It’s often said that art is a reflection of society, capturing a moment in time. After a tough few years, it’s no surprise we’re seeing a wave of joyful games designed to inspire child-like wonder. The Plucky Squire continues that trend, shortly after Astro Bot did much the same, and what a wonderful time it is.
Conjuring imagery of picture books made for kids, The Plucky Squire beautifully encapsulates what it means to be creative. Like a great book, it’s clever, imaginative, and absolutely delightful. It also lovingly pays homage to many video games and artistic endeavours before it and is sure to inspire a future generation of creatives.
It helps that the art of James Turner features prominently throughout the game. An Australian who has also designed multiple Pokemon, he’s one of my favourite artists. His style favours simple shapes and clean lines, letting the characters’ expressiveness take centre stage, which suits The Plucky Squire immaculately.
Sometimes, The Plucky Squire‘s world-hopping trick of bounding between 2D and 3D sections creates friction, slowing the pace down. Fortunately, this is easy to overlook off the back of its gorgeous world and charming characters.
Jot this down
Given its many clear inspirations, The Plucky Squire feels like a combination of other games mixed together. Most of the time, it feels like the classic Legend of Zelda entries, exploring 2D overworlds, slashing down cartoonish enemies and solving puzzles.
It’s here that you’re introduced to Jot, the hero of a series of popular children’s books. After going on a quest to help the speed dealer sunnies-wearing wizard Moonbeard, he quickly finds out that he’s a character living in a book. A villainous scheme to rewrite history throws Jot out of the book and into the real world, a 3D-rendered desk littered with art supplies. My partner remarked that the 3D world looked like something straight out of an I Spy book, an apt description of its kaleidoscopic diorama presentation.
A lot of The Plucky Squire sees you shift between these 2D and 3D spaces to navigate past obstacles. In action, it looks spectacular as Jot leaps from the vibrantly illustrated storybook into the colourful world outside. Whenever you encounter an immovable object, the solution often involves flipping through book pages or retrieving an object from the desk outside.
There’s a lot of fun wordplay to engage with too. You can re-arrange some of the book’s text to change the environment, like transforming a cumbersome bug from big to small or changing a metal block into cheese to distract a menacing rat. Some of these text puzzles don’t directly impact the gameplay and simply add to the fun. Turning dangerous floor spikes into cheese didn’t solve anything but it made me laugh nonetheless.
It’s these moments when The Plucky Squire shines the most. Its cute story is great, but the way it constantly rewards playful inquisitiveness is the highlight. When the game gets out of the way and lets you frolic in its pages? That’s the good stuff right there.
The chatty squire
Freedom is not a strength of The Plucky Squire. All of the characters like to chat, which is not an inherently bad thing. They’re all brimming with personality and the quip-laden dialogue sparkles. The timing of these chats is what causes the most frustration.
Shortly after receiving a fun new power-up, like a jetpack or the ability to manipulate book pages in the real world, you have to sit through conversations before getting back to the action. Subsequently, it feels like you only get to play with a new toy briefly before repeating the same process.
Even the regular hopping in and out of the storybook wears a little thin after a while. As I mentioned before, it looks amazing, but it’s time-consuming. Many puzzles require quickly swapping between 2D and 3D, and you can only do this from specific locations. This makes sense from a puzzle design perspective, although it lends itself to repetition and regular backtracking.
Jot also isn’t the most nimble hero going around. He’s quite capable and multi-talented, to be sure, but his movement is slightly stiffer and slower than Jot’s inspirations. None of the combat encounters are too involved, but it’s still easy to misjudge sword slashes when surrounded by foes.
The Plucky Squire cleverly sidesteps some of these complaints through sheer variety. In addition to its novel approach to exploration and platforming, one-time mini-games shake things up. Referencing classic games and pop culture, one moment sees you boxing a badger, while another is a turn-based battle set inside a trading card reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering.
When in the middle of these moments, and experimenting with the storybook’s whimsical setting, The Plucky Squire‘s friction eases. It sometimes gets in its own way, but the delightful adventure is worth enduring a few bumps along the way.
The post The Plucky Squire review: An imaginative modern storybook appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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