After getting a glimpse at the game’s fourth chapter at a preview event last year, I can say I’ve now been fortunate enough to thumb even further into the pages of The Plucky Squire and have played the game’s first four chapters in their entirety. The love was already there, however getting significant hands-on time with the game has only served to strengthen the infatuation.
There’s something inherently special about a great picture book. With formative lessons for tiny minds to be found within their hardcovers, story time in my house is always a nice closing chapter to any long day. Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are is rich with childhood empowerment, while Goodnight Thomas once felt like something of a magic spell to seal shut tired eyes. All of my kids’ favourite stories feel as though they’re ready to leap from the page and it’s this fun idea that The Plucky Squire so ably explores by presenting Jot’s exile from his own titular tome by the tale’s nasty sorcerer Humgrump, and his subsequent journey through the three-dimensional world atop Sam’s study desk to restore his place as the story’s hero.
The one word that sums up The Plucky Squire from both a style and design perspective is adventurous. The team cleverly blends two worlds—one flat, one three-dimensional and yet running in tandem behind the curtain—with a hint of puzzle craft to create a wonderful and jovial tone that’s really suitable for all-comers. Of course, the bright colours and flashy animation, especially whenever Jot pops free from the page as though he’s Homer Simpson stumbling through his closet gateway to the third dimension, will appeal to a younger audience but I think the wit All Possible Futures exhibits through the game’s meta fantasy plot and its wordplay puzzles does enough to hold the attention of a more mature gamer.
Although the portion of the game I’ve sampled spends time tutorialising and introducing the game’s core elements, it’s clear that it doesn’t simply rest on the fundamentals of its gameplay loop as it continually finds gears and introduces cool, fleeting, ‘see-it-for-ten-seconds’ shit that’ll leave you grinning from ear-to-ear. It reminds me a lot of It Takes Two in that sense, simply because the team have lovingly crafted whole fights as fun, throwaway gags. Whether it’s the Knock-Out boxing bout against one very tenacious badger or the Pokémon-esque, turn-based stoush against a fantastical elven warrior which takes place within the borders of a trading card that’s just distinct enough to legally not be Magic the Gathering.
These excellent moments are often bookends to longer stints of exploration and combat which I’d probably describe as serviceable rather than anything that’s set to move the needle. Save for the quasi-guard dogs that’ll instantly death roll you during the stealth portion of sneaking around Sam’s desk, none of the enemies present enough of a concern to get into the rigmarole of Jot’s secondary spin attacks. If there’s one thing the developer has led me to believe based on four chapters it’s that there are more strings to their bow than I expected, so I fully trust that the game’s systems will fill out the deeper we get into the adventure. Even if it doesn’t, The Plucky Squire’s charms lie elsewhere for me, namely its level design and how expertly its paths, particularly through the three-dimension tabletop, are routed.
After you learn from Moonbeard, Jot’s trusty mentor who happens to be a cool, old wizard dude, about the spiral-signed portals that allow you to, at will, hop between planes, the team go buck-wild in serving up creative uses of the mechanic. As much as I loved traversing the cardboard-crafted outer wall of Sam’s castle diorama in a moment that reminded me of Super Mario Odyssey’s retro-inspired warp pipes, I still feel the more impressive application ties into the game’s big hook that sees Jot retreat into the book’s previous chapters to cut, rearrange and give new context to words within his book to create change on any given page.
As much as I wish we were given a bit more rope to solve the game’s problems in a multitude of ways, it seemed as though the way forward pretty much each time was a straight line. That isn’t to say the developer didn’t cater to people toying about with their word use, there are several instances where radically different adjectives can be bolted onto the front of nouns to yield funny results. So while my previous hope that they might find the resources to craft multiple endings to their puzzles, it would seem as though they met me halfway.
Having played four chapters, which is nearly half of the game, I can only hope that The Plucky Squire continues to upend expectation with its bold, one-off gags, wonderful sense of humour, and gorgeous art design that is quite literally as pretty as a picture book. Devolver Digital’s knack for finding and funding the far out will never cease to leave me gobsmacked, but I truly believe The Plucky Squire is a winning mix of all the right ingredients to make up the archetypal hero’s journey.
The Plucky Squire launches September 17th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and PC, and will be available day one with PlayStation Plus Extra.
