Once Upon a Jester in the Test - An entertaining pastime with grandiose humor
The characters of Once Upon a Jester are one of the highlights of the game.
© Crunching Koalas
The story focuses on the jester Jester and his friend Sok, who is a simple red sock. Together they only live in tents in the humble village of Dorp Town, but they have a plan. Namely, they want to steal the royal diamond to have a better life. How fitting that Princess Kirstina holds her royal theatrical extravaganza where the best performance wins. But of course you have to put your acting skills to the test beforehand and inspire the audience anew every evening.
The core of the game consists of the evening performance, which is a little preparatory work required from you. The first thing to do is to find out which genre is currently being hotly debated in the village. You can listen to the conversations of the residents or question different characters. After all, you have to make a suitable poster before the performance can even begin. Because in order to be able to take part in the royal theater spectacle, you have to collect 15 bouquets of flowers in each of the three villages. You get it for an outstanding performance on stage and every night you have the chance to win five of them.
You can already choose the type of show when designing the poster for the evening. There are only a few available at the beginning, but as you progress through the game you'll unlock more, so there's never a dull moment on your stage. Finally, you can choose from various poster templates and stick them with themed stickers, so that the residents of the respective places are aware of your piece. Here, too, you can unlock more stickers as the game progresses, either through conversations and small tasks or through other interactions with your environment.
Sok is basically for preparation responsible for the play, which is why you finally go to him and the show can begin. Basically, each piece starts the same way, but you can influence the story by making various decisions. This is where the different genres come into play, because it makes a big difference with the audience whether you also put on a drama if that was previously required in the village. However, if you then play a genre that people don't feel like doing, the boos from the audience increase. A mixture of romance, drama, piece of music, adventure or scary story is of course possible, since you always have different choices. When the curtain falls, you can see how successful your play was before the next day dawns.
While making the posters is fun, it's really rewarding won't affect your performance.
© Crunching Koalas
What initially sounds very monotonous and boring is made up for by the great characters and humorous narrative. Because the performances become incredibly entertaining when you try different things and no two pieces are the same. In addition, the characters all have their own story to tell and the friendship between Jester and Sok alone is worth its weight in gold. You can also tell that the developers don't take themselves too seriously, because you often hear laughter during the soundtrack, which maybe doesn't belong there. The musical passages are also superbly staged and so absurd that you just want to shake your head. But at the same time, the game is so funny that you sit in front of the console laughing all over again from modern times, modern elements such as a radio broadcast or a ringing telephone are inevitable. The mix is chosen very appropriately and underscores the humor, which is reminiscent of a Monty Python film in places. The music is arguably another highlight of the game, because where else can you get a top-notch song that honors pesto and spaghetti? One notices the developers of their musical history. Even if the game only comes with an English soundtrack, you can also switch the entire text to German. A shortcoming, which ultimately isn't one, is the probably short playing time of three to four hours. However, Once Upon a Jester also offers different levels of difficulty and because the performances change over and over again depending on the genre, the replay value is very high.
