It doesn’t matter how many times I see it, when The Plucky Squire’s Jot jumps off of the storybook page and into the real world, it always blows me away. It’s ℱone of those things that is so compelling and instantly recognizable, it’s hard to believe no one else has done it before. If this was just a mashup of classic 2D Zelda adventuring and 3D Mario platforming it w🤡ould have been a hit, but the clever ways that those two worlds overlap and interact with each other make The Plucky Squire so special.
I got to play around 30 minutes of The Plucky Squire at a recent Summer Game Fest event, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. The storybook world is a vibrant playground with a hand drawn aesthetic that makes me nostalgic for the picture books of my childhood, like Dav Pilkey’s Capta🔥in Underpants and The Dumb Bunnies. Pokemon fans will be familiar with The Plucky Squire’s co-director James Turner, who worked as a character designer and art director on various Pokemon games (including Sword & Shield) for 20 years. So not only is the aesthetic evoking childhood nostalgia, it’s also handcrafted by an artist that helped shape many of our childhoods.
I Can’t Wait For The Plucky Squire, A Genre-Bending Adven꧂ture Game From Former P💧okemon Art Director
The adventures of Jot take our squire from 2D to ꦉ3꧃D, and back again
The storybook segments, which Turner says make up about 70 percent of the game, are classic 2D Zelda stuff. Swinging (and throwing) swords at enemies, rolling to dodge attacks, opening treasure chests, and solving simple environmental puzzles felt great, and exploring the colorful world, even without any context, was a delight. Entering a new ‘screen’ would cause the book to flip to a new page, and I could use star icons on the ground to briefly jump off of the page and land back down on a higher platform. Simple and common 2D adventure trope✨s, but cleverly re-imagined to fit the theme𒆙s and style of the game.
Eventually I came to a roadblock - a wall of rapidly moving blades - and it was time to jump out of the book and look for another way around. From previous gameplay trailers I’ve see the way Jot can sometimes leave the book and jump back into it somewhere else to get around obstacles, or even tilt the pages of the book to make objects on the page move, but in this case, I had to explore the 3D world to find a new item that♑ would let me get past the roadblock. Once outside the book, I jumped onto the surface of a mug and met a little rocketship who promised to help me if I could find the three disassembled pieces of his rocketship dad. I was then set loose in a pretty large 3D level where I could freely explore to find the missing pieces in any order I wanted.
Climbing around the real-world en♔vironment is very Toy Story-like. Everyday objects like rulers and playing cards become bridges and ramps, and there’s lots of collectible secrets to find tucked away in hidden corners. This particular level features a jet pack that allows you to gain extra height and distance when jumping, and there’s an emphasis on verticality that makes scaling the desktop junk feel like climbing a mountain. Occasionally I needed to jump back into 2D s😼paces to progress - a mechanic borrowed from A Link Between Worlds (Turner says Zelda, and ALBW in particular, was a big influence on The Plucky Squire).
This part of the level ended in a Resogun-style mini game in which Jot trღansforms into a jetpack-wearing, muscle-bound action hero and flies around the circular plane of the coffee cup shooting aliens and rescuing astronauts. Every level of The Plucky Squire will feature a unique mini-game like this that won’t be found anywhere else in the game. It went on a little too long, but as a Resogun fan I enjoyed the arcade-y detour qu🐓ite a bit.
After repairing rocket dad I was rewarded with a stamp, which I could use to stamp the gear that operates the moving razors in the book. At risk of making far too many comparisons to other games, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Paper Mario: Sticker Star’s ‘things’, a mechanic that lets Paper Mario use 3D-modeled real-world objects to solve puzzles. The Plucky Squire borrows a lot of ideas from a lot of great games (and Sticker Star) but it never comes across as derivative or laz🅘y. This is less imitation and more evolution, and the synthesis of so many Nintendo games into one cohesive experience is both surprising and endlessly impressive.
There’s some concern that the novelty of The Plucky Squire will eventually wear off. This is a game that will need to reinvent itself with new themes and mechꦫanics in every level. But everything I’ve seen so far is bursting with creativity, and I’m hoping every level is as clever and inventive as the one I played. Between this, Astro Bot, and Billie Bust Up, 3D platformer fans have a lot to look forward to this year.
The Plucky Squir🐼e’s Story Hooked Me Just As Much As Its Gamepl🉐ay
I knew I was into The Pluc🐭ky Squire’s🐼 unique perspective-jumping gameplay, but its story intrigued me even more.
