I was excited to see more about The Plucky Squire and had it circled as one of my most exciting games for release in 2024. So, I was even more excited to get hands-on with the game’s first four chapters. And I haven’t been left disappointed. The game’s sense of adventure, love for storytelling, and willingness to try different things are exciting and have me eager for more.

Playing as Jot, the titular Plucky Squire and hero of his line of children’s adventure books, the adventure begins as an almost Zelda-like adventure game. The 2D isometric view, the sword-swinging action, rolling and puzzle solving all with our hero on a mission to save his world once again. The twist here, however, is that when the big evil villain Humgrump realises he’s in the storybook and somehow gets access to a version of the book hidden inside his own world, he can change it. His first is to eject Jot out of his book, and he lands in the three-dimensional real world and on the desk of the child who owns this book.

via GIPHY

The first few chapters of The Plucky Squire are head-on tutorialization and introduction to the game’s 2D and 3D world, so I can see why the choice was made to allow the press to play four chapters of the game, which is around two and a half hours. But a good chunk of the game allowed me to walk away with an understanding of the passion of developers All Possible Futures for their debut game.

After exploring the 3D world for a bit, Jot is able to make friends with a literal Book Worm and unlock the ability to re-enter the book and exit at his own wish. This, paired with a mechanic where you can remove words on a page and take themselves elsewhere, makes for a unique idea, even if it’s one where the puzzles, at least in the early parts of the game, are particularly straightforward. Jot can make it day or night by reranging words in a sentence or even adding a bridge by removing the word ‘broken.’ From what I could tell by playing around, there’s only one answer for any of these puzzles, as much as I did try to see what would happen by placing odd words in unrelated sentences.

The most exciting part of the game, outside of its bright and wonderful character and world design, which is just gorgeous, is how willing it seems to be to add entire mini-games or mechanics to the game, just then whip them away all for a laugh or keeping things exciting. A boxing mini-game shows up during one “boss fight,” which is quite amusing since Jot goes from the tiny twink hero to a yoked Hercules type.

In the last chapter I got to play Jot needs to find a weapon to take on flying enemies so he searches for something in the 3D world, and finds something that is very obviously a Magic: The Gathering card without stating it for copyright reasons, and then convinces the elf in the card to lend him his bow.

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Playing The Plucky Squire is an absolute delight, and the few hours I spent with it flew by all too quickly. Now, I eagerly anticipate the game’s release in mid-September, eager to continue the adventure with Jot and his friends. I can’t help but wonder if there will be a section where Jot receives assistance from a dinosaur or something equally unexpected in the children’s bedroom. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised, as the game seems to fully embrace the wild and whimsical notion that anything is possible in a storybook.