Once Upon a Jester Review

Once Upon a Jester is the latest offering from Bonte Avond, a game studio of four indie musicians who make funny, wholesome games featuring original songs. Like the studio’s snowy adventure, Everybody Wham Wham, this title is full of contagious laughter and joy with spontaneous singing, improv theatre performances, and fantastic comedic timing, which are all individually hard to pull off (trust me, I’ve tried). It’s rare that I encounter a game that makes me laugh from start to finish. With Once Upon a Jester, it felt like the Bonte Avond team was in the same room laughing with me, which is a pleasant reminder of what games can be when designed with bold silliness. 

You play as Jester, a flute player who is dressed in a bright blue, showy garb fitting for his name. His best friend Sok is a walking, talking sock puppet (makes sense). For Jester and Sok, stealing is their speciality. We meet the pair of thieves in Dorp Town just after the heist of a purple cashmere scarf. They promptly decide on their next heist — steal the king’s precious Royal Diamond — when they overhear the princess burst into song in front of many Dorp Town residents, announcing a theatre contest to perform at the Royal Theatrical Spectacle hosted at the royal palace.

Jester and Sok must start their own improv theatre act and be the first act to gather a total of 45 flower bouquets from three different towns. With their eye on the prize, the duo venture into the silly, wacky world of Bonte Avond’s creation, meeting a variety of zany characters and facing obstacles, such as an old man and his goat performing as a competing act to a spider-legged witch turning people into piñatas. As you perform exciting tales and musical numbers for various audiences night after night, the journey begins to change the two friends; Jester and Sok start wondering if maybe it's about time they set aside their life of heists and take on a life of performing. 

Once Upon a Jester’s gameplay is simple and enjoyable. Your first goal is to get 15 bouquets from the Dorp Town audience before you can progress to the next town; you can receive a maximum of five bouquets at the end of each show. The secret to a great show is knowing what genre your audience will prefer — drama, romance, spooky, action, or music. As Jester, you can walk around town using the WASD keys, and you can eavesdrop on conversations between residents, which involves paying attention to the icons that appear over their heads. For example, if you notice heart icons, you may want to lean into romance for your show. Other clues are hidden on posters throughout town, and you are also able to speak with Hak, a travelling merchant who sells items that hint at what genre the audience loves (or hates) that day. As a result, I never felt confused about what type of show I’d be performing. 

Once you feel confident about the genre, it’s time to make a promotional poster! How else are people going to know about your show? When you interact with the poster, you’re able to choose which show you’re going to perform. At first, you can only select A Roaring Growl, but two other options will open up as you progress. After selecting a decorative background, you can apply stickers as you please. How you decorate your poster doesn’t affect your overall score with the audience, but that doesn’t make it any less fun! Plus, you can ask Sok for his input, resulting in some surprises. You’re able to unlock more stickers by interacting with the environment, talking with other characters, and performing different types of genres. One night you may improvise a musical number for A Roaring Growl, unlocking a new sticker for your collection! As far as replayability goes, I would definitely like to replay the game again to find/unlock all the stickers I missed in my initial playthrough. 

On stage, you’re introduced to two gameplay mechanics — branching choices for how the show plays out and quick time events (QTEs). With branching choices, you can make a variety of improvised decisions; maybe Jester is in love with a dragon or maybe he’s a giant worm in disguise. Some of the storylines can get truly wacky and surprising, but I don’t want to spoil them here. You’ll notice options appearing above Jester’s head also display a genre, letting you know whether you’re picking something the audience likes or dislikes, which is key to getting those five bouquets. QTEs pop up when you have to perform an action like chiselling a statue or catching Sok on stage (these chases resulted in me falling on stage multiple times). Completing or failing these QTEs will evoke cheers or chuckles from the crowd. I enjoyed how the QTEs kept the performances engaging and added to the feeling of improvisation. It was impressive that I could feel like I was improvising in a videogame’s controlled environment. I also thoroughly enjoyed the variations of dialogue and minigames you’d play depending on what genre you chose, but I do wish the game encouraged you to mix-and-match genres for more varied and weird stories instead of rewarding five bouquets only if you stick to the specific genre the audience prefers. 

In-between shows you can talk to various town residents, meeting folks like a heartbroken town mayor who frequently bursts into song, a group of little ice cream persons with big personalities, and an eccentric radio host who may or may not be wanted for a crime. Bonte Avond excels at creating memorable, funny characters. From the quirky art design to their dialogue, these characters are truly unique. 

However, what makes these characters even more memorable is the excellent voice acting! Keeping with the spirit of improvisation, you’ll hear the voice actors laugh or mess up their lines. Bonte Avond is known for keeping first takes and leaving in imperfections, which makes for some hilarious moments when you’re interacting with characters. Many of the characters are voiced by the four developers themselves, and the fun they had whilst recording comes through in every part of the game. You’ll notice some exciting voice cameos from popular Twitch streamers and YouTubers as well. Along with great voice acting, the soundtrack to the game features catchy lyrics and you can’t help but sing to the vibrant tunes. 

Bonte Avond also weaves heartfelt messaging into the narrative. You’ll find that most characters, including Jester and Sok, are looking for their place in the world and searching for the thing that will bring them joy. Many characters who find pure joy in performing theatre feel like reflections of the developers who clearly have great fun creating these musical experiences for us players. At the end of the day, Once Upon a Jester reminds us of two things — we all deserve to chase our dreams and there is something good in all of us. 

Whilst the game has a solid gameplay loop — interact with characters, find stickers, perform, receive bouquets, and repeat — it does toe the line of feeling repetitive, particularly with the number of shows you’re able to choose from as there are only three aside from one extra show at the end of the game. The addition of one more playable show would have made a big difference. However, the variety of genres that you have available does alleviate this problem. Even if I performed A Roaring Growl two nights in a row, the experience would feel completely different if I chose to do a musical one night and an action version the next night. So whilst the game can feel repetitive, it’s not a massive drawback. 

At a total playtime of three to four hours, Once Upon a Jester is definitely worth your time if you love laughing and are craving a cosy, wholesome experience. Bonte Avond weaves themes of friendship and chasing your dreams with engaging improvisational gameplay as well as excellent, funny voice acting. Overall, it’s an experience worthy of much more than five flower bouquets.