Once Upon a Jester

I absolutely love everything about this game, especially the music and the humor. I bought it after watching Karl, Foolish, and Corpse play the game and had so much fun playing myself. I'm looking forward to any future games from Bonte Avond.

My friend and I played this game together, and they excelled at the play-making side of things while I loved going through all the dialogues with different characters. It has something for everybody, and I wish I could play it again for the first time. Once Upon a Jester is such a funny, exciting, and surprising game that draws you in and makes you want to keep playing and discovering what else the small world has to offer. Yet another great game by Bonte Avond!!

This game is very charming, with a silly sense of humor, and some genuinely heartfelt moments. If you like musical numbers, puns, or Dutch jokes like me then this game might be for you.
You spend much of your time chatting with larger than life characters and procedurally generating plays to great comedic effect. The gameplay is fairly novel if somewhat bare-bones. What is there is mostly quick-time-events and pressing "e" to interact with people and objects, but these are handled well and ultimately the story takes prescience in a narrative driven story such as this one.
There are some other flaws as well; the game is rather short and doesn't have a huge repeatability factor and I also think that the game lost some of its wit towards the end.
With these flaws in mind I would still recommend this game on the basis of its overall impact. It is rare for games to make me laugh like this one has and it is refreshing to see a family-friendly game with a compelling central mechanic.

i just played it for 18 minutes and i am already sold
i love jester
i love sock
and i love the premise of them doing theatre only to further their own greed.
also love all the dutch references.
i shall finish this game and that says a lot i usually don't finish games

Edit:
i finished the game and i gotta say ... I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT
also got a new favorite character Hofnar he really started growing on me
especially around the end of the game. that's it,
NO SPOILERS ... just a recommendation from me

END SCORE: 95 out of a 100

Another amazing game from the incredible Bonte Avond! Very cute and cozy, but it also gets real. Jokes varying between puns, randomness, and dark humor. An action packed heist game with a wicked twist, a story of love and loss, all of this packed into a musical spectacular! If you aren't following Bonte Avond on spotify you are missing out on the most delightful joy filled tunes, jam packed with genuine hilarity.

It's a cute game but it feels like it's going to be very short. The art is adorable and the music is really nice. After about an hour the story started to get interesting, but I am not sure if that's enough to keep me going or not. There are only 3 towns to visit and you only need to perform 3 times in each town, and there isn't a lot to do outside of performing. The performances are also short. The voice acting doesn't always match up with the text shown in game and a lot of the names are hard to pronounce or understand. It's charming, but very focused on its singular path through the story. I expect this can be cleared in a single afternoon.

Overall, if you want something short, cute and with good music this is an adorable game that will offer some diversion. The performances are not complex and you unlock more as you go along. I wish I could leave a neutral review but because there are no glaring flaws I will give it a thumbs up.

This is a whimsical game with creative characters, surprising twists and silly songs, it was a delight to play! It takes about 4 hours to complete, but there are harder difficulties and more things to unlock if you want to play again. I loved the guest appearances as well!

such a genuinely funny and cute game! different enough from everybody wham wham, but kept many of the best aspects. the soundtrack was amazing, as expected, and i was so pleasantly surprised by karl jacobs, foolish, and corpse's characters. tysm for letting them be apart of it !! 100% recommend :D

Wonderful game, very awesome voice acting and charming! I love the music and have enjoyed watching the gameplay and half way through the game myself, hoping to get all the achievements! A lot of a laughs throughout, we hate the green one (if you know you know!)

Brilliant game! Honestly it's a lot of fun to play. It's both heartwarming and honestly really funny! I have been following updates for the past few months and I am glad to see it finally came out and was well worth the wait! The art is super pretty and all the music is catchy and lovely. I cannot say enough how much I enjoyed this game.

Snuggle down with some blankets and comfy cushions and pour yourself a hot cocoa to best enjoy this game! It's very cosy and is perfect for chilly nights or if you ever feel you'd love to hear a bedtime story at the end of your day.

If you are the kind of person that loves indie games that really show the personalities and heart the developers put into it, you will absolutely love this game. Bonte Avond are a group of indie musicians that use games and their hilarious storytelling to bring their songs to life. Once Upon a Jester oozes personality; it really feels like an indie music album imported to a video game form. It's filled with whimsical catchy songs that carry the same indie charm that their other games do as well and it is easy to see the passion the developers have placed into this game. I won't ruin the songs in this review but they're great to listen to when you find them.

Gameplay wise, Once Upon a Jester rewards mild observation and exploration - nothing that gets your heart racing (unless from copious laughter) but this isn't that sort of game. It's about experiencing the light but warm story and discovering fun interactions with the characters.

In the game, it is your job to put on an improv show. Depending on what choices you pick during the show, there are small mini games to play to see how well you've executed your choice. For example, you're being faced by a ferocious dragon! What do you do? The options could range from slaying the dragon or even flirting with it. After picking your choice, you play a small mini game as you see the characters on screen play out the maniacal consequences to your stage direction.

Your choices could be influenced by what you've discovered by observing the town in the day before the show. Do the villagers conversations show if they might be more romance-inclined? Do they hate action? This investigative period helps you decide what kind of show to put on. If you're worried that might limit your "fun" choices, don't be. There are plenty of opportunities to put on the same show and go with other options as the villagers' tastes change. So no need to feel upset if they hate romance but you're really dying to romance the dragon (I know I was). Some of the best choices are the musical ones too where you can enjoy some of the game's original music (that is all very good).

I won't go into the story as I don't want to ruin anything. If you're not the biggest reader, I think you can still find enjoyment from this game as the text length is quite light (no massive wall of texts) and it is completely voice acted. But I think it is a great game for players that love speaking to characters and enjoying that sort of interaction. Because of the improv gameplay, I wouldn't describe it as a visual novel at all and its compelling mini game gives a lot of opportunity for humour and a fun tool to see your own flair for storytelling.

Once Upon a Jester is a fantastic game with wonderful original music and hilarious cast. It's great to experiment with the theatre performances you put on to see what silly things you can make the characters do. Definitely a great time for people looking for new experiences and those who have a love for fantastic music.

A deeply enjoyable and absolutely hilarious game. It took me about 5 hours to finish, and my friend and I couldn't stop laughing all the way. Not every joke is always going to work for every person, but there's so many there's always something that works just around the corner. Every area was unique and the characters were charming. The Dutch-isms got a chuckle in their own right as well.

The music was objectively great.

The ending felt like it tied everything nicely together on an emotional level, without abandoning the comedy aspect. Steam has a y/n rating system, but this still gets 5 outta 5 stars (bouquets?).

Jullie hebben een goed spel gemaakt!

Consider me smekdoodled!

This game is all I ever longed for. I so miss the times when developers had so much creative freedom to create a roller coaster of goofiness, philosophy, positive messages, and various gameplay in just one game.

Bonte Avond didn't even re-record failed takes! And that adds much to Once Upon a Jester's charm.

A spider-legged-witch gag? That's Monty Python stuff, ma dudes.

Voiceovers, characters, dialogues, mini-games — all perfect for me, and I'm absolutely in love with Bonte Avond's works now. I so hope to see so much more in the future!

Absolutely love it.
I've been a fan of Bonte Avond for a while now and this game didn't disappoint.
It's a very welcome break from the usual games you see on the market. It's cozy and heart-warming, but at the same time super creative and funny in every aspect- characters, dialogue, game mechanics, music...
There are lots of reasons Bonte Avond are my favorite developers, and this game is definitely one of them.

An extremely charming little game. I love how the dialog voice acting has this semi-improvised feel to it, it's very fun to listen to. If you like goofy, heartwarming little stories about friendship, you can't go wrong picking this one up.

I haven't even finished this game but I can't WAIT to share how much I think everyone should play it. Bonte Avond's previous games have never disappointed but this one has just blown me away. It's come so far from when I beta tested and I can't wait to see what other surprises are in store in the rest of the game. The music is all top notch, the humor is laugh-out-loud funny, and there's so much genuine heart in the story. I might come back and add more details once I finish the game, but seriously - do yourself a favor and check it out!

Edit: Finished! All of the above is still true. Go play this game.

Hilarious and heartfelt. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. The music is really good too. I highly recommend talking with all of the characters each day to get all the extra dialog and running gags.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Bonte Avond’s other game, Everybody Wham Wham, so when this one was announced I was immediately super excited! Once Upon a Jester is such a cute fun game, and I enjoyed it even more than EWW which I didn’t think was possible! Loved the guest voice actors too, I couldn’t stop smiling when I heard them. Don’t be surprised if you head over to their Spotify to listen to some of the songs after you finish playing the game, because they’re so addicting!