Send In The Clown is a one-hour comedy role-playing game from developer Mad Herons, built around a single turn-based battle. You play as Pockets, a sad-faced birthday clown hired to rescue the ruined 12th birthday party of a girl named Miranda. The whole adventure is about wandering the party grounds, winning over guests through minigames, and assembling a squad to fight Miranda’s party-crashing brother, Tad.
Quick answer: This compact comedy RPG combines exploration and minigames before a final turn-based showdown with Tad. You can play the demo now or wishlist the game on Steam.
What Send In The Clown is and how it plays
Co-directors Nick and Jacques describe it as an hour-long experience with exactly one turn-based RPG battle. That framing shapes everything else. Instead of grinding through dozens of encounters, you spend the bulk of your time exploring the house and backyard where Miranda’s party has fallen apart.
Pockets starts the day with a party in disaster and a simple goal, tracked by quest text such as “Find the cake” in the corner of the screen. Interactable objects are marked with rings on the ground, and the house is dotted with secrets to uncover. Along the way you talk to guests, play minigames, and decide who joins your team before the fight begins.
The setup splits into two halves. First comes the exploration and recruitment, where everything you do builds toward combat. Then comes the one-and-only boss battle, a turn-based showdown labeled on screen as a face-off between Miranda and Tad, where your choices pay off.
Pockets is a support character, not a damage dealer
In the battle against Tad, Pockets fills the support role rather than the attacker. His command list includes Empower, Heal All, and Item. Healing can cover the whole party at once, with numbers like +105 popping up across allies during the fight.
The Empower command is what ties Pockets to the rest of the team. Using it on an ally triggers that character’s own special attack, so battle hints prompt you to unlock moves like Ned’s Dance Troupe or Carol’s Flirt With Pockets. In practice, Pockets keeps everyone alive and buffed while the recruited guests do the heavy lifting.
Tad fights back with poisonous gas attacks that spread a green cloud across the lawn and leave characters POISONED. That status pressure is the reason Pockets’ area healing matters so much during the encounter.
The guests you can recruit and their abilities
Guests befriended around the party become your battle squad. Each recruit has three stats, Strength, Charisma, and Magic, plus a unique special ability. The team-select screen limits how many you can bring, shown as a running “Picks Left” counter as you add or drop members.
| Guest | Minigame | Unlocked ability |
|---|---|---|
| Ned | Dance-A-Tron 10,000! | Dance Troupe |
| Nasser | Barometric Cheer-U-Lator | Be A Hero |
| Eleanor | Backyard vulture fight | Throw Baby Alia |
Ned
Ned is a single father who starts out insisting he can’t dance. You win him over through the Dance-A-Tron 10,000!, a rhythm minigame built on button prompts. Clearing it unlocks his Dance Troupe attack, a group offensive move for the boss fight.
Nasser
Nasser is an anxious boy, nervous enough to say he’s scared. You bring him onto the team by hyping up the crowd with the Barometric Cheer-U-Lator, a swimming pool minigame with a meter to fill. He joins with Be A Hero, a defensive ability for the squad.
Eleanor
Eleanor is a tired mother you help by fending off a vulture that threatens Baby Alia in the backyard. The sequence runs on timed button prompts, with cues like Shoo Vulture!, Fight Vulture!, Brave!, and Heroic!. Succeeding unlocks the offensive Throw Baby Alia attack.
Secrets around the house change the boss fight
Recruiting guests is only part of the preparation. Poking around the house turns up secrets and items that alter conditions in the final battle. Pockets finds Baby Tad photos behind a door covered in stickers like “No Girls Allowed” and “DO NOT ENTER,” stumbles into a secret marked Found Religion, and can wake up a sleeping Nanna.
These discoveries act as dynamic modifiers. What you uncover before the fight feeds directly into how the encounter against Tad plays out, so exploring thoroughly is part of building toward a stronger showing in that one battle.
The payoff: one battle against Tad
Everything converges on the backyard lawn for the turn-based fight. The full party, including names like Miranda, Pockets, Ned, Carol, Nasser, Linda, Hector, and Jen, trades blows with Tad while his health bar sits at the top. Damage numbers climb into the hundreds, with hits as large as 408 landing during the exchange.
Because this is the single combat encounter in the game, the recruited allies, their unlocked specials, and the secrets you gathered all matter at once. Pockets rotates heals and buffs while the guests fire off their comical attacks to wear Tad down.
Where to play the demo and wishlist
Send In The Clown is coming to Steam, and a playable demo is already available there. You can try it and add the game to your wishlist from its store page.
No firm release date has been confirmed yet. For now, the demo is the clearest way to get a feel for the exploration, the minigame recruitment, and the one fight it all leads to.
