The Plucky Squire Review (NSW)

A lot of popular games released today are dark and gritty in order to appeal to a mature crowd. However, the downside is that these stories end up feeling hollow and same-ish as a result. The Plucky Squire is the opposite, making it a breath of fresh air. Although it has its share of sword fighting, the game also has an adorable art style, cheerful music, and plenty of colorful places to explore. Topping everything off with creative gameplay, The Plucky Squire is a great game for young players as well as kids-at-heart. 

Story

The game is about a brave squire named Jot, who lives in the land of Mojo with his best friends, Violet and Thrash. He has already gone on many quests for the fair Queen Chroma and even written best-selling novels about his adventures. One day, while confronting the evil sorcerer Humgrump, Jot learns a secret that turns his world upside down: his entire existence takes place in a storybook! Having read ahead, Humgrump already knows that Jot will defeat him if they fight, so he banishes our hero out into the real world instead.

Little does he know that some of his metamagic rubs off on Jot, giving him the ability to travel between his 2D world and the real one after this incident. The journey is on to stop Humgrump before he ruins the story because if the book gets worse, then Sam, the 10-year-old author of the book, will lose his creativity and their world and its inhabitants will be forgotten forever. 

Since the game opens with a quick view of Sam’s room before the camera pans to the storybook on the desk, I wasn’t surprised by the big revelation. However, I was taken back when Humgrump ejected Jot from the book itself. The main character traveling to a new world isn’t new, but the game puts its own spin on the concept by having Jot travel from 2D to 3D and back again. Even though you only travel on the desk in the real world, the scope of that desk compared to tiny Jot makes the area seem vast.

The 3D animation also compliments the art of the cartoonish storybook nicely. These choices made both worlds a lot of fun to travel through. 

Brave Warriors

The characters are also really likable. I found Jot’s friendship with his two best friends charming. I also enjoyed the wise sorcerer Moonbeard, a mentor to the heroes, because of how laid back his character was in comparison to others who follow that same archetype. I had mixed feelings on Humgrump, who is depicted as the villain of the story right from the start. I waited for his character to have more depth as time went on, but that moment didn’t happen until the very end, when we got some of his backstory. Even so, without going into spoilers, his reason for being evil doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Still, at the same time, it is refreshing to have a villain who is just evil with no redemption at the end. 

However, the downside is that a lot of the story uses tropes that we have seen before. For example, we have seen the silent, brave protagonist in other big releases and there isn’t much there to make Jot stand out. Some of the dialogue is also strange, using slang words like “fire” and “gnarly.” Even though The Plucky Squire is aimed at kids, it came across as trying to appeal to them too much by using “hip” language. Finally, while it is nice to see Violet and Thrash join the fight later on, they only begin helping in the second half of the journey. For the first half, they don’t do much to contribute. Later on, we see them help fight Humgrump’s soldiers, and little touches like that in the beginning would have made them seem more like characters as a whole instead of just NPCs that follow Jot around. 

Gameplay

There is plenty to do in both the storybook world and the real world. In the former, you meet new friends, solve word puzzles that alter the world around you in useful ways, and fight off Humgrump’s henchmen. The 3D world is similar, but you also gain new creative abilities later on. For example, one power Jot gains is the ability to flip pages in the storybook itself so that he can retrieve items from previous pages to use in the present. He can also tilt the book, freeze items in place with a stop stamp, and use bombs in puzzles with another stamp. Needless to say, the game takes advantage of its unique worldbuilding.

With lots of checkpoints, easy enemies, and straight forward puzzles, this adventure is mostly a breeze. It only started getting difficult during the last couple chapters of the game.

There were a couple of minor errors that were a bit distracting. First, after leaving an area, the game has to load for a few seconds before moving on to the next one. At times, I didn’t move far enough without realizing and I wondered what was taking the game so long to load. There were also many times where the storybook showed pictures accompanied by text and narration to show plot progression, and the text was cut off at the end before it could finish. However, I could overlook these errors simply because I wanted to see the story through to the end. 

Final Verdict

Overall, The Plucky Squire is a great game because of its bright and colorful animation, relaxing music, and clever gameplay. Even though the game is aimed at children, some teens and young adults looking for a comfort game will enjoy it as well. While by no means perfect, I had fun playing it and you will too.

The Plucky Squire is available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.