A loving Zelda tribute from 2D to 3D

A children’s storybook sets the stage for the dimension-warping journey of The plucky squireAn animated interactive legend that plays as an extended, precious tribute to The Legend of Zelda. The debut of All Possible Futures contains remarkable moments that illustrate his colorful adventure of all ages, centered on a protagonist who can jump off the page into the “real” world beyond. It’s a fitting companion to Devolver Digital’s previous publisher Seldom– A roguelite The Swords of Ditto – whose veteran development team even includes members of All Possible Futures – but its comparatively reduced scope and challenge can cause this literary action-adventure to fall a little flat at times.

The plucky squire Star Jot, a mute hero whose sword is prominently shaped like a fountain pen. A guardian celebrity of the magical land of Mojo, Jot drafts his escapades for the afterlife alongside lifelong friends Violet and Trash, a princess painter and drumstick-wielding heavy metal mountain troll, respectively. The three team up to thwart the plans of malicious sorcerer Humgrump and ally with the benevolent Moonbeard, a Merlin-like mentor sporting rounded shades.

If names are any indication, The plucky squires world and narrative echo the stuff of silly Saturday morning cartoonsWhere good triumphs over evil, alliterative words prevail, and villains best beware. As a roughly ten-hour game, its generally low difficulty can risk compromising any dramatic intentions, even when things get a little darker and more satisfyingly meta. His unabashed charm and vibrant presentation are unmistakably effective and creative, even if I wish the most experimental aspects were expanded a little further.

A sword-swinging animated adventure

Jot’s basic moveset comes straight from the classic Seldom Games, with a sword that can slash enemies, be flung like a boomerang and retrieved, then charge for a recognizable spin attack. Unlike these Seldom However, there aren’t a bunch of special items to find that change how the game functions or his character traverses his world. instead, The book-bound threads of the Land of Mojo’s basic reality open up at certain junctures, allowing players to solve puzzles and progress further by jumping off the page or changing its content.

The main thing The plucky squire is the concept of living stories, exemplified in how the drawn characters walk across artwork in place of a formal overworld, all experienced as an open book on a table. Sometimes a page’s text can be edited similarly to an oversimplified one Baba is youWith swappable words that bend reality and solve simple roadblocks, like changing the size of a monster blocking the path.

Reaching the edges of any page conjures new areas, angles and events. The upcoming section could be a stretch of illustrated story, a perspective-swapping boss fight minigame or a short 2D platforming dungeon sequence cast in shadow. One of the ways that a page turn transitions into new gameplay encounters The plucky squires most reliably satisfying flourishes, and offers enough incentive to keep the otherwise by-the-numbers fantasy plot fresh enough on its own.

Tiptoeing down the fourth wall

The plucky squire Never delves too deep into his characters, except for the main cast. As a result, most NPCs are one-note word-bubbles that materialize for a quick gag or banter before disappearing. Reaching the village of Queen Chroma offers fun dialogue opportunities with caricatures of artists such as Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo and René Magritte, but Most of the game’s environments aren’t similarly dense with characters or exploration, which adds a focused but on-the-rails quality..

The action, while serviceable and responsive, is also comparably thin. Once Jot was able to jump from 2D to 3D and explore the desk space around his book, I was excited to dig into this new unseen playground. However, 3D Jot functions mostly like 2D Jot, and any resulting platforming through this world in miniature (or the occasional ill-fitting stealth segue) is straightforward. When you see the character squash down in scribbled notes or scamper over his painted friends on the page, there are immediately cool visual effects – reminiscent of A link between worlds – The desk feels more like an incidental detour than a fully realized environment, another minor obstacle between story beats.

This is related to the insubstantial difficulty, something that could be easier if the game didn’t strain to sort out every puzzle and roadblock. Moonbeard’s diminutive mascot Minibeard can offer hints if players get confused about what to do next, though Violet, Trash, the game camera, and the narrator usually spell out what’s needed to continue to the next page unprompted. If The plucky squire Had an option to tune down the constant tutorializing and hand-holding, it would arguably speed up and improve the experience overall.

An easy, breezy storybook adventure

Maybe it’s just that The plucky squire is geared more toward younger players, and early readers in particular may best appreciate its whimsical tone. There’s a faint hint of irreverent sarcasm throughout the game that tempers its saccharine nature somewhat, but its difficulty – despite the stunning fourth-wall-breaking approach and all that might entail – is almost non-existent, and its weird reality-warping mechanics are less expansive than they first seem.

When the game starts experimenting with text-swapping puzzles or page-escaping, it feels like things will get stranger and more complicated from there, but the experiment loses its footing over time. This could be due to how The plucky squireThe challenges are encapsulated rather than iterative, pegged to individual pages and scenes before being promptly forgotten in the next gameplay turn. Even the 3D world outside the book morphs to serve the current chapter, acting more like an incidental dungeon than a detailed environment to learn over time.

If Thrash’s drumsticks are any indication, there are some rhythm games to play, and riffs on Punch Out!!Shumps, Bust-a-MachAnd even a terrific 3D desk sequence with an erratic jetpack. However, many of these are one and done, easily bested on a first try, and leave me wanting for more (or more depth therein). While The plucky squire Featuring “Adventure” and “Story” difficulty options at the start, most players will breeze right through the former with no hiccups.

This overall ease may be intentional by design, and The plucky squire‘s beautiful hand-drawn animation and happy-go-lucky mischief serve as a great counter to the cynical edginess often found in modern titles; In this respect, it pairs wonderfully with recently released crowd-pleasers Astro Bot. A final sequence when the storybook seemingly turns on Jot is a great example of the game digging deeper into its own premise, and the narrative threads that hint at the “real” world beyond the book come off as thoughtfully odd abstractions, even if they do T completely pay off in the end.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

At his best, playing The plucky squire Feels like crawling the spine of an old thin hardcover children’s storybook, with each page another cheerful step towards new adventures. It’s light but engaging, and any apparent threats described within are quickly softened by the narrator’s easy-going paternal British cadence, reminiscent in ways of the voiceover found in 2021’s. BiomutantBut nowhere near as tedious or repetitive.

At times, however, the game can feel synthetically slow, as when any obstacles are over-explained, or in how the text speed is firmly measured, cannot be skipped by speed or adjusted in settings. Whole pages of the game are dedicated to the gang slowly climbing a hill or walking a path, and the careful animation and expensive narration can slow down the pace a bit, even when they set the stage for another interactive treat.

Still, the basic excitement of turning the page to discover what’s next is so strongly represented in The plucky squireAnd the game retains the energy in its final chapters, even while otherwise lacking notable tension or danger. It is an entertaining busy book to play through, but it is a shame that many of The plucky squireThe best ideas are ultimately underexplored. Perhaps these are just held back for any plucky printed new worlds to come.

Source: Devolver Digital