The Plucky Squire Review: A Joyful Journey of Childlike Creativity

The Plucky Squire (Digital)

Recommended

Platform reviewed on: Windows

Pros

• Charming storybook visuals
• Playful and creative genre shifts
• Endearing positive attitude

Cons

• Low difficulty throughout
• Overbearing hints for many puzzles
• Occasional camera and control problems in 3D

ESRB Age Rating: Everyone 10+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Fantasy Violence

Review code provided by the publisher.

The Plucky Squire’s pages are filled with moments of delight. But the best of them comes whenever the titular hero leaps physically out of his own hardback narrative. That shift – the game’s central mechanic of swapping from 2D cartoon adventure to 3D platformer – is a brilliant moment. But it’s looking back down at the pages below you, the world you inhabited a second before, that delivers the greatest sense of childlike wonder. Because separating from that paperbound landscape doesn’t render it as flat as its dimensions might suggest. Monsters still scamper to and fro beneath your feet, and colorful creatures fidget animatedly across the pages. The Plucky Squire is a game about childhood imagination, and nothing captures it better than this. It’s a storybook literally brought to life.

The Plucky Squire (Digital)

Release Date: September 17, 2024

Digital Only

• Windows
• Nintendo SwitchBuy
• PlayStation 5Buy
• Xbox SeriesBuy

The adventure begins with our young hero, Jot, embarking on a quest to stop Humgrump, an evil wizard who threatens the land. Guided by the advice of Moonbeard – a DJ wizard who has a brilliant tendency to remix the soundtrack of any scene he enters – he grabs his sword and departs alongside friends Violet the trainee witch and Thrash the metal-loving mountain troll. So begins a fairly simple adventure – one unmistakably in the vein of The Legend of Zelda’s isometric outings. Slash through monsters, collect lightbulb currency, and turn the pages of the narrative each time you move from one screen to the next.

Even in this humble opening, it’s easy to fall in love with The Plucky Squire. The sketched world of crayon colors is gorgeously charming. Environments are rarely busy, but even the simple elements are rendered with loving character. No wonder one of the game’s main collectibles is concept art (often paired with amusing insight). But it’s upon reaching your nemesis that things take a genre-twisting turn. Having studied dark magics, Humgrump unleashes a spell that ejects Jot from the pages of the book. Thrust into the 3D world, you discover that the story thus far has taken place atop a desk in a child’s bedroom. With the aid of Moonbeard and an educated bookworm, Jot gains the power to shift between these realms. And with it, he must stop Humgrump from ruining the beloved story forever.

The bulk of The Plucky Squire plays out within the 2D world. By accessing portals, Jot can spring in and out of the pages at will, and even take items with him as he does. Sometimes, this means finding the solution on the outside and bringing it in. But more often, the portals are used to shift things between disconnected regions. While on the outside, you can even flip between pages. Can’t spot something for that pressure plate? Perhaps a previous page has the hefty block you’re after. To stop things from becoming too convoluted, this ability to turn back to past scenes is limited to your current chapter.

Every so often, you’ll need to head out on a larger diversion to secure a substantial upgrade from the 3D world. Here, the action shifts to a fairly standard platformer. But one broken up via excellent 2D insertions. To scale a box or book, Jot might need to leap into a cartoon sketch on the side of a vertical sticker. One venture involves running around the sci-fi artwork of a printed mug to have a chat with its alien inhabitant. It’s grin-inducing stuff. In many cases, Jot’s art style adapts a touch match that of his environment.

Aside from a limited depth of field which grants a satisfying sense of minute scale, the visuals of the 3D world, and especially the characters within it, lack the immediate charm of their 2D counterparts. But the micro 2D segments dotted throughout mean exploring is never a chore. It’s also a delight to see how the wider world changes between each major outing. The time of day shifts. Items rearrange. New doodles appear. A set of headphones is suddenly propped up against books. It’s an indicator that the room’s owner has returned between chapters. They’ve tinkered with castles, set up doll houses, and crafted imaginative landscapes from rulers, erasers, and numerous artistic supplies.

Like the restless mind of a child, The Plucky Squire is constantly reinventing itself in playful manners. Each chapter introduces novel mechanics, often borrowed from other sources. Early on, we’re shown how Jot’s penchant for penmanship allows him to alter the words of some chunks of text on the page. Doing so will rework the reality of the story and open new paths. It’s a system drawn straight from ingenious puzzler Baba Is You. It starts simple, with a “forest” environment replaced by crumbling stone of a different layout when you put “ruin” into the text instead.

Nothing in The Plucky Squire comes close to the brain-melting complexity of Baba Is You’s harder levels, but the challenge does step up steadily. One later puzzle involves alternating between “night” and “day,” a shift that causes singing frogs to move between two positions. Push a block into one frog’s path, and it stops it from getting in the way when swapping back to the time of day required. With more elements sprinkled in, puzzles do require some head-scratching assessment, and feel well judged in difficulty for younger minds.

There’s also a gleeful sense of mischief to many abilities. In the case of text alterations, most words won’t fit into incorrect spaces. But where the sentence would make grammatical sense, amusing swaps can occur. A “tiny” watching frog can be swollen in size with a “huge” substitution, while dangerous “metal” spikes can be made rather less threatening (though still quite painful) by slotting “cheese” in instead. These changes serve no practical purpose beyond a quick laugh. But that makes it all the more special when you put in the time to discover they’ve been accounted for.

This whimsical attitude is suffused throughout the rest of the game, too. Boss fights ditch the core mechanics to toss out a mishmash of alternative mini-games like a shooting gallery, a turn-based battle, and a drumming rhythm sequence. The first sees the Plucky Squire, arm muscles suddenly bulging, squaring off Punch Out-style against an enraged honey badger. None of these duels presents a major challenge. But in truth, they’re not really bosses. They’re a break in the format; an injection of comedy which usually comes with a cheeky reference for older players to recognize.

Numerous franchises and their mechanics are riffed on throughout The Plucky Squire – the most obvious being The Legend of Zelda, and more specifically A Link Between Worlds’ 2D-3D transitions. But it does so with such guileless joy that we can’t help smiling along the way. These systems are never delved into with the rigor of their inspiration. You won’t find the enigmatic secrets of a game like Tunic here. Instead, they’re toyed with in a manner that feels aligned to suit all ages.

Some core systems work better than others. A weaker aspect involves the power to tilt one side of the book up in the air. The idea is that gravity will cause elements on the page to slide one way or the other. But in practice, it affects only a handful of specific objects, and is used sparingly enough that you’d be liable to forget it entirely without the game’s many, generous hints.

On that note, The Plucky Squire isn’t keen on you scratching your head anywhere for long. Hint stations – supplied by an amusing Minibeard simulacrum of your wizard mentor – are positioned generously around every puzzle. But even without them you’re unlikely to be lost from the get go. Most problems are introduced with direct clues as to which powers you need to solve them. While you can minimize your interaction with some hints, it still feels hand-led in a way that will likely feel patronizing to some. But in a scant few cases, that instruction feels almost essential, with the correct path forward easy to miss without a little guidance.

Unless you have the heart of a miser, however, it’s difficult to hold grudges for long against any part of The Plucky Squire. Especially when it eagerly whisks you off to another novel environment like Artia, a castle town crammed with amusing caricatures of famous real-world artists. There’s such a genuine worldly optimism resting at the game’s core. Far be it from us to prove the Humgrump to that positivity.

The Plucky Squire (Digital)

Release Date: September 17, 2024

Digital Only

• Windows
• Nintendo SwitchBuy
• PlayStation 5Buy
• Xbox SeriesBuy