The Plucky Squire Review

A child's imagination is a powerful thing, and there have been a few games, movies and shows over the years that have tried to capture that. But what if that young person was a little bit older, and rather than keeping their creativity inside, they were able to translate it to the page. That is the foundation of The Plucky Squire, a platforming action-adventure where players assume the role of a hero in an adventure book drawn by a young person, who discovers that his fantasy world is not the limit.

The Plucky Squire is the title of the main character Jot, and also of the book on which pages the game takes place. Jot lives in a magical kingdom of Mojo where he is well-liked, and has all sorts of brave adventures. His main nemesis is a wizard named Humgrump, who threatens to take over the kingdom, but is handily defeated by Jot each time. Jot then writes about his stories, as he is a scribe. One day, however, things don't go according to plan – the wizard has somehow figured out that their kingdom exists on the pages of a storybook, and with a special spell he kicks Jot out of it. After finding his way back, the young hero enlists the help of his childhood friends Thrash and Violet, and a quirky DJ-ing wizard Moonbeard, and sets off across the land and the rest of the storybook in order to chase down Humgrump and stop his plans.

The narrative is a decent one, but the title is clearly aimed at younger audiences, so do not expect deep dialogue or interesting characters. Jot is the typical young hero, his friends are perky and resilient, and the friendly wizard provides some oddball comedy. The writing may not be impressive, but at least it doesn't go overboard and annoy with too much humor or pop culture references – it's kept fairly tame and accessible for all players. The story beats are predictable as well, though the final chapter and its twists are still engaging to experience.

Taking place on the pages of the book leads the game to being mostly a 2D adventure. As Jot, players will navigate the pages that often change perspectives and camera views. You could be traversing up and down, left or right, and from a top-down or a side view. These shifts are fairly neat and give the game a decent amount of visual variety. But the bigger change comes from opportunities to jump out of the book and into the 3D world. Here, the book lies on the desk, and Jot can perform a variety of functions – such as tilting it, flipping pages, and eventually more – to solve challenges and find a path forward back in the magic world. All of these mechanisms provide some good puzzle variety as well, and the viewpoint changes are neat to experience on a number of occasions.

Jot will be running and fighting across the many pages of the book, with each set of pages acting as a sort of level area. The movement and platforming is very straight forward and not at all challenging, though the jumping could have been a bit more responsive. He will often encounter puzzles that require you to re-arrange the words on a page by carrying certain ones around – such as swapping a "strong wall" to a "broken wall." The words you need are usually found on the same page, and require some block pushing or lever pulling to access. Sometimes, the items you need are on previous pages of the book, in which case the game provides portals for Jot to jump in and out of the page, flipping it, and returning to the world. The perspective shift is unique, but the gameplay function can be compared to the very familiar portals system that many adventure games employ. It's often just a matter of figuring out how to teleport to the place you need to be.

As the game progresses, you get special tools such as a stamp that pauses time on an object, but these utilities are most heavily used in the same chapter that they are introduced, and only occasionally needed again in the future. This keeps the puzzles simple and to the point, and for all but the young players they should offer little challenge. Experienced players may find them a tiny bit annoying eventually, as most of the solutions are just busywork, jumping in and out of portals and moving things around in a correct sequence, rather than figuring out what to do. If you do get stuck, little versions of the Moonbeard wizard are typically on hand to provide a hint. The levels and puzzles are entirely linear, so there's not really any player choice in how they solve things or when they leave or return to the pages of the book. It keeps the game accessible, but also prevents it from getting creative with the world shifts.

When jumping out into the 3D world, there's not really anything to do - unless it's an actual designed level, which comes with its own construction on the desk. You'll navigate across scattered paint brushes, pencils, toys and paperclips in a third-person perspective, and do more platforming. The lack of precision with the controls can be a bit more notable here, as on occasion you walk some rather tight planks and missing a step sends you back down to the surface of the desk to retry the whole section again. The game again offers some perspective shifts here, as you can jump in and out of the 2D world via some scattered sticky notes and unfinished drawings. The 3D levels also offer some of the bigger areas in the game, as you often have to visit different parts of the desk to collect something and bring it back to the middle area. Here again you may get some one-time use items, such as a rocket that lets you jump high and hover for a bit.

In both worlds, Jot will also have to do a bit of combat. The game offers normal and easy difficulty, though again the former will be extremely easy for most players already. You'll encounter creatures such as trolls, beetles, and forces of the evil wizard. Jot can dodge, and swing his sword, with most enemies perishing within a few hits. As the story progresses, enemies get a few more ranged and melee attacks, as does Jot by finding light bulbs that act as the game's currency and buying new attacks from a vendor. Your move set can be expanded to include an ability to throw your sword like a boomerang, and do a spin move that damages all enemies around. While you often travel with friends, they are narrative companions for the majority of the adventure and do not participate in combat or puzzles.

Just like the puzzles, the combat eventually becomes rather monotone. As long as you upgrade the power of your attacks at the vendor, enemies don't pose much of a threat. Those that do may get you down to a sliver of health, but the game seems programmed to drop health refills as soon as you get low, so that you will rarely, if ever, die. Even if you do, the game simply restarts from the last checkpoint.

The bulbs can be gathered from defeated foes as well as hacking away at the various debris such as bushes and crates around the levels. There are also a few collectibles that can be found – such as art scrolls that fill up the gallery menu. Other collectibles require a bit of thinking and additional interactions when exploring the levels, or even make you go back a few pages after you've unlocked the tool that is needed to access them. Still, there's rather limited replay value, and one go through the adventure, which takes about 7-8 hours, is probably enough.

The Plucky Squire also has a bunch of minigames that crop up across the adventure, that involve mechanics like target shooting, shoot-em-up gameplay, or even boxing. All these minigames take place in the 2D world and can be surprisingly dull. They outlast their welcome, offer no challenge and require a lot of repetition to get them completed. The game thankfully includes an option to simply skip them – which you might do not because they are tough but because of how dull they are. That is keeping with the game's accessible nature, with other options such as invincibility, disabling platforms that crumble, and a jump assist.

To match its storybook setting, the game's art style is rather good. The pages are colorful, have great contrast and shifts between light and darkness as the day and night scenes happen, and because you are looking at the book from the 3D world, you can see the pages and their slight sheen, adding nice depth and perspective to the viewpoint. The levels are decently detailed, as you will venture across swamps, a town square, a mountain area, underground facilities, and more.

In the 3D world, the art is a bit more disappointing and lackluster, looking a bit worse than the pages of the book. The animations are basic, but still work with the art. The audio design is a bit weaker, with forgettable and basic background music. There is a narrator that often delivers parts of the story as the book flips along, but you can go for long stretches of a chapter without him saying anything. The dialogue between characters appears as text boxes, without voiceover.

The game is probably best played with a controller, though mouse and keyboard are also supported. Given the majority 2D adventure and art style, this is not a very demanding title and should run fine on most modern PC setups. The framerate remains steady and we didn't experience any crashes, however on a couple of occasions the character got stuck, usually when interacting with the book in the 3D world, and this required a checkpoint reload.

The Plucky Squire is a charming and very accessible adventure, targeting a younger audience. It has a well-realized art style, and the mechanics and perspective shifts of jumping in and out of storybook pages are well implemented, even if they boil down to being a fancy portal system. The puzzles are initially interesting and there are some cool moments, especially in the late-game, but they do become a bit dull and you can see the solution quick, so it just becomes a matter of going through the motions. The 3D world offers a neat alternative, though the platforming and visuals here are a bit less polished. But it's unquestionably better than similar games like Lost Words . At $30, it's decently long and offers an enticing enough adventure for the younger players, though without much replay value.