I’ve been a Zelda fan my entire life, so I always hesitate when other creators decide to create a game that draws inspiration from Nintendo’s well-received action-adventure series. The puzzle design never quite rises to Zelda’s extraordinarily high standards, and I’m typically left wishing I was playing A Link Between Worlds or Ocarina of Time instead. However, The Plucky Squire bucks that pattern with a blend of cunning riddles, straightforward but potent swordplay, and a brave, quiet protagonist who would fit right in Hyrule. Though a bit wordy at times and with some preeminent pacing problems in the last part of the trip, this is still a worthwhile voyage in the debut game from creator All Possible Futures.
The Plucky Squire has a great elevator pitch: you play as Jot, a children’s book hero who discovers early on that he is just that—a children’s book hero. This results in an unexpected meta-story in which Jot hops between the two-dimensional pages of his picture book and the three-dimensional actual world surrounding it. The real world is symbolized by the bedroom of a young Sam, a Plucky Squire superfan who has amassed an extensive collection of Jot’s writings and memorabilia. The inventive puzzle design of The Plucky Squire is made possible by its original premise.
While Jot can modify the book’s text to change his reality and overcome challenges, the story’s gorgeously illustrated visuals of beaches, villages, and mountaintops are still present. Want a gate that is closed to swing open? Jot can substitute the word “Open” from a different sentence in the book right into the prose that is placed in front of the closed gate. It’s like playing with different combinations of nouns and adjectives to see how the universe responds—like changing a tiny frog into a gigantic frog just to see if it would work—and it plays out like a (significantly) lighter version of Baba Is You’s rule manipulation.
(Spoilers alert: It did.) Though each scenario using this notion only has a small number of phrases that Jot can swap, it’s still an amazing mechanic that the developers cleverly employ throughout the adventure. It’s not the most flexible approach, though. I replenished a drained moat with water using the power of words, transformed strong columns into collapsing ones to topple them over an enemy obstructing my path, and much more.
Puzzle-solving is one of The Plucky Squire’s greatest achievements.
One clever way The Plucky Squire makes use of its storybook setting is through wordplay. In addition, Jot can emerge from the book and transform from a cute hand-drawn 2D character into a fully realized 3D version of himself, which is similar to the toy-like appearance of the future Echoes of Wisdom and the Link’s Awakening remake. When Jot is outside the book, he can take on the role of God and directly control the universe inside. He can use abilities like tossing the book on its side to move blocks about or even turning back pages to retrieve words or other items he needs for the current page. I had several interesting “aha!” moments when I had to turn back pages to uncover The Plucky Squire’s optional hidden items, and I could see myself coming back to get the ones I missed. The Plucky Squire reaches some amazing puzzle-solving highs inside these sections, and the book’s numerous applications prompted me to zoom out and think wider about the tools at my disposal.
The Plucky Squire’s continual barrage of clues is the only problem. The lovable Jot buddies Violet, Thrash, and Moonbeard have a lengthy chat on what you need to do before I’m turned on most tasks. This inclusion becomes even more perplexing when you consider The Plucky Squire’s clever optional hint system, in which, should you ask for assistance, a recurrent figure who is essentially always present will provide you with precise instructions. It annoys me that the developers include too much information in the required dialogue instead of letting the hint system do the heavy lifting and letting skilled players try to piece everything together on their own.
As Jot investigates Sam’s bedroom in search of new ways to engage with his book, the outer world is much more than just the pages. The puzzle-like elements of the novel are wonderfully broken up by these exploration portions, and it’s fun to explore Sam’s bedroom. As one might anticipate from a child’s room, Jot traverses playing cards and building blocks in search of his next improvement. Toys and LEGO bricks are strewn all over the place. Jot may move between sticky notes and kid-drawn pictures in these areas, giving the entire affair the feel of an imaginative twist on the wall-merging mechanism from A Link Between Worlds.
While there are a few small technical glitches (I had a severe crash and some flickering shadows), The Plucky Squire on the PlayStation 5 looks and functions flawlessly overall.
For the first five hours of the roughly eight-hour campaign, the timing between the storybook, the real world, and the minigames is excellent; therefore, it’s startling when The Plucky Squire entirely falters in the last act. Initially, Jot loses all of his skills, and to regain all of the talents you have already spent the entire game acquiring, you have to go through a fairly standard stealth portion. It would be as though, just before the last boss, Metroid erased all of Samus’ upgrades, making you acquire the Morph Ball and Grapple Beam twice. Even worse, Sam’s bedroom is reduced to a lifeless slog across worn-out terrain in this section, which is set in a completely monochromatic universe.
This doesn’t take too long, but thereafter there’s The Plucky Squire’s last dungeon, which consists of a monotonous march through the same old rooms and a rhythm-based stealth minigame that I had to play three times to pass. I was done before the credits even rolled, having just defeated a final boss who similarly dragged on for much too long. Sadly, The Plucky Squire’s final third leaves a bad taste in your mouth because the majority of the film is so enjoyable.
Verdict
At its best, Plucky Squire is a stunning Zelda-inspired adventure with a ton of mind-boggling wordplay challenges. Because of Jot’s capacity to control his storyline from the inside as well as the outside, each puzzle has ingenious dimension-hopping physics and solutions that are enjoyable to unravel. Though at times funny, its verbose script frequently obstructs action and occasionally gives away the solution to a puzzle before it even starts. It also drags on with its long last act, with adventure continuing several hours after it has exhausted all of its creative possibilities. But before that tardy misstep, Plucky Squire is jam-packed with surprises. It breaks up its challenges with adorable minigame tributes to vintage video game genres and entertaining segments that transport Jot outside the pages of the narrative.
