Not to kick things off by talking about a completely different game, butAstro Botsure is an impressive platformer. An absolute joy and a truly triumphant, colorful, kid-friendly adventure. So you’d kind of hate to be the next type of game immediately following such a GOTY contender, right? Well, not with developer All Possible Futures, who were more than happy to be sharing the spotlight with their new game,The Plucky Squire,even doinga bit of celebratory artwork.It also helps thatThe Plucky Squirehas arguably been one of this year’s most-anticipated indie titles, with several HG staffers alone wanting to get their hands on it. But does this game also have what it takes to deliver a cute and amazing experience as well?
The Plucky Squireis a story about the story ofThe Plucky Squire.To be more specific and less confusing, the game follows our titular hero, who is the main character in a series of kids' fantasy storybooks. Typically, his adventures in the land of Mojo involve him battling the evil wizard Humgrump, winning, and writing about his own tales afterwards. But then one day, Humgrump discovers the reality of their world, and using powerful “metamagic,” sets out to find a way and conquer Mojo in order to rewrite the story’s ending and make himself the ruler. Which is bad news for Mojo, since if Humgrump wins, the story becomes dull, and Sam, the ten-year-old kid whose desk the book lies upon, will banish it to the shelf and fail to be inspired by the stories. So now, with some metamagic residue in hand, Jot sets out on his strangest adventure yet…
The Plucky Squire Leaps To Consoles and PC This September
Indie game The Plucky Squire transports outside the storybook and onto consoles and PC next month.
Take a Look, it’s in a Book…
The main hook inThe Plucky Squireis that of Jot’s ability to leave his storybook whenever they come across a glowing green portal, literally popping out of it and switching genres. Within the book, the game is a top-down Zelda-esque action-adventure game (with the occasional side-scrolling 2D platforming section), and outside of the book, it becomes more of a 3D platforming adventure. Outside, Jot not only has the ability to look around Sam’s desk, but also to interact with the book in various ways from the outside. They can flip and travel across pages to previously-unreachable portals, tilt the whole book to move certain objects, use a stamp to prevent certain objects from being able to move and more.
The end result is a lot of impressive bits of puzzle design, especially those that require more outside-the-box thinking. In one area, you’re supposed to look for a character that’s sleeping under a tree, it turns out they’re in that chapter’s establishing shot, which you can leap into now. Not that the storybook world itself is lacking in great puzzles, especially with the parts where you can with narration on the ground where you can knock words loose and then rearrange them in order to get past certain obstacles, such as turning scattered pages into stacked pages in order to create a platform or tuning metal spikes into glowing spikes in order to light a dark cavern. Or you can just goof off and experiment by, say, turning stone pillars into cheese, which is also enjoyable.
Genre-Hopping, in More Ways Than One
The standard top-down action is also great, with a few nice upgrades to purchase and collectibles to find, if nothing truly spectacular. The same goes for the 3D segments on the desk, which are also fun (despite a few slippery bits of platforming). It’s nothing too complex, but still highly entertaining as you go around slashing baddies, and feels like a perfect fit for a younger audience, with nice accessibility options for the kids as well. Some of the true highlights come during certain sections such as boss battles whereThe Plucky Squireswitches genres even further, delving into rhythm games, arcade shoot-‘em-ups or puzzle games, among other things. It’s a good blend and each of these segments is fun as well.
It helps that these sections also highlight the impressive graphics, especially when they allow for nice shifts in style to represent the other styles from other pieces of work outside of the story, and the subtle differences between the 2D and 3D worlds are a delight. That said, the storybook’s graphics still end up being the biggest highlight, with colorful characters and landscapes, all drawn with thick lines, expressive faces and cute designs. you may genuinely see how this would make for one beloved storybook and it enhances the personality of everyone and everything within it.
Speaking of stories, the game also has a good narrative as well, plus nice bits of dialogue from Jot’s friends, Violet the trainee witch and Thrash the mountain troll (Jot himself being a mute hero). There’s a lot of good chemistry between everyone, many moments of good humor and even actual scary moments near the end, with things being perfectly balanced. Mojo doesn’t exactly have many regions to explore, but areas like a mountain village dedicated to heavy metal or a swamp that’s a home for theatrical snails and a nice bit of flavor to everything.
Not Exactly a Doorstopper
But there’s one notable flaw holdingThe Plucky Squireback, which would be the issue of length. Or rather, what it does with the time given. Which might seem odd, since the game lasts for at least a good eight to ten hours, which sounds meaty on the surface for a relatively-small indie title such as this. But to this writer, a video game can be as short or long as it needs to be, provided that it does everything it needs or wants to in the time given. It’s a mix of length and design that can make or break a game in this area, and while it doesn’t break the game, it does feel likeThe Plucky Squireand its chapters are over too quickly before they can realize their potential.
In particular, I do think the chapter-based approach wasn’t the best idea for a game such as this. While the idea of having Joy pop out of the storybook to explore it is amazing, the only times he gets to fully explore the desktop are with fully-scripted events where Jot has to go out and retrieve a new tool in order to alter the pages, each time with the odds and ends around the desk arranged into a new area. It just feels like this is begging for more of a metroidvania-esque approach, especially when given the nifty parts where Jot can hunt for secrets in previous pages using new powers. It doesn’t help that it feels like parts of the story could have used more expansion as well: Thrash basically gets a whole chapter devoted to them and their homeland, but Violet gets fewer scenes devoted to any development.
Still, in the end, it’s hard not to recommend The Plucky Squire, be it for younger games or gamers who are young at heart. It’s a charming bit of work that ends up being quite the page-turner, metaphorically and literally.
The Plucky Squire is Shaping Up For One Impressive Story
All Possible Futures are set to deliver something special with The Plucky Squire, a genre-shifting game that goes well beyond its titular book.
Closing Comments:
While The Plucky Squire could have benefited from being fleshed out even just a little bit more, it still provides a unique genre-hopping adventure, one that perfectly captures a feeling a childlike wonder in Jot and the land of Mojo. With fun gameplay, cool puzzles and a great use of different mechanics and genres, and eye-catching artwork, it easily stands out as a storybook adventure worth checking out.
The Plucky Squire
Version Reviewed: PC
The Plucky Squire sees our protagonist Jot kicked out of their two-dimensional storybook, and venturing into the three-dimensional real world, which they’ll have to explore in order their story’s happy ending.
