REVIEW: ‘The Plucky Squire’ Is A Fun, Earnest Page-Turner (PC)

Developer All Possible Futures understands this better than most with their debut title, The Plucky Squire. It’s almost a rite of passage for a child to take their favorite character from a book, a cartoon, or even just a toy and to imagine them in situations completely out of their scope. Whether it’s your favorite hero fighting off the things that give you nightmares or an explorer finding their way into another world, a child’s imagination is a powerful tool. The Devolver Digital published game provides a delightful adventure for a little warrior out of his depth, and despite its lack of friction, it’s hard not to be enamored the whole way through.

Storybook character Jot lives happily in the kingdom of Artia with his friends until his nemesis, Humgrump, appears to make trouble for the group once again. This time, however, the evil wizard is armed with a new kind of magic and the knowledge that they’re all just characters in a book. Using his new power, he shunts Jot out of the book, setting the story’s events into motion. While the story’s premise is fairly simple, the developer goes the extra mile to turn it into a story worth playing. It’s about breaking out of the role you’re assigned to, whether it’s societal or self-imposed.

The Plucky Squire tells its story through a largely linear adventure. Occasionally, the game backtracks using Jot’s powers to flip through the pages of the story. These fourth-wall-breaking powers and several others create incredibly clever puzzles throughout your journey. However, players won’t be spending all their time within the confines of the storybook. Periodically, Jot will have to venture out into the kid’s room, where his book lies on the messiest desk you’ll ever see.

Without giving too much away, leaving the storybook creates opportunities to explore other realms, and they’re always worth the trek across the messy desk. Thankfully, Jot’s combat and exploration skills within the book don’t feel out of place in the real world, making it easy to transition between the two segments. Naturally, these sections of the story stand out because they best fulfill the potential established when Jot first left the book.

These trips also typically provide a new way to solve puzzles, which The Plucky Squire has many. Simple wordplay becomes more and more complicated when you need to transform a block from wood to metal to a glowing material and finally into cheese just to get through a room. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reality-bending nature of the puzzles you’ll encounter, and each new power allows for increasingly meta solutions.

One of the game’s strengths is the variety it constantly presents. With each new power you receive, you’ll face new combinations of puzzle mechanics, changing exploration dramatically. This variety affects combat encounters as well. Boss fights and other sections take the form of mini-games, with each almost feeling like a completely different game. Whether it’s a rhythm game, a boxing match, or a tile-matching game, each one exemplifies the hero’s or boss’s strength. Naturally, some of these were more enjoyable than others, but if you ever get frustrated or tired of a mini-game, you can skip it anytime from the pause menu, which is The Plucky Squire’s other great strength.

The Plucky Squire cares more about you having fun than it does about forcing you to enjoy all the tricks it has up its proverbial sleeve. Adventure mode, the harder of the two difficulties, didn’t present any challenge that was too complicated or difficult, but if you’re getting frustrated, you can bump it down to Story mode. However, this presents The Plucky Squire’s only issue: it’s not challenging. The game never asks you to think too hard about a puzzle or strategize to beat an enemy encounter. With the cute aesthetic and themes, it’s not surprising, but it would have felt more satisfying to beat the story if it felt like a triumph instead of a foregone conclusion.

That’s not to say The Plucky Squire isn’t fun the whole way through. Combat starts simple, but Jot can unlock a few cool moves that feel good to unleash during a fight. There are a few puzzles that, although they weren’t headscratchers, still feel clever in their execution. The castle town is crammed full of references to famous artists like Van Gogh, and the mountain that served as home to heavy-metal-loving trolls is a strange, whimsical detour.

The whole third act will especially leave you smiling like a fool, because at its core, The Plucky Squire is good, simple fun. It presents an earnest story with enough twists, fun references, and jokes to keep you looking for more, and it inspires us all to be more than we are.

The Plucky Squire releases September 17 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.