Kickstarter for The Jester and the Madman is no laughing matter

Written by Jack Allin — February 26, 2019 at 12:05

You'd think saving the world from a creature mystically summoned to our dimension might earn an FBI agent a vacation, but the star of Evil Grog Games' Lovecraftian freeware adventure Curse of the Old Gods is right back at it in an upcoming commercial sequel called The Jester and the Madman, which is currently seeking support through Kickstarter. 

After "chasing a crazed museum curator around the world" the first time around, on his way home special agent Rick Moreton suddenly "finds himself locked up in a cell with no memory." It's now up to players to help him "find out who put him there and what really happened with the portal at the Kongo Mesa." That's about all we know for story details, except that it will "take place over a multitude of locations all around the world and feature a second playable character." As with its predecessor, it promises to be "heavily inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and feature otherworldly entities and secret societies practicing the occult." 

While the first game used "digitized images in an EGA graphic adapter art style," The Jester and the Madman will feature an "updated art-style with more harmonic colors while staying true to the original." Also retained are many of the same old-school sensibilities, including a point-and-click interface and logical puzzles. There will be some time-limited puzzles as well, though failure to act correctly in time will simply result in the game being reset a few moments to try again. Providing a degree of replayability will be at least two different endings to the story.

Although this game tells a largely self-contained story, 2017's Curse of the Old Gods is still freely available to be downloaded from itch.io or played in your browser. If you like what you see, you can help support the Kickstarter campaign to raise €30,000 for The Jester and the Madman by March 24th. If all goes well, we can look for the new Rick Moreton adventure to launch on Windows and Linux before the end of the year.