The Plucky Squire Review

When you commit to a gimmick, you better hope it’s a strong one. So many games have obviously come from a whiteboard idea that sounded awesome in an initial brainstorming sesh, only to then run out of juice once sufficient pressure was applied. Things like NeverDead wanting to make dismemberment fun, or Far Cry 2 giving you malaria every 10 minutes – stuff that just didn’t make it through the wash cycle. But when you hit that creative bullseye, things really start cooking – and The Plucky Squire is serving up a feast.

Taking place in a storybook titled – funnily enough – “The Plucky Squire”, you embody Jot, a writer SLASH adventurer who defends the wondrous world of Mojo from a doofus evil mage named Humgrump. Dispatching this nerd each time he tries to cause trouble is no problem for Jot, full of heroic pluck and purpose, who then details his adventures as stories for others to read. With close childhood friends rock troll Thrash and art mage Violet at his side, life is good – almost mundane – for the Mojam crew.

How’s the ear, Vincent?

However it all takes a rather desperate turn when a routine adventure sees a new type of magic deployed by the dark wizard – for you see, Humgrump is nothing if not resourceful. Utilising something called Meta Magic, Ol’ Grumpy has figured out that the tale of The Plucky Squire takes place in a story book – and upon sneaking a glimpse at the ending, he is not happy with how the story turns out. Oddly enough, it seems that Jot always comes out on top during their scuffles, meaning he is eternally destined to be a loser. So, demonstrating some pretty killer villain logic, Humgrump realises that the best way for him to finally be victorious is to simply kick Jot out of the book.

Now this isn’t metaphorical – he isn’t ‘removing Jot from the equation’ by way of murderous intent or locking him in a deep hole, no – Humgrump actually shoves the plucky squire right out of the page, and into the real world before slamming the book shut with a resounding thud. It is here that Jot realises that there is more to his existence than the pages he lived in before, and sets out to explore and find a way back into the story. This introduces the core mechanic of the game – jumping in and out of both the original book, and other nearby pieces of creative storytelling.

Initially this sets the table for some cool traversal, as Jot starts to navigate the desk that his book rests on. Turns out he is in the bedroom of a very creative kid, who loves to draw and paint when he isn’t reading the amazing tales of The Plucky Squire. Thanks to Humgrumps creativity, Jot can now leap through portals that appear in other sketches and artworks – allowing him to noodle his way across the desk in all kinds of wild and weird ways. This will then allow him to discover artefacts that have been hidden across the child’s desk by Jot’s mentor Moonbeard – who just so happened to know about the whole “living in a book” thing and anticipated that Humgrump would figure it out sooner or later. These artefacts give Jot a leg up in sorting out this Humgrump issue, with the first macguffin allowing him the ability to physically turn the pages of the story, giving Jot an unprecedented level of access to the narrative so far. Before returning to his pages, a friendly bookworm informs Jot that his story is a great inspiration for the boy that reads it – and if Humgrump ruins the story, that inspiration will be lost …and the book will eventually be ‘put away’ to never be read again. Which, for people who live in a book – is basically a death sentence.

The desk is an ever-changing world

So now Jot is a dimensional hopping badass that can leap between the 2D plane and the real world, finding himself uniquely equipped to bypass any barriers that might stop him from reaching Dumbgrump. The simple act of being able to flick back through previous pages is a great one, because it means that Jot can basically time travel to a previous point of the current chapter for resources. One puzzle type involves Jot rewriting the book’s narrative by openly swapping words around to better suit his needs. This is done in a wicked ad-lib style, where you can slap a word out of a sentence and retrieve a more beneficial one from your immediate surroundings, or even from a previous page. The bridge was broken? SLAP. Now The bridge was ______ . Remember, that previous page had the word ‘repaired’ on it, so let’s quickly leap out of the book and grab it. Easy, now The bridge was repaired. The page magically updates itself, and Jot and co have a shiny new bridge to walk across and continue. I haven’t had this much fun with words since Scribblenauts.

This puzzle element then expands with each new toy that Jot uncovers from the deskspace, with new and creative ways of manipulating the book. Stamps that can stop an illustrated page element in its tracks, tilt gauntlets that let you angle a page to let gravity do the work – each gets carefully allotted to you at a key time to make sure your path forward remains challenging and oh-so rewarding. Even in the final moments of the game, I was introduced to the simple pleasure of slamming the book shut and reopening it again to find that things from one page had been unceremoniously dumped on the other – I was never left wanting for cool new ways to futz around with a kids story. Even the act of leaving and re-entering the book has innovation applied to it beyond simply being a cat-flap between the story and the real world, with some unique portals actually firing you at velocity out of the book like a cannon – and if your aim is true you can slam down into a partnering portal to re-enter. It’s a little bit Donkey Kong Country, a little bit circus performer – but a whole lot of awesome.

Seeing the pages turn never gets old

Between the more inspired gameplay mechanics, there is a fairly standard navigation and combat element – hoofing your squire-self across pages and desktops while whapping things with your sword. It’s as boilerplate as it comes, offering a smidge of flair as your sword can be tossed and recalled like Thor’s hammer Mjölnir – but hardly delivering anything more than that. It is not a detractor of the experience however, serving more as a familiar palette cleanser between the more fantastical elements at play. Throw a few shop-bought upgrades at Jots sword (which in an inspired move, is shaped like the nib of a fountain pen) and you’ll be breezing through baddies with little issue. 

You’ll also rarely be alone during your page-bound treks – with a fun cast of childhood friends and longstanding mentors offering their assistance and support. Your childhood mates lend their voice to alleviate the lack of dialogue from Jot, and have their own development throughout the plucky parable – eventually promoting themselves from sideline cheer squad to proper arse kickers when the story ramps up. Their own setpieces provide context to their growth, with cool corners of Mojo-world showcasing the expectations of their background – and perhaps explaining why they were happy to let Jot take the lead for so long. This explosion in confidence and self-worth even blossoms into your mates stepping in to deal with larger threats when they pop up, providing some of the coolest moments in the game.

Swapping ‘water’ for ‘ice’ made for a cool change

These are often the inventive boss encounters within the game, with ‘encounter’ being the best term to describe them. Jot and his mates don’t really get down to business with extreme biffo (apart from one exception) – instead each major altercation shifts the game formula briefly to give you a unique set of mechanics to shake things up. From your first encounter with a Honey Badger being a Punch-Out!! clone, complete with Jot sprouting killer biceps, to Violet having a dramatic magic duel in the vein of Puzzle Bobble, the game keeps you guessing. A nice touch is that the game does cordon these off as an optional experience, if you perhaps have a vitriolic hate for doing a random rhythm battler and just want to get back to Squire’ing – simply open the menu and ‘Skip Minigame’. I personally thought they were all extremely cool, particularly a sequence that harkened back to Galaga to rescue some science nerds.

During my time in the world of Mojo, I did encounter the odd weird glitch. A conversation would start with the other character absent, a particularly exceptional jump attack would knock an enemy into a portion of the page I could no longer reach – at one point the book actually closed during a page cutscene, like the game had chosen for the experience to end. Every single one of these would either have no impact on gameplay, or would not reappear after a quick and convenient checkpoint restart, so it is hardly a big concern; but it may well be a case of luck on my end. Nothing that can’t be papered over in a patch or two.

A laser rifle improves any game exponentially

At the end of your saga, you will have witnessed a great deal of terrible things having happened to your beloved book – but Jot is nothing if not plucky, and your final showdown will be a brilliant final exam of everything you have learned so far. The tale wraps up neatly with an emotional cannon shot to the gut that left this embittered Dad just a little teary, if for no other reason than simply that books are such a special part of a kid’s life. As much as I enjoyed The Plucky Squire, the joy and wonder experienced by my observing six year old daughter is something I won’t soon forget – while the careful consideration for art and expression were the facets that spoke most to me. Fun nods to real world artists, unlockable concept art that tells the tale of Plucky’s creation – the passion put into this project is like a warm, enveloping blanket that is beyond comforting.

Much like laser rifles, dinosaurs similarly make a good game even better

Final Thoughts

From the first moment I saw The Plucky Squire, I knew it was something special. Every trailer, every preview – right up to actually playing the game, it has delivered on every frolicsome promise that All Possible Futures showcased to us. The technology on display in bringing the book to life is so appreciable that you can’t help but gush about it to anyone within arms reach – it’s just slathered in that special something that elevates a game from being ‘just another notch’ on your interactive media bedpost, and instead reserves a spot in the hallowed halls of games you will love talking about and referencing for years to come.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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