With a hefty sprinkling of video game magic, The Plucky Squire feels as though it’s about to out-Nintendo Nintendo. This delightfully playful indie title falls under the Devolver Digital banner, and after first appearing in a Nintendo Direct it’s already captured player’s imaginations with its storybook stylings, and the crucial, eye-opening mechanic that sits at its heart.
If you haven’t seen any footage of The Plucky Squire I suggest you do that now – go on, there’s a trailer right above this paragraph! That crucial ‘wow’ moment is when the Plucky Squire, our hero Jot, leaps from the 2D pages of his tale and heads out into the real world in 3D. James Turner, one of the two-person development team that is All Possible Futures, told us, “Originally the idea came from wanting to do a game set in a book, and we were brainstorming about the idea. One thing we wanted to do was surprise the player, so every page could be a different kind of gameplay, and then we thought ‘what could be the ultimate surprise?’ and we thought that would probably be if you could jump out of the book. As soon as we came up with the idea it really excited us.”
It’s definitely a wonderful moment, and from the reveal trailer and through our guided hands-on at this year’s Gamescom, it’s one that I still haven’t tired of. At various points Plucky Squire throws a variety of obstacles in your way, and having to leave the book in order to find the solution is both beautiful in its simplicity, and fiendishly clever in its delivery. James continued, “We had some experience working with Unreal Engine, so we thought it was something we could possibly implement. As soon as the idea arrived we had to sit down and try it. That was the key moment of getting the project off the ground. Getting out onto the desk is a key part of progressing; you can’t progress without this back-and-forth between the two worlds.”
The demo that we saw had Jot and his two companions working their way through a few pages, and the visual design nails the hand-drawn look of a children’s book. It’s quite meta, as the characters are well aware that they’re in a book, though it isn’t always the case. James said, “It blows their mind at first. It’s like the Matrix. The world they thought they knew was real, is not real. We wanted to play with the ideas of how does that affect them? They’re wondering ‘Is my story fixed then?’”
Tonally, Plucky Squire runs a tricky line between self-awareness and emotional depth, with that Disney-esque balance between the sense of humour running through while managing not to undermine the dramatic depth. “There’s more dramatic moments, more desperate moments,” James said, “I think if you have that baseline of charming and humorous you can change it up and you can suddenly be more affecting.”
The villain of the game’s motivation is similarly well thought out, with James revealing, “He wants to change his story because he’s always been second fiddle to the hero of the game. ‘Why is the book always about this guy? Why is it not about me?’ That’s what really drives him, to push Jot out of the book.”
In the next section of the demo, the way ahead is blocked by a huge, engorged bug. It’s both grotesque and playful, and the way you get past it talks to the thoughtfulness with which the team has approached this project. James said, “It takes place in a book, so how best can we take advantage of that in the gameplay? Books are all about the writing and if you change the narration of the book, you can change the reality of it, and we realised that could be a puzzle system.”
In action, you can take words from other sections of the book and replace them in the passage you want to change, hopefully achieving the desired effect you’re looking for – in this case getting rid of the giant bug. There’s not always just going to be one answer though – “You can take any word you want and try it out and see how it works. It might not be the solution to the puzzle, but we want to reward the player.” This is ably showcased by finding the word ‘drained’ and popping it into the sentence about the bug, deflaing them into a horrible, squashed mess. You still can’t get by, but it’s fun to see the linguistic playfulness at work, and I can see lots of players just trying out whatever combinations they find just to see the result, like a classic point and click adventure. Based on this, it’ll be well worth it.
The close of our demo sees Jot heading into the real world in search of a powerful weapon, finding it in the most unusual, but equally the most wonderful place: a Magic the Gathering style game card. The beautiful elven archer, depicted here in the traditional art style, challenges Jot to a battle which suddenly sees them hop into a turn-based RPG system. James said, “it came from the idea of what illustrations you could jump into on the desk, and a card came up. What kind of gameplay would that be?’”
Having proven himself in battle, the elf grants Jot her bow, and he heads back into the book to use it, leading to a showdown with yet another unexpected effect; Jot gains rippling biceps which he uses to aim the bow with. Our time up, we don’t get to see how this battle unfolds, but whatever comes next is practically guaranteed to be both unexpected and magical.
The Plucky Squire takes a few lines from The Legend of Zelda, a paragraph or two from Mario, and borrows a couple of footnotes from Pixar, but its clear that All Possible Futures are writing their own story. Based on Gamescom 2023, it’s heading straight to the top of the bestsellers list.
