Joy is a bit of an understatement, I think, but at Summer Game Fest this year it felt like the closest thing to a running theme. Astro Bot and Lego Horizon Adventures were both a breeze, fun, family fun games that put all their focus on simply having a good time. The Plucky Squire, an action game with an internal dimension hopping twist, however, probably just pipped them to the top spot in the race to be the most joyous experience I had all week.
In fact, it was some of the most fun I’ve had in video games in a while. Plucky Squire is a delight.
The setting here included an opening sequence in a 2D installment of The Plucky Squire, the main storybook. What stands out is how the edges of the pages, although always visible, seem to just melt away here. You’re in it, playing a top-down Zelda-like adventure, slashing at little enemy blobs with your sword or using a nice little throw-and-pull system for it like a boomerang summoned with hand. You jump over ledges and chasms from green scrolls placed on the ground, which lead you to the corresponding green scrolls on the other side. Then you hit an obstacle – a large spinning shredder that looks rather strange and, frankly, suspiciously out of place for this little pastel-colored fairy tale – and you jump into another spin and – oh! – you immediately jumped off the page.
I will never tire of such moments. Fez’s world turn, Portal’s portal jump, Superliminal’s or Manifold Garden’s match lines. Plucky Squire is different – it’s not an on-demand thing, but a change 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 led me into the world of desktop 3D. Suddenly you’re no longer in Zelda, but in Toy Story, A Bug’s Life. You’re riding over small piles of notebooks and along with precariously balanced papers or rulers, with games – the telltale desktop of a procrastinator, I know a friend when I see one. A small wizard, located 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 land too high for a jump. We are on an old 3D platform. I smelled an unlockable skill.
The wind is right: around the world there are other characters who need help, who will give you a skill in return. The most notable is a jet pack, which emits a long tail of flame as you climb a little higher—flame that lights up wonderfully, I should add, that flickers and glows and casts shadows on a world that seems to have settled down a little. time. around dusk.
Unlocking this jetpack took some work. I would encounter another small swirl of bright colors, this time on the surface of a mug. I went for the mug, themed out of some kind of space cartoon and a little rocket in distress. Its parts are scattered across the desktop and need recovery. (If you’re wondering what the story is behind all this 2D-3D crossing of worlds, by the way, there’s a charmingly convenient magical explanation: the evil wizard, Humgrump, is using his magic to try and control the book’s history from you are, and that seems to turn everything else upside down.)
With those parts collected and the jetpack acquired, more research continues. On a vertical wall, a portal takes me to a retro 2D platformer, with its own sketchy, colored pencil art style, a doodle on the wall, as I jump ledges and dodge more patrolling enemy spikes and spikes. Another mission requires me to use my jetpack to find and, with its burning flame, light some candles hidden around the world. A plastic toy tub offers a moment of true magic: a game of its own.
This is effectively a round of Resogun – Resotub? Does this work? – as dashing Jott transforms into a shadowy ’80s action hero with a jetpack and laser gun, and you make your way around the tub surviving wave after wave of enemy spaceships and rescuing civilians. Another art style – something like 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 artist’s inimitable work – and it is. James Turner, formerly a designer of Pokémon like Golurk, Sinistea and Gigantamax Pikachu at Game Freak, is one of the founders of developer All Possible Futures. Turner explains to me some small bits of development magic – how 2D mini-games and storybook segments were created by actually projecting these 2D elements into a 3D world, for example, which I find almost impossible to i understand Suddenly it’s impossible not to see the artist’s hand in everything – changing art styles for one, but also changing perspective, shifting frame and angle. The collectibles are also 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 development.
And what you feel above all, really, is the love an artist has for their creations. Plucky Squire is fun and cute and inventive, but it’s also a game that’s been made with unquestionable care. The kind of care that literally jumps off the page.