An epic tale of the quest for freedom with strings attached!
A Juggler's Tale is an indie story-driven side-scrolling Platform Game developed by Kaleidoscube, published by Mixtvision, and released on September 29, 2021.Abby is a marionette that entertains crowds in a circus but then spends night after night locked in a cage longing for freedom. One night, when the chance for freedom calls, she breaks out of her cage and enters the open world, but very quickly finds that it is a very dangerous place. Soon in the middle of a war-torn medieval fairy tale world, surrounded by starving citizens and constantly on the hunt by her former assistant Tonda, she soon finds that freedom is not as easy to get as she once thought.
A Juggler's Tale contains examples of the following tropes:
- 2.5D: The game's graphics are 3D, but Abby can only move left and right as well as jumping.
- Animal Companion: Urs, Abby's bear who is also part of the show. In the first chapter, he is the one who helps her escape the barn.
- Animate Inanimate Object: The trees in the first chapter. Abby must light branches of theirs in the way with a torch to keep moving along the path and, because they don't like fire, they appear to come to life to shake off the fire and move their branch out of the way.
- Art Shift: The game's prologue cutscene has a 2D animation style. When we get introduced to Abby, her stage set has the look of a school diorama with cardboard cutout set pieces. When we get to the actual game world, the graphics have a full 3D look.
- Big Bad: Tonda is the main character that wants to capture Abby and bring her back to the circus. It's implied he is also Jack the narrator because he gets progressively angrier at Abby's success at evading him late in the game and the narrator is no longer heard after his defeat.
- Breaking the Bonds: Abby breaks free from her strings at the start of the fourth chapter so she can escape from the burning room.
- Cue the Rain: As Abby breaks away from the village where the circus is located and sees the glamor of the outside world with a feeling of excitement, a raging thunderstorm begins. Later in the fourth chapter, another storm begins to rage as Abby rows out to sea.
- Friend to All Living Things: Abby's best friend is Urs the bear.
- Giant Spider: Abby is attacked by a giant spider in the middle of the woods during her escape through the woods.
- "I Am" Song: When the Ringmaster, Tonda, and the circus crew capture Abby at the end of the third chapter, they sing a song about how they are excited to bring her back because they will get massive pay and can use it to indulge on a lot of food.
- Interactive Narrator: Jack often freely narrates Abby's actions as she performs them, and is not afraid to put her down for failing a task. Jack is implied to be the Big Bad Tonda because he gets progressively angrier at Abby's successful escapes and is not heard anymore after Tonda's defeat.
- The Lost Woods: After Abby finds her way out of the circus, the first place she enters is a large forest. It is also her first major challenge.
- Noob Cave: When Abby finds herself in the woods, she is given her first major tasks to try and free herself from the circus.
- Stealth-Based Mission: When Abby gets to the Village, she must hide from Tonda and his men by staying in front of boxes in the foreground and out of the view of their flashlights.
