The Plucky Squire Review – All the Tricks in the World

The Plucky Squire is a game that rightfully receives a lot of attention for its striking visual trick that combines the worlds of 2D and 3D art around a clever story hook. But more than just its stunning artistic design, The Plucky Squire is a game that takes full advantage of its premise – it tells a kid-friendly and heartfelt story, fills its well-realized world with lovable characters, and constantly throws in surprises. It's a fitting reminder to never judge a book by its cover.

You play as Jot, the titular “brave squire” in a children's book series of the same name. The picture book series is so popular that it has inspired a large fan base and merchandising, which is entirely believable given the playfulness and inviting nature of the series. While Jot himself is the classic mute protagonist, the surrounding characters are boisterous and frequently funny, and the world of Mojo itself, in which the characters live, is colorful and imaginative.

Over time, the game reveals itself in its layers of complexity. You start off playing what appears to be a standard top-down adventure game, with the nice visual touch of screen changes and cutscenes being marked by the turning of the book's pages. But soon the book's recurring villain, Humgrump, reveals his insidious plan: the ability to kick Jot out of the book entirely. You are forcibly thrown out of the book and into the real world. That reveals the second layer, as Jot finds his way back into the book and then gains the power to jump in and out at will using special “Metamagic” portals. When he jumps out of the book, he roams around the desk of Sam, a 10-year-old boy who loves the Plucky Squire books.

I can't stress enough how magical and seamless the transition between the two realities feels. When Jot and his friends occupy the book, there's beautiful 2D imagery that would fit in a real storybook, complemented by fluid animations and varied behavior that brings all the characters to life. When Jot jumps out of the book, he magically transforms into a Rankin-Bass model of his 2D self and the perspective shifts downward to allow for a closer look. The two art styles look beautiful on their own while also being visually consistent with each other. As you gain more skills, you can bring things from the outside world into the book with you and they have their own similar transition into the 2D plane.

The story of a protagonist being pushed out of his own book, then finding his way back and pursuing the villain would be compelling enough on its own. But The Plucky Squire adds extra emotional weight by making it clear early on that you're not just fighting for the fate of your own storybook. You're Sam's favorite book, his favorite hero, and you inspire him to draw his own characters and imagine his own worlds. As you explore his desk, you can see evidence of how much he loves Jot and the world of Mojo all over his room. If Humgrump wins, not only is Jot's world at stake, but so is Sam's future as a budding artist and writer.

Structurally, The Plucky Squire behaves like a mashup of a 2D and 2.5D Zelda game, albeit with puzzle elements built around the book jumping gimmick, as you'll frequently need to jump in and out of the book to manipulate your environment. As it's a storybook, your activities are constantly being narrated, and sometimes even the words on the pages themselves need to be manipulated to solve the puzzle.

One moment you might be rearranging the words on the page to turn an impassable barrier into a broken gate. A few minutes later you're jumping out of the book trying to find an object that can help you in the story. Sometimes you'll have to flip back a few pages to find a missing word you need to solve a word puzzle. Occasionally the book will even change perspective, turning on its side to present a part of the stage that's more vertically oriented.

Your ability to manipulate the book becomes increasingly complex – eventually you can tilt the book to make objects inside it slide around, freeze certain parts of the environment so they don't move, and even close the book to transfer an object from one page to another. The puzzle solutions are just right to stimulate your brain without getting too overwhelming or frustrating. If you get stuck, there's almost always a clue totem nearby to point you in the right direction without completely giving away the solution.

The clue system is Minibeard, a miniaturized simulacrum of your wizard mentor Moonbeard. In the real world, he manifests as a piece of merchandise: a My Talkin' Minibeard doll. Her other friends, a young witch-in-training named Violet and a rock-and-roll mountain troll named Thrash, round out the main cast. The land of Mojo has the surreal, comical style of a show like Adventure Time, with fun little touches that give it a sense of personality and place. The city of Artia, the royal center of Mojo, is not only made up of artistic tools like paintbrushes, but is also filled with characters that visually reference famous works of art like Edvard Munch's The Scream or The Son of Man by Magritte. The mountain trolls are old-school metalheads, and so many of the trees around them take the shape of throwing horns. Every time I thought I had seen everything the world of Mojo had to offer, she threw up a new surprise that made me smile.

That's true of the gameplay too. The Plucky Squire takes full advantage of its meta-breaking premise to introduce plenty of variety that breaks up the pacing. In one early example, you have to venture out of the book to find a bow from a nearby elf huntress, only to discover that the bow you're looking for is in a Magic The Gathering-esque CCG map. So you jump into the map and engage in a simple turn-based RPG battle to win her bow. This only happens once in the game, and then it's on to the next activity. At another point, you jump into a spaceship mug and the game briefly turns into a sideways shoot-em-up. Jot and his friends take part in boss battles similar to Punch-Out, a color-matching puzzle game, and a rhythm game. It's genre tourism, but each of them is so well done that they're more than welcome as breathers from the main adventure.

The result is a game that feels securely grounded in classic Zelda mechanics, but is also full of new ideas and creative touches that make the world feel alive and distinctive. These ideas continue through to the final boss encounter, which introduces yet another new game type that feels completely different to anything that came before. This can be a risky proposition, as games that stray too far from their core mechanics often end up feeling tacked on or not confident enough for a finale. Thankfully, The Plucky Squire has put just as much care and craftsmanship into this as it has into its other genre experiments, making it feel like the culmination of a great fairytale adventure.

The Plucky Squire is a joyful story about creativity and inspiration that is itself both creative and frequently inspired. In the world of the game, The Plucky Squire is a beloved franchise and character with multiple entries in his long-running series. Here in the real world, he deserves to be a star too, and I can only hope this is the start of his success story.