthax! From the Steam store page
52 reactions from 1 source (Steam reviews) · newest Sep 18, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
37
Rotten
19 positive · 33 negative
95% range 25–50%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 19 | 33 | 0 |
Steam's own rating
Mostly Negative
34 of 89 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
52 of 52 · most liked firstReview copy provided by publisher Magic is as ubiquitous in games as guns or swords, but unique representations of it can be few and far between. I very much appreciate games like Lichdom: Battlemage and Magicka which offer new ways to sling spells and combine your powers on the fly. I believe that was the intention behind Gift of Parthax, an isometric arena-based magic battler, but it doesn’t seem to have been fleshed out as far as it needed to. While the spell customization is fun to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →To everyone saying they're experiencing the bug of the game freezing after a new file, the developer posted this solution: You will need to select Gift of Parthax in your Steam library and then right click on it. A dropdown menu will appear and there you need to choose "Properties -> Local Files -> Browse...". In there open the "Gift of Parthax_Data" folder and then "StreamingAssets". Then delete all the files in the StreamingAssets folder. The game itself is fine offering around 2-3 hours of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Wow.. WTF Seriously..no wait.. your serious? The game doesn't even start, I have read community page after page saying that its broken, most people can't get passed the difficulty selection screen with no Solve in sight. Cmon steammmmm
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →All in all, what we have with a Gift of Parthax is a game with good potential at its core, wrapped up in some frustrating design choices that sometimes lend to an ambiguous, confusing experience with poor user feedback. In some cases, the only way to learn about Parthax's basic mechanics is to go look at its Steam store page or its achievement list. Among other things, this took away from the overall experience for me. I had my share of good moments with Parthax, notably when I strategized how…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6142328/]Like this Review? Follow The Cpt Froggy Club Curator Page for plenty more! Gift of Parthax is a top-down action game where you take part in the grand arena of Atixa, built by the great wizard Renfry as a place to practise and demonstrate magic for an audience. However, that all changed when Parthax took control of the arena after defeating Renfry in a one-on-one. Now it’s a gladiatorial arena where mages fight for their lives against…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →1/ The "mostly negative" rating is not unearned. 2/ I've finished the game, and still have no idea what the hell Parthax's gift is. 3/ Come for the bugs, stay for the grind, forget about the story: the script and the monologues fit on a small sheet of paper. Oh, and it does not even make much sense. 4/ Even NPCs are bored by this game: it's all about fighting in an arena and "pleasing the crowd", but... you won't see a single spectator! The only time you'll hear them is upon casting some…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →WARNING This game is a scam It will always crash right after the "choose difficulty" screen. Dev hasn't fixed it yet after over a year.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →From its top-down, pixelated 2D graphics to its straightforward plot set in a medieval fantasy world, Gift of Parthax newest creation may appear to be an ode to simpler times. But Foldergeist Studios’ brawler packs quite a potent punch. The game’s fighting system is deceptively multifaceted and allows players to experiment with a wide variety of options, and its levels truly test players’ mettle. The game begins by giving exposition about the fantasyaaa world its story takes place in.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Art style The pixel art in this game is absolutely stunning. Not only are the characters creative, but also beautifully made with awesome animations. Not to mention the pretty environmental art inbetween the "Hall of Preparation" and the arena fights, and in the room after a completed challenge. Hats off to you guys for making such a visually pretty game Foldergeist Studios. Gameplay At first I found it hard to get to know all of the controls after the tutorial, but a quick peek into settings…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tutorial is broken, had to reset and skip jsut to play the game tiny wonky hit boxes for everything, EVERYTHING!!! ooh you want to click on that book. nope, nope, nope, try again, nope, FIRST TRY!!!. now lets go talk to that person. nope, nope, nope, try again, nope, a little higher, nope, lower??? nope now lets try and use the shop, WHERE THE HELL DO I CLICK???? CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK ooooh cool i…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Steam Play-ready enough for a ThumbUp in my book of magic. And it plays fine at 3840x1080/32:9 (though you cannot zoom in/out). Edit: Playable native Linux build in a dedicated beta branch, see https://steamcommunity.com/app/795610/discussions/0/1739968490553793957/#c1739968490557276157 for details. I wish I'm given the possibilitiy to apply a second thumbsup!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game has a roguelike difficulty, but it can't even be called a roguelite. No randomization at all - the spells you get are the same, the runes you have access to are the same, the enemies you fight are the same. Permadeath without randomization isn't fun, its just an exercise in frustration. Its a shame too, since I think the game would work fairly well as a roguelite. There seems to be a variety of spells and the customization system is pretty cool.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TLDR: game is boring and too easy Graphics are retro which are okay at best Story is nothing special it might as well not exist. Combat is just shooting spells and enemies and running away. It gets boring after a while. Also the game gives you too much money to the point where you don't even need to run away as much as you can buy 10 health potions making it too easy to beat.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Totally broken. It's impossible to even start a game. Click 'new game,' select a difficulty level, the level selection text disappears, and NOTHING HAPPENS. You get a blank menu screen, and the game doesn't start. Check the message board, this is not just me. Steam needs to take this POS down from sale.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The concept is interesting, but somehow it's not enough. Broken mechanics, the healing system is terrible, you can use as many potions as you want it won't be enough. The thing is, every time you loose a fight, you loose money, so you can't buy potions, without potions you can't win a fight. So you just loose again and again. The only way to avoid this is by going back to earlier levels, and play them again and again until you get enough. Then you go back to the level you were, to get killed…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I can see why Gift of Parthax has mixed reviews. There are interesting pieces. Like the spells and runes. All the spells are unique and there are traps. I never see traps in a game. New spells are a fantastic reward for completing a level. Also, you get to customize the spells you carry. Customization is always welcome. The runes augment your spells. Giving you more customization. For example, projectiles have a chance of exploding. I like all this. Yet, in the arena it all falls apart. The…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game is at the moment (27/04/2019) quite garbage. bad spell-making 90% of the spell-upgrades are chance-based with very low chances and they aren't even that good, also the "ooh you shot? ooh and it's a volley? well hope your aim is future proof because after clicking your next shot will go exactly the same way. and worst of all WTF is wrong with the hit-boxes you hit some stuff while missing it with a mile or "hitting" it perfectly but not really...... garbage
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →bought this cause one of my favorite youtubers played it and seemed to have great fun, so i bought it as well....and what a ballache it was. It just felt soooooo clunky and sluggish and not nearly the fun its suppossed to be/what it looked to be, so i refunded the game
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not a big fan. Its an okay game, but it has some serious issues in terms of being both short and very repetitive. Essentially, the entire game is just the same thing with 5 different sets of skins (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Blood). But what really makes the repetitiveness worse is the mediocre combat. The spell cooldown times are way too long, to the extent that combat feels like it was designed with the goal of lengthening the game. In less than 3 hours I managed to beat the game.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game had potential but, its a buggy mess. Here are some of the bugs you will encounter first off you have to delete a file in the games folder to even get the game to play, 2nd spells constantly break when swapping forcing you to have to go to the main menu and back in to be able to change them, 3rd "arch spells" cannot be changed, doing it the normal way you change spells doesn't work, 4th there are unobtainable achievements. The game is very easy, bosses are the only "challenging" part…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game won't start up properly, and freezes after first selecting a dificulty. 0/10, complete waste of money
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Follow our [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36214917/]Curator Group for more reviews Gift of Parthax is a game with a generally interesting concept, but falls flat on execution. It is a gladiator style game, but with a focus on magic instead of realistic physical combat. It has a progression system in which you learn new spells, as well as runes to upgrade those spells. In theory, this would be fun, but in practice, the flaws of the game outweigh the enjoyment. The controls feel…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Wow. . how is anyone recommending this game? The camera framing is quiet poor, graphics are jerky, there's spelling errors in the dialog, and the character movements feel klunky. Loved the idea, but the execution wasn't great. Don't waste your time.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i dont know why people are attacking this game there was a simple bug in the game that wont let you start, and it can be easily fixed with one google search all you had to do was go to local files and look for "Gift of Parthax_Data" folder and then "StreamingAssets". after that delete everything in the StreamingAssets folder. and your done i really loved the pixel art in it and the soundtrack the story had some depths in it which what kept me going and from the way i see it, thats as far…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →game looks decent but it doesnt even start for me, just click new game then choose difficulty and it stays stuck on a blank picture of a book indefinitely
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →tutorial doesn't even work numbers "midgame" make it impossible to progress. unavoidable damage and inability to heal beyond ~1%/s puts time limits on boss fights when player dps is too low to succeed even if the bosses didn't all have invincibility periods literally unwinnable
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Aside from being repetitive and unbalanced, the game features unobtainable achievements. Edit: The developer's working on an update to fix the unobtainable achievements, as well as reduce the needs for so many playthroughs. I'll update this review accordingly once it is available. Edit 2: The game's achievements seems to have been fixed, although I've had multiple game-breaking issues along the way. This may be due to how I've previously had a save file.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great game that really sucked me in with it's gameplay and story. The pixel graphics are good, the controls are simple to get the hang on and the music really sets the mood. All in all a great little game that is definitely worth it's price!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Gift of Parthax is a pixel art great game. Storydriven action arena game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In my opinion, this game is poor overall on multiple aspects. The art and the graphics are jerky and the colours are not appealing. The gameplay is not that fun with clunky hit boxes. The mechanisms and the abilities that are poorly explained and designed. The story is boring as well and not that interesting. Not recommended.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a console ported 2D retro pixel twin stick shooter/arena brawler where you play a badly rendered retro pixel magician and blast waves of samey pixel enemies while kiting them around a low-res arena. They chose to use obsolete retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. This is a really low effort game with poor graphics, stale…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game plays as clunkily as the 8 bit graphics would lead you to believe. DO NOT BUY IT. An Isometric Arena Brawler it claims to be, with absolutely no polish whatsoever, "Gift" of Parthax has you moving in eight directions on controller, using spells with far longer cooldowns than they have any right to be (I'm throwing stones, why does it take me two seconds to recharge the second most basic spell?) obstacle design is terrible (they're all blocks of 'You can't move past this') the Dodge…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is a great little arena style shooting game, I was pleasently surprised, got sucked in for at least an hour, that rarely happens to me :) I like the artwork, and the gameplay is great, you definently can have a good time with this game :) If you like to support indie development, and think this kind of gameplay is for you, you should definently want to consider this for your game collection. :)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A great arena game. It is slower paced than Diablo, but faster than a strategy game. The tactical part of the gameplay is fun. Dodging enemies and moving around the areana is important to survive. I've not yet played to the end game, but the first boss fight was sufficiantly difficult and varied to make it fun. Using the different spells for best effect is necessary. So fast ranged spells for flying opponents, and ground traps and summoned creatures for slower walking opponents. I enjoy this…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is 100 % functional AFTER you delete the GiftOfParthax_Data/StreamingAssets directory. After that the game will create properly formatted files and you can progress beyond the difficulty selection. It would take the developer five seconds to fix this issue. The game is not really "abandoned" seeing that it has all of the content to complete the story. The only dysfunctional feature is the inability to change the arch spell or to manually add runes to it. The game is not long, though…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Gift of Parthax is a top-down arena action game developed by Foldergeist Studios and published by Fulqrum Publishing, built around spellcasting combat, character progression, and a narrative framed by gladiatorial trials. Set in a dark fantasy world, the game follows Arif, a mage who willingly enters a brutal colosseum in pursuit of a legendary reward known as the Gift of Parthax. His motivation is deeply personal, as he seeks the power necessary to save a gravely injured friend. This narrative…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A badly optimized, buggy mess You can't even begin the game without doing some workaround first. That should tell you everything you need to know right there. UI is terrible and unresponsive, the buttons don't work properly most of the time. Sound settings don't work at all from the main menu. From inside the game, they do but then everything gets muted instead of just reducing volume. During the gameplay itself, the movement and attacks feel slow and clunky, not fluid. It feels like a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game doesn't even start. What can i say?
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is broken. It is impossible to even start a game. Click “new game”, select a difficulty level, the level selection text disappears, and NOTHING HAPPENS. You get a blank book as menu screen, and the game doesn't start. I know that I am not the only one with this issue.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Gift of Parthax is a very cool game in which you really get that mighty wizard feeling. I know I did! It starts of easy, so you have all the time to learn about the basic mechanics of the game. But after that it's a typical example of an "easy to learn, hard to master" game. The spells and the runes to upgrade them are really awesome. And you'll need them, because in the arena only one can walk out alive and the best outcome for you is if you are the last mage standing! For more info, reviews…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Gift of Parthax is a nice little 2D arena game thats great to play if got some time to kill. The combat can be a bit challenging but at no point unfair or unbalance, as you can customize you spells with different runes before each fight. The graphic is pretty nice aswell and very fitting for the style of the game and storie.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →https://youtu.be/rvrCqV434_Y While it is possible to get the game to launch the arena based combat against simplistic foes isn't much of a draw.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →COMPLETLY NOT RECCOMENDED. I don't think it's either the right price or the quality to be in the steam shop. Im pretty sure that if you need to dowload an old version of the game to get the achievements, something is not right. And once i launch it they have the balls to suggest me their launcher? I wish i realized once i bought it, since i can't refund it right now, thanks :) It's incredible how many games went to sale without passing the tiniest filter to check if they even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ work.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i cant even start the game without having to myself go and delete some files, and having a price tag above free, its just a CON that make me rather play something else,
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After selecting a new save, you're prompted with the dificulty setting. After selecting it, the game does not progress in any way whatsoever. The music keeps playing though. Would not recommend.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game itself is fine offering around 2-3 hours of content and pretty easy achievements. The developer is also responsive and still updating and fixing the game. Definitely worth it for me.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is broken. You can't even start a new game without meddling with the save files. This is a long known problem too that the devs just never cared to fix. Some achievements are broken as well. The gameplay is boring and monotonous. You play 25 levels (5 seasons with 5 levels each). I nearly completed the first season and all levels have been the same so far, the only difference being slightly stronger enemies. The way the combat can be customised is a nice idea but the the devs added…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →maybe the real Gift of Parthax was just the friends we made along the way
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Was fun. Too buggy to play now.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pretty good. I'd give it 7.5/10 for the price. If it's on sale I'd definitely grab it as it does have a pretty good game play and it doesn't require a massive time investment to get down. Honestly would maybe like to see them do dungeon crawler as a sequel as I believe it would make a more interesting game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Arena battle type game where you have mana based weapons to fight against the hordes. There are several waves per battle and several battles per season you need to get by. The game is quite alright.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Cool arena game with a nice mix of story elements. The game is easy going at first, but quickly puts your skills to the test. The arena forces you to think about your positioning, and to take advantage of the different obstacles, while trying to spam as many spells as possible - Great fun :-)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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