In a fantastic fantasy world, a wizard carrying sun shades brews a weed-killing potion so a noble hero can go by way of a very prickly plant. After doing so, the wizard carrying sun shades appears to be like out of the web page, straight at you, and thanks you in your braveness and ability in controlling stated noble hero.
Then the noble hero, AKA Jot AKA The Plucky Squire, jumps proper out of the web page, grabs his personal storybook, flicks ahead a web page, and hops again in, weedkiller in hand. This one minute sequence is emblematic of The Plucky Squire’s fourth-wall breaking humour, sport design, and shifting aesthetic.
It is these components that take this anticipated indie from a clichéd RPG to a intelligent puzzler that may have you ever smiling to your self because it turns basic mechanics on their head (generally actually) to inform its story of bravery and heroism. There are occasions when the illustrative artwork course and genre-hopping mechanics aren’t sufficient to gloss over drained fetch quests and flat characters, however for probably the most half, The Plucky Squire is a joyous exploration of creative aptitude and mechanical brilliance.
The Plucky Squire will get so much proper, and it begins with the vibes. From the attractive illustrations penned by Pokemon alum James Turner, to the good rating, to the humorous dialogue, it is a sport that envelops you in its fantasy world rapidly, capturing your creativeness with good character designs and a story as outdated as time.
The soundtrack is phenomenal, and I hope it doesn’t go unnoticed amid all the pieces else that The Plucky Squire does proper.
Setting off on a noble quest, trusty sword in hand, Jot’s journey to avoid wasting the world begins as some other coming of age RPG. Certain, it’s received the extra pizazz of a flowery web page flip every time Jot strikes to a brand new display, nevertheless it’s an in any other case normal affair. Nevertheless, it’s solely when the evil wizard Humgrump will get his palms on the very storybook that Jot inhabits that issues begin to go mistaken, and the sport involves life.
Humgrump is sick of dropping to Jot in each Plucky Squire novel, so he units himself on rewriting the story so he can emerge victorious for as soon as. When you thought that was meta, a bookworm tells Jot that, if this dastardly plan involves fruition, the kid who owns this ebook, Sam, will put it away on a shelf in disgust and can by no means change into a kids’s author when he grows up, and subsequently won’t ever encourage a brand new era of youngsters. There’s so much on the road, and Jot takes it properly.
If the meta narrative is harking back to Toy Story (Jot’s buddy Violet takes the function of Buzz Lightyear, the one one to freak out in regards to the reality she’s a personality in a ebook fairly than an actual individual dwelling her personal life), the gameplay brings again recollections of A Hyperlink Between Worlds. As Jot departs his personal story to stroll the actual world of Sam’s bed room in wonderful 3D, The Plucky Squire contextualises its metanarrative with matching mechanics. Gameplay is totally completely different in 2D and 3D, objects might be introduced between the 2 worlds, and that is the place the sport’s cleverest concepts come out to play.
The characters themselves are fairly two dimensional. Pun very a lot supposed.
The actual world principally consists of 3D platforming and lightweight fight, however you often nip into 2D journals or notepads to go by way of completely different areas. Within the 2D world, puzzles are extra assorted. Each contain grabbing keys to unlock doorways and different normal RPG conventions, however my favorite is the wordplay. Often you’ll stumble throughout impassable obstacles within the 2D world, together with a sentence writ throughout the ground describing what’s happening – you are in a storybook, in any case.
Nevertheless, generally you possibly can edit these sentences, switching phrases with these from different narrated traces on the identical web page or others. The world reacts accordingly, turning tiny frogs into big frogs and glowing mushrooms into cheese mushrooms. Not each phrase works in each sentence – some are rejected outright – however there are plentiful humorous alternatives to make gates bigger than supposed and unlock Achievements by purposefully messing up.
Even once you’re doing it proper, although, the phrase puzzles are extremely intelligent. And, like lots of the sport’s mechanics, they work finest when mixed with the 3D world. One notably sensible instance is once you flip a tall pillar right into a crumbling pillar, earlier than hopping out of the storybook to tilt the web page and let gravity tip the now fragile stone onto an enemy. Whereas the phrase puzzles are solely used sporadically and I’d appreciated to have seen extra of them, these are the moments that make you smile. It’s a mix of mechanics I’ve by no means seen earlier than in a sport – a phrase puzzle turned physics puzzle – and in these moments The Plucky Squire feels really good and wholly unique.
That’s not all the time the case, although. As a lot as I like assembly all of the cartoon artists in Artria, rounding up misplaced pigs is hardly riveting in 2024. Fight is simplistic too, and I discovered myself resorting to throwing Jot’s sword fairly than utilizing any of his different assaults. Nothing in The Plucky Squire is difficult, not puzzles nor fights, however that’s not the purpose. The Plucky Squire provides mechanical curiosity over technical problem, and I like the truth that boss fights may be a shmup degree or a rhythm sport, however I’d nonetheless like to interact my mind every so often.
It’s additionally suffering from technical points. The body price drops alarmingly when preventing a number of enemies, the sport freezes randomly, and a few ranges straight up don’t work on Steam Deck. The Plucky Squire by no means claims to be Deck Verified, nevertheless it’s a sport good for Valve’s moveable and it’s unlucky that the builders couldn’t make it work in time for launch.
Whereas it might serve to supply extra of a problem and a few quests really feel a bit of rote, the instances when The Plucky Squire twists style conference and blends 2D and 3D puzzles are a sparkle of creativeness within the style. Each degree feels contemporary, the puzzles are satisfying, and it’s all wrapped up in that beautiful artwork model that put the sport on so many individuals’s radars.
