I must confess that it wasn’t until this hour that I even envisioned the possibility of an all-clown RPG party. There’s a great tradition of clown characters in RPGs – Sylvando from Dragon Quest The full big top? The maximum cabaret? Madness! Delicious madness! Here is the trailer of Clown King, the next game from Moonana, developer of the colorful and melodic Keylocker. I like it better than a custard pie full of razor clams. I like most things better than a custard pie full of razor clams, but this is pretty high on the list.
Clown King is a turn-based tactics-me-do set in the Moonlit Kingdom, a world of tinted glass and, from the looks of it, belligerent brocolli. You are Matheus, a disgraced harlequin prince who “hides his bloody past behind a mask of laughter”, and you are on a mission to recruit some badass buffoons so you can do a dark Heath Ledger about your evil father , the mad king Marduk.
The game’s combat system is inspired by “Disgaea, Fire Emblem and Brazilian culture,” according to the Steam pageand spotlights formations, which unlock special abilities. I wonder if the right word here isn’t ‘formation’, but stagecraft? If this game doesn’t make every last feature an expression of clown culture, it’s an unfortunate waste of a premise, not to mention a solid 7/10 title pun.
We can also expect “a huge amount of mage class types”, which feels appropriate – when clowns speculate on melee, it’s usually because they’re horror movie clowns, who prefer axes to hand buzzers. RPG clowns are more of a bard variety, I think. Apart from the battle, you will “[bonding] with leaders from opposing realms to help support your fight against the Mad King. “Ah yes, clown politics, so different from the regular kind.
Clown King is out… at some point. While you wait, try the precision platformer Clown Meat, in which you must cheer up a jester of planetary size and misery, spawned in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Or how about the classic point-and-clicker Dropsy, in which all the title character wants is a hug. Now that I think about it, we’re probably overdue for a clown game where the clown is not an emblem or metaphor for sadness and madness. If you know of one, I’d love to hear about it.