I think joy is a bit of an understatement, but at Summer Game Fest this year it felt like the closest thing to a running theme. Both Astro Bot and Lego Horizon Adventures were light, playful, bubbly family games that put their entire focus on just having a good time. The Plucky Squire, an action game with a hint of home dimension, however, probably just knocked them out of the running for the most joyous experience I’ve had all week.
In fact, it was some of the most joy I’ve had in a video game in a while. Plucky Square is a treat.
The setting here includes an opening sequence in a 2D installment of The Plucky Squire, the main storybook. What’s striking is how the edges of the pages, although always visible, seem to just melt away here. You’re in it, playing top-down much like a Zelda adventure, hitting little enemy blobs with your sword, or using a nice little throw-and-recall system for it like a hand-summoned boomerang. You jump over set ledges and chasms, green vortices in the ground that take you to corresponding green vortices on the other side. Then you run into an obstacle – a large spinning grinder that looks rather unwieldy and, frankly, suspiciously inappropriate for this little pastel-hued tale – and jump on another merry-go-round and – oh! – you jumped right off the page.
I will never tire of moments like this. Fez’s world flip, Portal’s portal jump, Superliminal’s matching lines or Manifold Garden. Plucky Squire is different – it’s not an on-demand thing, but a shift that happens in certain places – but it feels just as magical. Just as instantly transformative, just as effective at leaving me with a massive smile.
The first of these moments took me into the world of the 3D desktop. Suddenly you’re not in Zelda anymore, you’re in Toy Story, A Bug’s Life. You hop over small piles of notebooks and past playing cards or precariously, playfully balanced rulers – the telltale desktop of a procrastinator, I know a comrade when I see one. A small wizard perched on various stationary objects around the desktop offers advice. Enemies taunt you with attacks from ledges that you can’t reach with your sword or that are too high to jump. We are in an old 3D platformer. I feel an unlocking ability.
I smell it right: there are other heroes in the world in need of help who give you an ability in return. The most notable is a jetpack that shoots out a long tail of flame as you climb a bit higher – a flame that’s lit quite wonderfully, I must add, flickering and glowing and casting shadows over a world that seems set for a while around dusk.
Unlocking this jetpack took a bit of work. I would come across another small glowing distortion, this time on the surface of a glass. I went for the mug themed after something like a space cartoon and a little rocket in trouble. Its parts are scattered across the desktop and need to be restored. (If you’re wondering what the story behind all this 2D-3D world crossing is, by the way, there’s a suitably charming magical explanation: the evil wizard Humgrump uses his magic to try to control the story of the book you’re from, and that too seems to turn everything else upside down.)
With the parts collected and the acquisition of a jet pack, more searches continue. On a vertical wall, a portal takes me into a retro 2D platformer, with its own sketchy, colored pencil, doodle-on-the-wall style, as I jump over ledges and avoid more patrolling enemy spikes and blobs. Another mission has me using my jetpack to find and light with the gushing flame several candles hidden around the world. A plastic toy tub provides a moment of true magic: independent play.
Is this actually a round of Resogun – Resotub? does it work – as the plucky Jot transforms into an 80’s sunshade-clad action hero with a jetpack and a laser gun, and you make your way around the cylindrical tub, surviving wave after wave of enemy spaceships and rescuing civilians. Another art style – sort of a retro cartoon here? – another mechanic, another moment of impossible charm.
What you realize playing through The Plucky Squire is that this should be an inimitable work of an artist – and it is. James Turner, former designer of Pokémon such as Golurk, Sinistea and Gigantamax Pikachu at Game Freak, is one of the founders of developer All Possible Futures. Turner explains to me some little bits of development magic – how the 2D minigames and storybook segments are created by actually projecting those 2D elements onto a 3D world, for example – which I find almost impossible to understand. Suddenly, it’s impossible not to see the artist’s hand on everything – the change of artistic styles for one, but also the change of perspective, the change of frame and angle. Even the collectibles are a nice artistic touch: each one is a poster of a different character in the game, which is actually the actual concept art for those characters from the development.
And what you feel above all, really, is the love an artist has for his creations. Plucky Squire is joyful, delightful and inventive, but it’s also a game made with undeniable care. The kind of care that literally jumps off the page.
