The Plucky Squire [Review]
Enchanting adventure with gorgeous visuals The Plucky Squire doesn’t reach its full potential.
The Plucky Squire. Credit: All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital
All Possible Futures and Devolver Digital’s The Plucky Squire is a streamlined Zelda-style adventure with a charming storybook conceit and stunning art direction. The game’s central concept is similar to The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, which features Link shifting between being a 3D character and a living painting on the wall. While innovative in expanding on the idea, The Plucky Squire doesn’t maximize the use of its mechanics, which limits the game’s overall impact.
In the land of Mojo, Jot is the titular Plucky Squire, an adventurous hero who wields a fountain pen nib sword and a writer who shares his exciting tales with readers. However, the evil mage Humgrump discovers that their world exists within a storybook, where Jot is the main character. Humgrump, tired of always being defeated, kicks Jot out of the book and takes his place as the protagonist. Now, Jot and his friends must defeat Humgrump to save their world. If they fail, children will lose interest in the story, and the book will be forgotten, dooming the land of Mojo. While a narrator reads the book's story, the characters in the game are not voiced.
The Plucky Squire. Credit: All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital
Jot exists in two worlds, thanks to Humgrump’s magic: in the storybook pages and the real world, on an artistic child’s desk. Jot has the same abilities in both worlds. He can slash with his sword, push objects, run, dodge, and jump. You’ll also learn a couple more sword techniques—a throw and a spinning slash.
The Plucky Squire. Credit: All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital
The gameplay on the 2D page is similar to a classic Zelda game, but the combat is relatively easy. You’ll find most of the game's puzzles here. The puzzles involve a mechanic that allows you to swap words in the book's text to change the nature of objects. For example, you might open a gate by changing the phrase "the gate was closed" to "the gate was open." Sometimes, the effects are especially fun, like changing the size or behavior of objects, and the game allows you to affect things that aren't part of the puzzle. Many puzzles involve jumping into the 3D world through green portals to warp around the page or manipulate the book from the outside, turning pages to visit past areas, or partially closing the book to cause heavy objects to roll. Like the combat, the puzzles are not very challenging. They only become truly interesting in the game's final chapter, where you combine the puzzle mechanics more frequently in puzzles with greater complexity, making the game feel like it has much wasted potential.
The Plucky Squire. Credit: All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital
In the 3D game areas, Jot climbs up obstacle courses made of toys and art supplies to find a specific item. The gameplay sometimes switches between 3D and 2D, allowing Jot to leap into drawings to access unreachable areas. However, the book owner's pet beetles are running loose, and there are some underdeveloped stealth sections in the game where they will instantly eat Jot if they spot him. Apart from the stealth sections, the 3D parts of the game are mostly enjoyable, if not particularly noteworthy.
Some of the most memorable moments in the game are the boss fights, which are minigames based on other games. For example, an early boss fight against a honey badger resembles a boxing match straight out of Punch-Out. Another battle where you control Jot’s friend Thrash could be a minigame plucked right out of Rhythm Heaven. Additionally, his friend Violet’s magic duel with Humgrump is a simplified version of Bust-A-Move. These sequences are a well-executed, clever way to bring more variety and personality into the game.
The Plucky Squire. Credit: All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital
The world of Mojo is beautiful and looks like a real, living storybook. The game camera tracks Jot through each open book spread, with pages that are realistically textured and are complete with the book’s center crease. Moving from one area to the next causes the book’s page to turn, a wonderful effect. The characters and the world they live in are designed with bold, bright, solid colors with rich contrast and are drawn with thick, black lines that look printed onto the page. Everything is animated fluidly. To me, the book world’s visual design and graphics are the most impressive quality of the game.
The 3D “real” world isn’t nearly as pretty. Things are rendered with a photorealistic, Toy Story-like quality, textured and lit nicely. However, what we see isn’t remarkably different from the 3D games we’ve seen before. The levels don’t make as much sense as the game’s 2D sections because of the absurd amount of art supplies the unseen child living in the room has haphazardly set up into areas for Jot to explore.
The Plucky Squire. Credit: All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital
I wish less of the game’s 8-hour playtime took place in the real world. Perhaps we would have seen more elaborate puzzles using Jot’s unique abilities to manipulate his book. I believe the overly simple nature of most of the gameplay comes from this division of focus, not necessarily from being targeted to younger players. The standard 3D action gameplay just isn’t as interesting. I never got the same sense of wonder from these parts of the game that I did exploring the book, which is a pity. Still, The Plucky Squire is an impressive title that’s worth experiencing for yourself.
The Plucky Squire is available now on PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
