Developed by All Possible Futures and published by Devolver Digital, The Plucky Squire is an indie homage to adventure stories and games. Seemingly aiming to throw back to titles like The Legend of Zelda while incorporating a unique storybook aesthetic, the developers have landed on a unique blended style that looks to be quite a cool experience, but will it have enough pluck?
The Plucky Squire is an interesting beast. What if a storybook came to life, not only within its pages, but also bleeding out into the real world? Putting players into the boots of “The Plucky Squire”, they explore the storybook, gathering friends and pushing back against the evil Humgrump. The story is pretty light, never really going anywhere unexpected, but it’s fun, it works as a narrative frame for the gameplay events, and it’s written with some wry wit and humour.
The main top-down gameplay will be immediately familiar and reminiscent to people who are familiar with older Legend of Zelda adventures. Each set of pages offers an area to explore, as the majority of the game makes use of 2D characters inside the book or on sheets of paper atop a 3D, realistic desk environment. This has some cool elements, like the daylight filtering over the pages and proper page-turning transitions.
Of course, the unique catch is that the game escapes the pages in some areas. This brings with it a change from the 2D gameplay design, instead swapping to a more freeform 3D setup with physics included. It’s almost like two completely different games in one, but over the course of the adventure, they become more naturally intertwined. It’s when the player first encounters this gameplay that they will also get to try the stealth mechanics, which are a little unrefined, but luckily not used often.
Once the player is around chapters 3 and 4, they will gain new abilities that allow them to manipulate the storybook from outside. This is really cool and offers some interesting puzzles that require transporting items from page to desk and vice versa. In terms of difficulty, it never really gets complicated enough to be truly satisfying, but it does hold a good enough level of challenge that keeps engagement high.
The puzzle design is interesting as it plays on the storybook setting by making players move and exchange words to change properties of various level elements. This is usually to unblock a path, but can also be story related. These can also have the player take words out of the book and transport them to other pages, which is a pretty cool feeling.
Each area is fairly small and self-contained, but full to the brim with charming characters, enemies, and interactive elements. Each 2D area is basically a page of the storybook; this means they have a max size of a two-page spread, and area transitions happen when the player walks off the page. It will automatically flip to the next page and render the next area. It’s all surprisingly smooth and well put together. Once far enough, the 3D areas are reached via magical swirls. These areas are also fairly contained but have a much more freeform layout; it’s a great facsimile of a messy artist’s desk.
Visually, the 2D artwork is very cute and full of character. All the animation work is smooth and tends to have decent exaggeration and expression. This isn’t always as obvious in the 3D area, but the models do a good job of matching the 2D characters. There are also some really cool scenes where 2D and 3D mix seamlessly with artwork, animating on things like sticky notes, or the player swapping to a 2D segment that wraps around a 3D object. The Plucky Squire does lots of this, and it’s always a joy to see!
Where the Nintendo Switch version falls down a bit is in clarity; the game is quite low resolution in some areas, which can obscure text elements on pages and in different scenarios, making them a little hard to follow. To go with the visuals is a decent soundscape with some fun fantasy game music and a silky-voiced narrator. Characters aren’t voiced as they are just part of the book, but the narrator adds context and gets the story across in a fun way. Other sound effects aren’t bad, usually timed well and do a good job of reinforcing the action.
There is also a plethora of collectables in the form of experience points and artbook images. Both are hidden around the environment, and the game encourages players to hit everything. It’s not the best collectathon element, but it is decently executed and relatively satisfying. The experience can then be spent on new abilities to help players get the upper hand in different scenarios.
