The Plucky Squire may just be the cutest game ever made. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since it was announced, and it finally has a release date – right around the corner too, September 17th. While you won’t have to wait long to crack open Jot’s storybook, GamingTrend had the chance to play the game’s first four chapters ahead of launch. So let’s open up the front cover and see what’s in store.
The Plucky Squire has you don the cap of Jot, a hero and writer living in the land of Mojo. He battled the evil sorcerer, Humgrump, and always came out on top. Until one day, Humgrump finds the story book, “The Plucky Squire”, and ejects Jot from the plot! With the story gone off the rails, Jot and his friends will have to go off book to defeat Humgrump, save Mojo, and inspire the little boy who owns their book.
To match its adorable premise, The Plucky Squire has an equally adorable art style, looking just like a childrens’ story book, with a charming wobble to characters seen in cartoons like Ed, Edd, n Eddy. When Jot is forced out of the book, the real world possesses an uncanny yet charming quality, with some realistically rendered art supplies and bugs that serve as platforms and hazards to make your way around. Whether inside or outside the book, it’s absolutely gorgeous.
You’ll often need to go between the book and the real world to solve puzzles. On one page, singing frogs block your path at night. However, you can remove the word “night” from the page’s narration. Once you realize a previous page had the word “daytime” on it, you instantly know what you have to do. To move the frogs out of your way, you need to leave the book, turn to the previous page, grab the word you need, and replace it on the current page. It’s incredibly clever, and much easier to grasp (pun intended) in practice than it is to explain on paper (pun once again intended).
While word play puzzles are some of my favorite parts so far, sometimes Jot will need to further explore the real world to acquire tools and progress the narrative in his own story. To battle some bothersome bugs, Jot needs a long range weapon. There’s a Magic: The Gathering style card depicting an elven woman wielding a bow, though it’s pretty far away. You need to battle, platform, and puzzle your way to it by moving in and out of Sam’s (the boy who owns the book) drawings. You might need a spring to bounce on to reach a high platform, so you find it within a scrap of paper and bring it with you back to the real world.
Once you reach the card, the elven woman won’t give up her bow so easily, and you have to battle her in turn-based combat. The Plucky Squire has a lot of these types of minigames, everything from a Punch-Out!! style boss fight to a shooting gallery, and they’re all a ton of fun. They mix things up occasionally without detracting from the main gameplay for too long, though if you really don’t like them there’s an option to skip.
Speaking of the main gameplay, it’s incredibly varied as well. We’ve already discussed some of the types of puzzles you can find, but there’s also combat and 2D platforming. Combat is simple and fun, though you can get stylish with it if you want. Jot can swing his sword with the X button for a combo that’s fast and satisfying, with cartoon sound effects popping up when you hit an enemy. You can also buy badges to unlock new moves, including a spin attack and the ability to throw your sword and have it boomerang back. Your sword can get stuck in walls and the like, so remember to press RT again to have it return to you. I had a lot of fun knocking a foe away with a combo, then throwing my sword to finish them off.
While most of the game is from a top-down perspective, some pages will take on a side view. You still have all your moves here, but you’ll find the jump to be a lot more useful. From this perspective, falling into certain pits will send Jot out of the book, allowing him to come back in at a different point on the page. For example, I needed to use a block to hold down a switch to open the path forward, but the block was all the way across the page. So, I dropped down the cliff and into the real world, jumped back in next to the block, carried it back to where I was earlier through the real world. Our preview didn’t have much of this type of gameplay, but what I did experience got my mind racing about the possibilities later on.
I think that’s the main takeaway from my time with The Plucky Squire, it only made me more excited for the full game. Developer All Possible Futures has something truly spectacular in the works, so look forward to more coverage on the game as we get closer to launch. I know I will be.
David is the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. He can find positives in anything, like this is a person who loved Star Fox Zero to death. You’ll see him playing all kinds of games: AAAs, Indies, game jam games, games of all genres, and writing about them! Here. On this website. When not writing or playing games, you can find David making music, games, or enjoying a good book.
David’s favorite games include NieR: Automata, Mother 3, and Gravity Rush.
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