It is felt The Plucky Squire appeared at gaming events forever. The first time it fell on my radar in one and was immediately attractive. Yesterday, Devolver announced that it will be out for over a month, on September 17th. After a couple of hours of gameplay over two sessions, I’m happy to say it’s worth keeping in mind.
The Plucky Squire All Possible Futures is the first game created by Jonathan Biddle and James Turner. Turner is an artist best known for his work on Pokémon at GameFreak – if you know what Vanillith is, you have Turner to thank for that. Biddle was created earlier 2017 ARPG Ditto swordsand brought in other developers working on the pair Likewise to the team.
All Possible Future’s debut combines classic 2D and 3D game styles into a unique whole. You play as Jot, a character from a series of children’s books who defeats evil and saves the day. When the antagonist of the series realizes that he can change the story, it’s your job to stop him. A large part of the game takes place in the 2D plane of the book, from the same classic bird’s eye view. Likewise. The “cut scenes” are also book pages, with a few interstitial side-platforming segments thrown in for good measure, à la Mario. There’s a real sense of whimsy woven through everything, aided by the game’s narrator who tells your story as you turn each page.
Jot can slash, jump, roll, and everything else you’d expect, and you’ll unlock more combat skills as you go, like throwing swords or Zelda-spinny-sword-attack™. However, there are twists on the formula with different puzzle mechanics. The first thing you’ll encounter are word puzzles: Jot can dislodge certain words with one swipe of his sword, which you can then move around the page. At its most basic, you can interchange the words “closed” and “open” in a pair of sentences to pass through a door. It has some playful elements that remind me of it Scribblenauts — doing something “big” will never be fun.
The real What’s unique here is Jot’s ability to leap out of the flat plane of a storybook and into a full 3D world. When you encounter the green swirl icon, you can jump out of the book and onto its owner’s desk. Often it’s a quick hop-out-hop-in to solve a puzzle, but you’ll also go on longer desktop adventures.
Although not as attractive as the in-book segments, I was loved to explore the table and see the wider world of the game. The 3D gameplay feels like a throwback between the classic mascot games of the PlayStation era and the LittleBigPlanet series. On a high-end gaming PC, the tabletop environment was gorgeous, with hyper-detailed textures and realistic lighting contrasting with Jot’s cartoon figure. The 3D sections also have 2D elements where you can jump on a surface to advance just like in the mechanical section. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
The reason for this switch to 3D also plays into the game’s larger story: Jot breaks the boundaries of his 2D world and discovers the effect his stories have on the boy who owns the storybook. If the antagonist of the game manages to change the story, Jot will no longer inspire the child.
“You’re fighting for your land, but you’re also fighting for the owner of the book and its future,” Turner explained to me at Summer Game Fest earlier this year.
I’ve played the first few chapters of the game, as well as part of the sixth chapter, and I’m starting to get a feel for how its disparate worlds fit together. At one segment, my progress through the book stalled and I had to jump on the table and wade through the clutter to find a single (unbranded) Magic: The Gathering card. This gave me the item I needed to defeat the enemy I was stuck with. Turner said that later elements of the game will allow for more changes to the book, introducing more mechanics and degrees of complexity as it progresses.
Even more destructive are the mini-games. These are fairly frequent and are generally drawn loosely from well-known features. My favorites so far have been the Punch-Out!-style boxing game and the shootout inspired by one of my all-time favorites. Resogun. As a great accessibility move, you can skip these minigames if you’re not up for the challenge. I’m sure there are more enjoyable things than 2D and 3D exploration, but right now these minigames are the highlight of my experience.
None of the individual elements in my game were wild, one-of-a-kind things, but the way they tied together and the level of polish with everything made me very excited to play the full game. It felt like behind every page there was a new little surprise waiting to make me smile. The Plucky Squire It was originally supposed to be released in 2023, but now will now be released on September 17th. It comes Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/Sand will be free in the Extra and Premium tiers of PlayStation Plus.
