The Plucky Squire expertly transforms old ideas into something new
Its whimsical take on retro gameplay has me counting the days until September 17.
It feels like The Plucky Squire has been popping up at game events forever. It first came onto my radar during one of publisher Devolver Digital’s bizarre showcases in 2022, and was instantly appealing. Yesterday, Devolver announced it would be coming out in just over a month, on September 17. After playing through a few hours of the game over two sessions, I’m happy to say this is one to keep an eye out for.
The Plucky Squire is the first game from All Possible Futures, a studio founded by Jonathan Biddle and James Turner. Turner is an artist best known for his work on Pokémon at GameFreak — if you know what a Vanillite is, you have Turner to thank for that. Biddle previously created the 2017 ARPG Swords of Ditto, and the pair have brought other developers who worked on Ditto onto the team.
All Possible Future’s debut mixes classic 2D and 3D gameplay styles into a unique whole. You play as Jot, the character in a series of kids’ books who defeats evil and saves the day. When the series’ antagonist figures out that he can change the story, it’s your job to stop him. A large chunk of the game takes place on the 2D plane of the book, from the same classic birds-eye-view as in Ditto. The “cut scenes” are also book pages, and there are a few interstitial side-on platforming segments, à la Mario, thrown in for good measure. There’s a real sense of whimsy weaved through everything, aided by the game’s narrator, who is telling your story with each page turn.
Jot is able to slash, jump, roll and everything else you’d expect, and you will unlock more combat skills as you go, such as a sword throw or Zelda-spinny-sword-attack™. There are twists to the formula, though, with a variety of puzzle mechanics thrown in. The first you’ll come across is word puzzles: With a swipe of his sword Jot can dislodge certain words that you can then move around the page. At its most rudimentary, you might swap the words “closed” and “open” from a pair of sentences to make your way past a gate. There are some playful elements to this that reminded me of Scribblenauts — making something “huge” will never not be fun.
The real unique thing here is Jot’s ability to leap out of the flat plane of the storybook and into a fully 3D world. Whenever you come across a green swirly icon, you’re able to jump out of the book and onto its owner’s desk. Often this is a quick hop-out-hop-in move to solve a puzzle, but you’ll also go on longer desktop adventures.
While they’re not quite as charming as the in-book segments, I loved exploring the desk and seeing the wider world of the game. The 3D gameplay feels like a throwback, somewhere between the classic mascot games of the PlayStation era and the LittleBigPlanet series. On a high-end gaming PC, the environment of the desk was gorgeous, with hyper-detailed textures and realistic lighting that contrasted against the cartoony figure of Jot. There are also 2D elements within the 3D sections, where you can jump onto a surface to progress, similar to the mechanic in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
The reason for this jump into 3D also plays into the game’s larger story: By breaking the confines of his 2D world, Jot discovers the influence his tales have and will have on the child who owns the storybook. If the game’s antagonist succeeds in changing the story, Jot will no longer inspire the child.
“You’re fighting for your own land, and also fighting for the owner of the book and his future,” Turner explained to me earlier this year at Summer Game Fest.
I’ve played through the first few chapters of the game, as well as a chunk of chapter six, and am starting to get an idea of how its disparate worlds fit together. In one segment, my progress in the book was brought to a halt, and I had to jump out onto the desk and navigate across the clutter to find a single (unbranded) Magic: The Gathering card. This gave me the item I needed to defeat the enemy I was stuck on. Turner said that items later in the game will allow you to modify the book in more ways, which suggested more mechanics and degrees of complexity will be introduces as progresses.
Breaking up proceedings further are minigames. These are fairly frequent, and generally pull liberally from well-known properties. My favorites so far were a Punch-Out!-style boxing game and a shoot ‘em up inspired by one of my all-time favorites, Resogun. In a nice accessibility move, these minigames can be skipped if you’re not up for the challenge. I’m sure there are more delightful things to come from the 2D and 3D exploration, but as of right now these minigames are the highpoint of my experience.
None of the individual elements in my playthrough were wild, unique things, but the way they connected and the level of polish to everything made me very excited to play the full game. It felt like, behind each turn of a page, there was a new little surprise just waiting to make me smile. The Plucky Squire was originally slated for a 2023 release, but is now due out on September 17. It's coming to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will be free on PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers.
