The Plucky Squire Review
A Whimsical Journey With Heart
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Title: The Plucky Squire
Release: September 17, 2024
Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S Switch
Developer: ALL Possible Futures
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Genre: Action Adventure
ESRB: E
Reviewed on: PC
Time Played: 9 Hours
Review-
Where it starts
Jot and friends live the stories of The Plucky Squire, a children’s book series. Their adventures take them through the land saving the people and taking down the nefarious Humgrump. Your adventure starts in one such story, however, this time Humgrump has gained some terrible knowledge. Knowledge he uses to knock Jot out of the story. With Jot out of the picture, Humgrump can make himself the hero, thus ruining the story and the world inside. Jot must find his way back into his story and set things right.
The Crew
Jot, Violet, and Thrash make up the Mojam crew, each an artist in their own way. Jot writes stories, Violet draws pictures and plays with magic, and Thrash can play some mean beats with his drumsticks. While Jot is the only one who has the power to manipulate the story, he still depends on his friends for the many challenges they face.
In & Out of The Book
In the book, Jot interacts with his surroundings in a two-dimensional fashion, moving up and down across the pages. While outside, Jot takes on a three-dimensional look, along with all the other perks of a 3d world. However, there was still danger to be found outside. Bugs and Humgrump minions roam outside ready to take Jot out.
Story Manipulation
Jot’s good friend Moonbeard, a DJ slash wizard, has left a few magical tools lying around on the outside. Jot could use the tools to manipulate what was happening in the book, turn pages, stop movement, and shake things up, all from outside the book. Many things were blocking the way in the book, making these tools necessary to move forward.
Puzzling Progression
If it’s not a group of enemies blocking your way, it would be some form of puzzle. Plenty of puzzles would be found throughout the story. Some required you to swap keywords out of phrases to change how the story looks, or hit the book with a special tool. The puzzles weren’t straightforward, and there was a lot to figure out.
Combat
Combat in The Plucky Squire was simple. Swing your sword at enemies a couple of times until they die. There was a shop periodically available where you could purchase some new moves to play with. There were however some special fights, every character in the Mojam crew would have to fight a boss enemy in a manner reminiscent of older games.
Collectibles
If you were so compelled to explore a little, there were collectibles to find hidden amongst the pages of the book. There were different pieces of art, showing concepts for the game, fun little easter eggs from the developers. As well as cute glitch birds, each one giving a small definition or story about the small creatures.
Outro:
Have you played or seen the game? I would love to hear any questions or thoughts you may have about it, or this review. Please let me know in the comments below, and while you do that, let’s move onto my final thoughts and review.
The Plucky Knight was a cute and very enjoyable game. It may have been short but it has a lot of heart. The characters and environments were entertaining and just a joy to experience. There were some parts that started to feel repetitive and it wasn’t a big challenge, but the game is geared more toward a younger audience so that’s to be expected.
The chapters throughout the game changed the environments quite a bit, however, the variety of enemies didn’t change much. Sometimes it felt tedious to defeat enemies consistently to move forward. It was nice to have a puzzle in the way to change things up a bit.
And now for the ratings.
The visuals were great, swapping between 2d and 3d was amazing. I loved seeing the book version of something turning realistic outside. It’s a 4
The story was awesome. Lighthearted and fun all the way through and the characters brought a lot to the game. That’s another 4
The gameplay had it’s monotonous moments, but they added enough difference throughout that helped. I’m giving it a 3
As much as I enjoyed the game, I don’t see a reason to go back through it, once was enough of an experience. Getting a 1.
I did have some fun in the game. My favorite parts were playing with the words in phrases and the story, the rest was alright, I’m handing out a 3
Earning a 3 out of 5 for The Plucky Squire. Placing it on the mid shelf. A fun experience that’s worth checking out, especially with the kids. There wasn’t a lot of voice acting so if you’re playing for an audience, you will be reading a lot out loud. But really getting into the characters was much fun, I enjoyed the heck out of that.