Plucky Squire skillfully transforms old ideas into something new

It sounds The Plucky Squire it’s been showing up at gaming events forever. It first entered my radar during another, and was instantly appealing. Yesterday, Devolver announced that it’s coming out in just over a month, on September 17. After playing a few hours of the game over two sessions, I’m happy to say that this is one I’ll be keeping an eye on.

The Plucky Squire is the first game from All Possible Futures, a studio founded by Jonathan Biddle and James Turner. Turner is an artist best known for his work on Pokémon at GameFreak – if you know what Vanillite is, you have Turner to thank for that. Biddle previously created the 2017 ARPG Ditto swordsand these two brought other engineers to work That’s right in the group.

All Possible Future’s debut combines classic 2D and 3D gaming styles into a unique theme. You play as Jot, a character in a children’s book series who defeats evil and saves the day. If a serial antagonist discovers that he can change the story, it’s your job to stop him. The main part of the game takes place in the 2D plane of the book, from the classic bird’s eye view. Such is the case. The “cut scenes” are also book pages, and there are a few bits of interstitial side-on platforming, à la Mario, thrown in for good measure. There’s a real sense of intrigue built into everything, aided by the game’s narrator, who tells your story with each page turn.

Jot can slash, jump, roll and everything else you’d expect, and you’ll unlock more combat abilities as you go, like throwing a sword or the Zelda-spinny-sword-attack™. There are twists to the formula, however, with various inclusions of the puzzle machine. First you’ll find word puzzles: With a swipe of his sword Jot can pull out certain words that you can move around the page. Unusually, you may switch the words “close” and “open” from a pair of sentences to get through the gate. There are toys in this that reminded me Scribblenauts — doing something “big” is never fun.

I the original the unique thing here is Jot’s ability to jump out of the flat storybook plane into a fully 3D world. Whenever you encounter a green icon, you can exit the book and enter its owner’s desk. Usually this is a quick hop-out-hop-in move to solve the puzzle, but you’ll still be on a long desktop journey.

Although not as attractive as the parts in the book, I loved exploring the deck and seeing the wider world of the game. The 3D gameplay feels like a throwback, somewhere between the classic mascot games of the PlayStation era and the LittleBigPlanet series. For a high-end gaming PC, the desktop environment was great, with detailed graphics and realistic lighting that contrasted with Jot’s cartoon image. There are also 2D elements within the 3D stages, where you can jump up to advance, like a mechanic The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

The reason for this jump to 3D also plays into the main story of the game: By breaking the boundaries of his 2D world, Jot discovers the impact his stories will have on the child who owns the storybook. If the game’s antagonist succeeds in changing the story, Jot will no longer be able to encourage the child.

“You’re fighting for your place, and you’re fighting for the owner of the book and his future,” Turner explained to me earlier this year at Summer Game Fest.

I’ve played the first few chapters of the game, as well as an episode of chapter six, and I’m starting to get an idea of ​​how their different worlds fit together. In one episode, my progress through the book was halted, and I had to jump over the desk and rummage through all the clutter to find one (unmarked) Magic: the Gathering card. This gave me what I needed to defeat the enemy I was attached to. Turner said that things later in the game will allow you to change the book in a number of ways, suggesting that mechanics and degrees of difficulty will be introduced as it progresses.

Other procedural differences are small games. These are common, and often draw freely from well-known places. My favorites so far have been the Punch-Out style boxing game! and a shoot inspired by one of my all-time favorites, Resogun. With a good access move, these minigames can be skipped if you’re not up for the challenge. I’m sure there are more exciting things to come from 2D and 3D exploration, but as of now these minigames are the pinnacle of my experience.

There aren’t any individual elements in my playthrough that were wild, unique things, but the way they all connected and the level of polish in everything made me so excited to play the full game. It was as if, behind each page, there was a new surprise waiting to make me smile. The Plucky Squire was scheduled for release in 2023, but will now be released on September 17. It’s coming to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will be free on PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers.