A love letter rather than a fresh installment 💌 The Plucky Squire

Note: This was a draft I had sitting in my backlog for a while now, and I’ve finally finished and hit the ‘publish’ button! I’ll be trying to do that with a few of the reviews and previews I have sitting around, so apologies in advance if some of these seem games seem random.

Watch my playthrough on YouTube!

I’m not going to bury the lede: I wanted to love this game more than I ultimately ended up doing, but it didn’t stop me from having good time while playing. Each level was a joy and wonder to look at particularly when we got to hop in and out of the book, moving from 2D to 3D. Every area also brought in a new mechanic, and while we did get a bit of a payoff in the end — the stages of the last boss battle let us revisit those mechanics once more — I didn’t feel invested in the world or the characters beyond the moments I was playing. Again: The Plucky Squire is a fun, polished, and delightful title…I just think I’m not it’s intended audience.

SUMMARY

In The Plucky Squire, you are a titular Squire, the one character who saves the Kingdom time and time again with your heroic deeds (and writes about them afterward, so everyone’s got some good books to read too!) The Kingdom is once again

WHY?

• I appreciate the story of being impacted and inspired by something so much that you want to create.

• There are throwaway story lines, like Violet’s bullies and her existential crisis, that makes me feel like they should’ve keep the story even MORE simple. Have it fully embrace being like a Saturday morning cartoon in it’s premise, and not attempt to say much more. Because it doesn’t need it

• Clever gameplay premise, but never really gets past the ‘premise’ stage.

• There are moments of joy, particularly when we get to hop in and out of the pages. But those moments end up feeling short-changed by the fact that the whole game feels like a tutorial. You never get a chance to spread your wings and truly enjoy the world and it’s mechanics.

Rather than paying tribute to and making a space for doing something new, The Plucky Squire primarily feels like a love letter that honors the sources of inspiration, and mostly leaves it at that. This is a great game for folks looking for a very light time or want to play games with younger folks/people not as familiar with games.