The Plucky Squire [PC] | REVIEW

From the moment it was revealed, The Plucky Squire won the hearts of a lot of gamers (myself included), with the delightfully unique blend of 2D and 3D adventuring easily helping it stand out as something a bit special. It meant that there has been a lot of hype heading into its release, so… did it meet expectations? Spoiler alert: yes, it’s brilliant.

Check out some screenshots down below:

The Plucky Squire puts players in the role of Jot, who lives a typical life as a hero in a colourful fantasy world. The twist? The fantasy world is actually part of a children’s storybook where, of course, the good guys always win in the end. Unfortunately, the villainous Humpgrump has had enough of this and, upon discovering that everything takes place within a book, finds a way to take over the land. It’s up to Jot to save the day, but with his new adventure taking place across both a child’s bedroom and his own world, it won’t be as straight-forward as his typical adventures.

One of the best things about The Plucky Squire is the way that it implements so many different gameplay ideas into its experience. Things start off in the 2D dimension, with the game taking an almost 16-bit Zelda-like approach with some basic hack-and-slash action from a colourful top-down perspective. However, it soon changes up completely, with the perspective shifting to a 2D side-scroller and then culminating in a Punch Out-style finale against a honey badger that needs a beating… and all of that takes place in the first fifteen-minutes.

Puzzles are prevalent during this time too, with Jot able to change up areas of the world through the power of words. Remember how I said everything takes place in a children’s storybook? Well, you’ll see sentences across the world that tell the story, but there’ll often be words that can be replaced with special variations that you can find littered across the environment. These then alter the environment in various ways, whether that’s by changing the landscape from nighttime to daytime, turning a forest into a ruin, or simply making a broken bridge fixed, just to give a few simple examples. It’s a really cool mechanic that adds a fun twist to the game’s puzzling (and believe me, you have to get creative in your approach), though it’s fun to simply mess around with the world and see what kind of wacky changes you can make to it.

“The Plucky Squire is a joy to play, with the varied gameplay, delightful world, and constant surprises ensuring it stands out as one of 2024’s best indie hits.”

There are plenty of other puzzles to encounter across the world too, some of which will require you to shift between the 2D boundaries of the book and the 3D world that exists outside of it. You know how I mentioned that Jot is kicked out of the book? Well, during this time the game turns into a 3D platformer, with Jot exploring the messy desk of the kid who the book belongs to and interacting with the real world in a variety of neat little ways. You might just have to complete some platforming challenges that see you traversing desktop items to get around, you might have to use one of the special abilities you unlock such as flipping pages to alter the world within the book, or you might jump into the 2D drawings that exist outside of the storybook (which is ALWAYs cool). Either way, the blend of 2D and 3D exploration is ALWAYS satisfying and adds a unique charm to The Plucky Squire that is wonderfully executed.

It’s just a really innovative experience, and whilst there are a lot of ideas strewn across the game that you might have seen before elsewhere, the way they all blend together here helps ensure that variety and creativity are always at the forefront. It’s rare you’ll do the same thing for long in The Plucky Squire, and when you do start to get comfortable, it’ll throw another fun little mini-game your way to keep the excitement up. It’s packed to the brim with surprises, and it helps make the roughly seven-hour playtime a joy from start to end.

Everything looks absolutely beautiful too, with the world itself one that just feels… well… nice to be a part of. I loved exploring its variety of locales and meeting its quirky characters, whilst there’s so much charm to be found in the design of everything in both the 2D and 3D world. It’s definitely one of the prettiest games I’ve played this year, with the mish-mash of visual styles always ensuring that The Plucky Squire is a real treat on the eyes.

Check out some screenshots down below:

I’ve got plenty of nice things to say about The Plucky Squire (and there are a lot of things that I loved that I won’t be mentioning, just to keep them a surprise for players). It was mostly bug-free too, though there were a few small issues I encountered when playing. I got stuck in the environment on two occasions that forced a restart, whilst there was one occasion where the game seemingly stopped recognising my control inputs. Nothing game-breaking by any means (especially with the game’s very forgivable checkpoints), but they were still issues that can hopefully be ironed out with a patch. It’s also worth noting that the game is on the easier side, so much so that I don’t think I died once whilst playing. Whilst it’s clear that The Plucky Squire isn’t meant to be an overly challenging game (and it has plenty of options of assists to help players), it’d be nice if there were extra difficulty settings for those who want a more formidable test.

Developer: All Possible Futures
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platform(s): PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch
Website: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1627570/The_Plucky_Squire/