The Plucky Squire is a charming storybook with big ideas and clever puzzles

The Plucky Squire plays as good as it looks

The Plucky Squire / Devolver Digital

If you’re at all interested in The Plucky Squire, I’d be willing to be it’s because you took one look at the art style and immediately fell in love – I know that’s why I wanted to try it out. Having played the first couple of hours, the gorgeous art is just as great in motion, whether it’s the kid’s storybook style of the 2D gameplay or the bright and colorful visuals of the 3D sections.

It’s not just a looker though, there’s some cool gameplay here too. You play as Jot, the hero from a series of kid’s storybooks; he’s the classic noble hero who never puts a foot wrong and always saves the day. Through some shenanigans involving an evil wizard and his “meta-magic”, Jot gets thrown out of the book, but in the process gains the ability to travel through portals connecting the 2D storybook and the 3D real world where you’re a tiny character on a child’s desk.

The Plucky Squire / Devolver Digital

In the 2D sections, you’ll be faced with a lot of puzzling challenges involving the words in the book. The narrator’s words appear on the page when you interact with certain objects. Some words (usually adjectives) in the sentence can be pulled out and swapped with others, for example, when a “huge” bug blocks the path, you must replace it with the word “tiny” from another sentence to clear the way.

Meanwhile, the 3D sections are more keen to test your puzzle-platforming skills. The many items on the child’s desk can all interact in unique ways – like using dice to knock over dominos – which creates interesting challenges. There are even stealth sections where you have to avoid being mauled by hungry beetles…it isn’t as horrifying as I made it sound.

These two worlds don’t exist in isolation though, as most puzzles past the tutorial section require you to switch between both worlds as you go. That may mean using the real world to cross an impassable point in the book, or it could mean using the child’s drawings to get around obstacles in the real world.

The Plucky Squire / Devolver Digital

It kept getting deeper the more I played too, as Jot eventually gets the ability to turn the pages of the storybook himself, allowing you to grab elements from earlier in the game to aid you in current puzzles.

As I was only in the early game none of the puzzles were especially challenging, but the dimension-switching and page-turning gave me enough layers of thinking to keep my brain working even when the solutions were fairly obvious. On top of that, the different ways that you can affect the world – like playing around with what words you can insert into which sentences – give you an incentive to be creative. You won’t find any alternate solutions this way, but you might get a funny interaction or an achievement.

The Plucky Squire / Devolver Digital

Plus, occasionally it will throw everything out of the window and you’ll have to play a completely different game for a bit. Sometimes this takes the form of cute minigames where you have to catch a fish (without a rod) or shoot down hordes of flying bugs, but other times you jump into a knock-off Magic: The Gathering card to fight the character inside of it with a turn-based RPG combat system, which is then never used again.

It’s a game where I want to keep seeing what’s around every corner because it always puts a smile on my face. How complex the puzzles get in the full game remains to be seen, but I can say that the early hours of The Plucky Squire met my expectations perfectly and I can’t wait until I get to play more.