The Plucky Squire Review: Charm Goes a Long Way

When I first saw the trailer for The Plucky Squire I immediately wanted to play it. The idea of a game based around being in a picture book sounded like a creative premise. It gave me similar vibes to Cuphead in that it took a style and made an entire game around it.

But while Cuphead’s style was purely aesthetic in nature, The Plucky Squire looked to take that style and integrate it into the mechanics. Blending both 2D and 3D gameplay together in a very unique way.

It looked awesome, and the fact that it was being published by Devolver Digital made it a safe bet. I’ve become a big fan of these guys these past few years due to them publishing some very strange, very creative or just straight up fun indie games like Cult of the Lamb, Broforce, Inscryption, The Messenger and many others.

When I pick up a title from them, I usually wind up enjoying it or at least finding something weird to appreciate about it. I even love the press conferences they hold every year just for how gloriously insane they are. Seriously, go back and watch their E3/Summer Game Fest shows because they some of the most entertaining ads you will ever see.

As for the developer, it’s a new studio called All Possible Futures. A studio founded by James Turner and Jonathan Biddle. With Biddle having previously worked on the game Sword of Ditto, and Turner having worked with Game Freak directing the underrated 3DS gem Harmoknight and providing artwork for a small monster catching series no one has heard about.

The Plucky Squire itself is actually based on characters created by Turner for a webcomic that he was developing but never released. At least I think it wasn’t since I couldn’t find the thing online.

The game seems like it was a true labour of love; a game made by people simply because they wanted to make it. Which is refreshing in an industry buckling under the weight of big AAA companies trying to hop on the live service bandwagon and failing spectacularly at it, yes Sony I’m looking at you when I say that.

Even when compared to other indie games that seem to following the retro gaming trend a bit too much, The Plucky Squire stood out as something unique. At least it’s not another deck building rogue like.

But does that uniqueness translate to an actual good game. Thankfully, yes, but only if you go in with the right expectations. The Plucky Squire is a game largely carried by its charm more than anything else, and it has plenty of charm to spare. All starting with the premise.

The entire game takes place within the pages of a storybook. Said storybook follows the adventures of Jot, the titular Plucky Squire and his battles against the evil wizard Humgrump. Which is just the perfect name for a villain from a children’s book isn’t it.

The story seems to be progressing smoothly; Jot is on an adventure with his friends, a paint witch named Violet and a Heavy Metal Mountain Troll named Thrash, to stop Humgrump’s scheme. But upon confronting the maniacal mage, Humgrump reveals that he’s discovered they’re just characters in a children’s book by… finding the book.

Yeah, the book itself is an actual thing inside the book, isn’t that weird. How does that even work? This is like when the Double Dragon arcade game appeared in Double Dragon the movie, it doesn’t make sense.

Regardless, the book is real within Jot’s worlds and not only has Humgrump found it, but he’s also found out that he loses in it every single time. Tired of this he’s developed a new form of magic that lets him control the book so he can change the ending to one where he wins and becomes the new main character. With his first act being to kick Jot out of the story and into the real world.

Thanks to a literal bookworm called Page, Jot finds out that his book is owned by a young boy named Sam who is a huge fan of The Plucky Squire book series. So much so that he’ll one day be inspired to create his own book series, but if Humgrump gets his way the book will become terrible, lose all its inspirational value and be put on the shelf. Effectively ending the world in the book.

After returning to the book Jot’s new mission is to stop Humgrump and put the story back the way it was. Using his new ability to leave the story to change things on both the inside and the outside.

It’s all very meta, to the point that Humgrump’s magic is literally called Metamagic. I’m not the biggest fan of meta humour or commentary, but I didn’t mind the meta nature of the story here.

 I think the reason for this is twofold. One, whatever commentary it has is done in a subtle way.  One of my big issues with meta commentary is how in your face it all is; often just coming across as a pretentious and snarky way to poke fun at tropes.

Plucky Squire isn’t like that at all. There’s a message here about the nature of stories and how they can not only inspire us but also how bad stories ultimately get forgotten and left behind, but it knows to keep the story focused on the characters and the adventures.

It keeps the commentary in the background. Trusting the audience to pick up on it so it doesn’t have to bludgeon you over the head with it. it’s not the most subtle commentary I’ve seen, but it’s a lot more subtle than most.

The second reason it works is it never gets bogged down in existentialism. Normally in stories like this where the characters find out they aren’t real there’s usually a big theme on the nature on reality and how you’re only as real as you think you are.

That’s in this game too, but it’s kept to a very brief exchange. It doesn’t dwell on the idea which was a good call. The whole idea of The Plucky Squire is it’s meant to feel like you’re playing through a children’s book, and deep philosophical conversations on the nature of existence aren’t that common in those. At least not in any of the ones I read as a kid.

No, it focuses on it being a light-hearted fun adventure and it does that very well. The characters are simple, but they have distinct personalities. Even Jot the silent protagonist has a very happy go lucky attitude.

They all have their own character arcs. Violet and Thrash both start out as the typical useless sidekicks you see in kids’ media, but as the game goes on they do start coming into their own and even start helping out in the gameplay. I wound up really liking them by the end.

The world is also very cute and creative. There’s an entire kingdom of art where the residents are all based on some kind of famous painting or artist, a swamp of poetic snails and an entire clan of Mountain Trolls dedicated to Heavy Metal which is just all kinds of awesome.

The writing is very clever and humorous. Nothing is laugh out loud funny, but it did get a chuckle out of me, and it is very likable. It does take a bit for it to get going. I didn’t like the writing at first because a lot of the jokes were kind of lame, but it did get better. I’d say around chapter 4, which isn’t that far in, is where things start to pick up.

I also like how they handled the whole idea of the world not being real. One of my pet peeves in stories like this is that once you reveal that the characters and world aren’t real then the story loses a lot of its impact because, well, none of it is real.

It’s hard to care about a narrative when all the stakes are removed by making everything fake. It’s one of the reasons the twist in Star Ocean Til the End of Time is so infamous. It’s hard for me to care about the fate of the world when the world is just a bunch of ones and zeroes.

But in Plucky Squire they find a good way around it. While saving the world of the book is a goal, the main reason for saving it is Sam. The kid looks up to The Plucky Squire and it inspires him to be a better person. You aren’t just saving the book for the characters, but for the kids who read the book and are inspired by it.

That’s much easier to get behind, relatable even. We’ve all been through franchises we like that eventually turn to crap and we lose all interest in them. Hell, some people have made entire careers bitching about this kind of thing. Even if it inspires us, when it gets bad it does kill a lot of the impact it leaves on us.

Sam doesn’t physically appear in the game, but there are a lot of details in the game world that tell you a lot about who he is. We know he’s very creative because he has a lot of arts and crafts items on his desk, and we see a lot of arts and craft structures made by him that you get to explore in the game. It’s also easy to see what a big fan he is of The Plucky Squire book due to the amount of merchandise you can find in the game.

I love that detail in particular because it shows that The Plucky Squire isn’t just a random book but a massive franchise read by kids the world over. It’s a nice bit of subtle worldbuilding and a bit of a jab at how commercialised a lot of children’s books can be.

There’s a lot of little details like that. For example, Jot isn’t just an adventurer he’s also a writer who writes about his adventures. Which is shown by his sword being shaped like a pen, which I guess makes it mightier than a regular sword.

It’s not a perfect story. If you think about the particulars of what’s going on it does fall apart, but in that same breath I don’t think you’re meant to think about it that much. this is just one of those stories where you just have to roll with what happens and enjoy the ride.

I also give them credit for nailing the feel of a children’s book. The writing is pitch perfect and captures the same spirit you see in children’s literature. I especially like Humgrump because, despite being a big threat, he’s basically a big loser with a massive ego. Even the backstory they gave him just ends up making him more pathetic which only makes it funnier.

It’s a fun story, but one clearly aimed at a younger audience. Which makes sense considering it’s centred around a children’s book. It’s very light-hearted and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Even the darker moments have a humorous tone to them.

But I think it works on multiple levels. Kids will enjoy the quirky characters and humour, and adults will enjoy the clever meta commentary. Like any good kids’ media, it can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

But that just accounts for the story. How about the gameplay? The best way I can describe it is a simplified Legend of Zelda. It has that kind of top-down action-adventure gameplay, only with a lot more linearity and nowhere near as deep.

This isn’t a game with a big emphasis on exploration. There are hidden collectables to find, but they’re purely for bonuses. They provide no actual gameplay benefits; they’re entirely optional.

The game is more focused on pushing you forward to the next set-piece/story moment. Which isn’t a bad approach to take given the entire conceit of the game. The game is trying to make you feel like you’re playing through a storybook, and books are about as linear as media can get.

The combat and puzzle solving are very similar to what you would find in Zelda. The combat more so as you have some of the same moves you had in Zelda. You start with a basic sword combo, but you unlock new moves like a sword throw and a spin attack through lightbulbs you collect that can purchase upgrades.

There’s a fair variety to the enemies though none of them pose a particular challenge. It can become a little hectic with multiple enemies on screen, but you have plenty of room to manoeuvre and the spin attack makes dealing with groups a non-issue.

The difficulty in general is not very high. This a breezy playthrough that doesn’t provide much of a challenge. Even the puzzles aren’t too difficult to solve; and even if you somehow get stuck there’s a recurring NPC that provides hints to the solution.

That said, while the puzzles are easy, they are consistently clever. Often showing a lot of creativity and utilising the games premise the most. Many of them will require you to exit the book and interact with it from the outside in various ways.

You can turn the pages and return to a previous section to get an item you need, tilt the book pages to move what’s on it, or use different stamps to affect things on the page. There’s a lot of ideas here that take full advantage of the storybook premise.

My favourite puzzles are the word puzzles. Because of course a game about books would have word puzzles, it would feel weird if it didn’t have them. it would be like having a game about cooking and not having recipes in it.

These involve you taking certain words from sentences and changing them around to affect the game world. Like, for example, changing the word water into ice to freeze a lake to cross over it, or changing big into small to shrink an obstacle, or even changing what an object is made of.

Again, really taking advantage of that storybook premise in a fun and creative way. These puzzles were easily the most fun to solve and you can even mess around with them to change things that don’t benefit you but are still fun to see play out.

So while the puzzles are pretty easy, they’re creative enough that they never get boring. Same with the combat, there’s enough variety in the enemies and the ratio to puzzles and combat segments is just right. You don’t spend too much time in either for them to become tedious.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t mind an easy game so long as it isn’t boring. If you keep the game interesting with clever ideas and interesting set-pieces I don’t mind the lack of challenge. And I think Plucky Squire succeeds at this for the most part.

I say for the most part because there are some gameplay sections that are worse than others. While the core gameplay is solid enough, but there are times when the game tries to shake things up that aren’t nearly as fun. And I’m not talking about bosses or anything like that since it doesn’t have any.

Yeah, there aren’t any real bosses. Instead, you get to play these little minigames, and they’re a bit of a mixed bag. Some of them are fun and are throwbacks to a classic retro game, like the first one is a boxing match against a honey badger styled after Punch Out, which is somehow less weird than the actual Punch Out.

But even when a minigame is good they feel a bit too simple for their own good. They’re fun for the brief period you play them, but they don’t have enough to them that make me want to replay them. Which is bad because you end up playing a lot of these at least twice throughout the game.

They aren’t even that much harder the second time, so the re-tread just ends up feeling like filler. It also doesn’t help that some of these go on a bit too long for their own good. Some of these really drag on for how basic they are, and when you have to replay them, it only makes them more tedious.

They also don’t control or play the best either. Not that the controls are unresponsive, just that they’re a little weird. Take that Punch Out minigame for example. In the real Punch Out you have two kinds of punches, body blows which you just press the button to do and face punches that require you to hold up.

That makes a lot of sense and is simple to understand. But in The Plucky Squire it’s reversed, you punch up by default and hold up to do a body blow. I never got used to this; not only because it’s different to Punch Out but because it makes no sense. Why would I hold up to punch lower? It’s just confusing.

A lot of other minigames are like this too. There’s a Puzzle Bobble minigame where instead of rotating you’re shot you just move the character left and right. It makes it so you can’t do any trick shots, which is what makes Puzzle Bobble so enjoyable to begin with.

They just aren’t that much fun. That said, there is one minigame I did really like. At one point you enter into a Magic the Gathering style playing card and have to converse with the character in the card. With it all playing out like a turn-based RPG.

That one was great. The writing was funny, and it was a cute little concept that was done pretty well. It was a nice send up of RPG’s that made sense given the context, didn’t go on too long and only appeared once and then let you get back to your regularly schedule action adventure. That part was awesome, but everything else was just kind of mediocre.

It’s good to have variety I guess, but I’d rather the designers have spent more time crafting more intricate puzzles or actual boss fights instead of these. You do have an option of skipping these if you want though, so I suppose they’re harmless enough.

Luckily, the minigames aren’t the only form of variety. While the game primarily takes place within or around the book, there are times when you’ll have to leave the book entirely and explore the wider 3D world, or just more of the desk in this case.

This is where the game comes alive, pun slightly intended. The level design becomes a lot more interesting with an increased emphasis on transitioning from 2D to 3D.

It can be a little trippy considering you’ll use this to bypass obstacles or travel up structures. To continue with the Zelda comparison, it’s sort of like the paint mechanic in A Link Between World where you could turn into a drawing to reach area’s you normally couldn’t reach.

You’ll be travelling up 3D objects like tubes or even dollhouses but through 2D drawings found on notes plastered in the levels. There’s a lot of clever camerawork in these sections to give the feeling of moving along a 3D object but still retaining the 2D gameplay. It’s a really cool effect.

These sections also come with some unique mechanics you don’t see anywhere else. Like one part gives you a jet pack and has an increased amount of verticality and platforming in the level design. Another has you lose your sword and having to sneak by enemies undetected.

The latter is a little annoying, I’m not a fan of shoehorned stealth sections, but the former was a lot of fun. These sections add variety to the game but, unlike the minigames, do so without radically changing the gameplay.

Instead, they simply add a new element to the main gameplay. adding a new mix to proceedings that help keep things fresh. Which is always the best way to add variety.

While jumping between the real world and the book world is the main crux of the game, you’ll also enter different things other than the book. I already mentioned the playing card earlier, but there’s also space lamps, a dinosaur volcano playset, simple crayon drawings and more. Each of which comes with its own art style.

Which I suppose is a good a time as any to talk about the visuals. They’re great. Straight up, this game looks fantastic. Fitting for a studio formed by an artist. The art style is spot on, being very cute in the way you’d imagine a children’s story to be.

It captures the look and feel of a picture book perfectly, but there’s also a bit of influence from graphic novels and comic strips too. I got a lot of Hilda vibes from the art, it has that same kind of rounded look to the characters that series had.

They all have a lot of personality and a lot of that can be told just through the character designs. I already talked about Jot’s sword being shaped like a pen; that’s a good example since you know that just by looking at him that he’s an adventurer and a writer.

Even minor characters have a lot of character simply from how they’re drawn. The animations and posing can tell you everything about them without needing to utter a single word.

I love how colourful everything is too. It’s got a very vivid colour palette but also knows when to dial it back when it wants to get a little moody. There’s also a harshness to its use of black that contrasts but also compliments the bright colour scheme very well.

The cutscenes are fantastic too. The page layouts in them really hammers home the story book feel. Every page feels like it was ripped directly from a children’s book. One little detail I love is you can actually see the slit in the middle of the book where the pages meet.

You’d think that it would be a little distracting but it’s really not. It’s just a small detail they added just to hammer home the feeling of being in a storybook brought to life.

It’s also not afraid to embrace its cartoony side a bit. Besides the excellent animation, there’s scenes where the characters get beefed up and look like Rambo if he was a Calvin and Hobbes character. It’s pretty funny when it happens but thankfully it doesn’t happen too often that it ruins the effect.

There’s just a lot of charm to the visuals. And to go back to what I was saying earlier, it’s able to tackle different art styles very well. To Saturday morning cartoon to high fantasy art, it juggles plenty of disparate styles but somehow nails all of them perfectly. That playing card you enter looks like it was directly taken from Magic, it’s almost uncanny how spot on it is.

Sometimes they’ll even do Jot in that style, but most times they don’t. This does lead to art style clashes. Seeing the cutesy Jot side by side with detailed high fantasy art is a little surreal, but I think it works in the games favour. The whole idea is Jot is leaving his world and entering another one, it makes sense he would look different.

There are sometimes shifts in the book world too. At some point in the story Humgrump brings in machines from another book that have a more realistic style. It makes them look cold and weird compared to the colourful friendly world of the book which is exactly how it should feel. They’re smart in how they use art clashes.

The 2D art here is superb. The way it’s able to capture the style of a children’s book, while also tackling other art styles and contrasting the styles on top of that shows a great skill in 2D artwork.

The 3D is a different story. Not that the 3D is bad because aesthetically it does look nice. There’s a lot of details in the background, it has a nice lighting engine and it translates the 2D art into 3D models very well. Capturing the same style but in a different dimension, which isn’t as easy thing to pull off.

Even the best 2D to 3D transitions usually have to change the art style to make them a better fit in the third dimension. Just look at the art work for Zelda games from Link to the Past and compare it to Ocarina of Time. the former was a lot more cartoony compared to the latter's more realistic/anime aesthetic.

But Plucky Squire doesn’t haven’t that problem. The characters retain the same cutesy look in 3D that they had in 2D. I guess that’s what years of technological progress does.

So I don’t have an issue with how it look. No, my issue is in how it runs. There was a stuttering in the 3D sections that never went away, and while I got used to it after a while it still gave me a slight headache while playing it.

Now I should that I played this on my Series S. I don’t know how this runs on the more powerful Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles, but on Series S the 3D sections felt a bit rough.

I think this is an issue with the weaker consoles, because it seems to run much better on the more powerful systems from what I’ve seen. I should also mention the Switch version has a lot of performance issues from what I have heard, so I wouldn’t recommend that one unless it gets patched.

The frame rate did at least run at a stable 30fps, which may have been the cause of the stuttering. It may not have been stuttering at all, it could have just been that switching from a 60fps 2D game to half that in 3D caused some sort of whiplash effect.

I’m not entirely sure, but whatever is the cause there is a stutter and it sadly not the only performance issue. There were a number of bugs and glitches that I ran into during my playthrough.

Most were just minor graphical hiccups, but some forced me to reset the game because it locked out actions I needed to progress. This happened a few times and thankfully I didn’t lose too much progress, thank you auto save, but that is still a major issue.

The game was delayed a few times, and it shows. Remember folks, a game delay isn’t always because they want to polish it; nine times out of ten a delay is because something went wrong in development. I’m sure there’s a patch in the works to get these issues fixed, it might even be out by the time you’re reading this, but it could have used a bit more polish.

So yeah, the performance isn’t the best, at least in the 3D sections. In 2D it runs flawlessly, which only makes the 3D sections look worse. And even then, some of the glitches happened in 2D as well, so even that isn’t totally without flaw.

When it comes to the visuals I think artistically this is a winner. It nails its art style in both dimensions, said art style is very cute, and they put a lot of personality into both the characters and world. It’s just the technical side of things that really let the graphics down.

As for how it sounds, it’s ok. Just ok. There’s no voice acting outside of a few grunts from the characters and the narrator, but both suit the game fine. I like how the narrator sounds like an old man reading the story to his grandkid. It fits the vibe the game is going for.

Musically it’s nothing particularly special. It fits the game well enough but nothing about it is that memorable or catchy. Not a bad soundtrack but not one I’m going to be listening to anytime soon.

That about covers everything about the game, so what do I think of The Plucky Squire overall? Well, if I’m judging purely from a gameplay perspective then I’d say the game is fine. A good experience but nothing especially great.

It plays well enough with some clever puzzle design, but it isn’t particularly challenging, the gameplay is a very simplified version of a bunch of other games, besides the obvious Zelda comparison half the minigames are just watered down versions of classic arcade titles, it has clear performance problems that needed ironing out, and it isn’t particularly long.

It’s just about 8 hours long and just under 10 hours if you go for all the collectables. Now, I don’t mind a short game. I like my games under 10 hours, but The Plucky Squire isn’t just short it’s also low on replay value. Once you’ve played it once you’ve pretty much seen everything.

You could go back for the collectables, but the lack of any kind of reward makes them not worth the effort. This feels like a one and done, or at least it’s a game you won’t replay for a good long while after finishing it.

This isn’t really a game that focused on replayability in the first place. It’s clearly more focused on the story and the overall experience. And as far as those games go, The Plucky Squire is great.

It really is the strength of its premise that carries the game. The idea of the game, of a storybook coming to life, is very creative and through its presentation and gameplay they get the most out of it that they can.

The story is light-hearted fun with good humour and memorable characters, the art-style is spot on, and it just has a very likable charm to it all that makes it hard to dislike. And that’s the key word here, charm.

This is a game absolutely brimming with charm and personality. It harkens back to simple memories of childhood that make it oddly nostalgic. It’s a love letter to the stories we used to read as kids and the impact those stories left on their readers.

For all the games faults it’s clearly made with love. A love for those old stories, a love for stories in general really, and a love of classic videogames. So, despite me not wanting to replay it anytime soon, I’m still glad I played this one. It’s an experience with a lot to love because it had a lot of love put into it.

In the end I would still recommend this game despite its faults. At £25 that’s not a bad price for what you get, and while the gameplay isn’t it’s strongest asset it still has plenty of fun and memorable moments that do make it a fun experience to play.

It may not be the most challenging or deepest of games, but the charming story and premise make it something that I think a lot of people will find some enjoyment out of. It’s a great game for young gamers and gamers young at heart.

There’s a lot of great and interesting indie games out there. Far too many to keep track of honestly, but games like Plucky Squire show the creativity that can come out of this space. You know when they’re not just making deck building rogue likes, oh who am I kidding I love those too.