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I must confess, it was not till this very hour that I envisaged the possibility of an RPG party consisting exclusively of clowns. There’s a fine tradition of clown characters in RPGs – Sylvando from Dragon Quest XI, Harle from Chrono Cross, the Jester in Darkest Dungeon – but a whole party’s worth? The full big top? The maximum cabaret? Madness! Delightful madness! Here’s the trailer for Clowned King, the next game from Moonana, developer of the colourful and melodious Keylocker. I like it better than a custard pie full of razorblades. I like most things better than a custard pie full of razorblades, but this comes reasonably high up that list.
Clowned King is a turn-based tactics-me-do set in the Moonlit Kingdom, a world of tinted glass and, from the looks of things, pugnacious brocolli. You are Matheus, a disgraced harlequin prince who “conceals his bloody past behind a mask of laughter”, and you’re on a mission to recruit some badass buffoons so that you can do a darkside Heath Ledger on your villainous father, the Mad King Marduk.
The game’s battle system takes inspiration from “Disgaea, Fire Emblem and Brazilian culture”, according to the Steam page, and puts the spotlight on formations, which unlock special abilities. I wonder if the appropriate word here isn’t “formation” but stagecraft? If this game doesn’t make every last feature an expression of clown culture, it’ll be a sorry waste of a premise, to say nothing of a solid 7/10 title pun.
We can also expect “an immense amount of mage class types”, which feels apposite – when clowns spec for melee, it tends to be because they’re horror movie clowns, who favour axes over hand buzzers. RPG clowns are more of a bard variant, I guess. Combat aside, you’ll be “[bonding] with leaders from opposing realms to help support your fight against the Mad King”. Ah yes, clown politicking, so unlike the regular kind.
Clowned King is out… at some stage. While you wait, why not sample precision platformer Clown Meat, in which you have to cheer up a jester of planetary scale and misery, who spawned within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Or how about the classic point-and-clicker Dropsy, in which the title character just wants a hug. Come to think of it, we’re probably overdue a clown game in which the clown isn’t an emblem or metaphor for sorrow and insanity. If you know of one, I’d love to hear about it.