The Plucky Squire review – the power of imagination

It’s probably strange to accuse a game like The Plucky Squire of realism. This is a game in which a heroic character from a children’s fantasy book can leap from the pages and rove around the bedroom desk on which the book was being read. It’s a game in which you can move back and forth, from 2D illustration to chunky, squishy 3D in the name of adventure.

The Plucky Squire reviewDeveloper: All Possible FuturesPublisher: Devolver DigitalAvailability: Out 17th September on PS5, Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam)

But that desk you end up on. It’s something else. It’s something I recognise. And it may be the thing that really lifts this game into the realm of magic. The book is lovely stuff, obviously, all bustling towns and sloshing swamps, all mysterious forests and towering mountains. But the desk is its own magical space, where the shifting architecture is built from old wooden blocks and pots of ink, where a bridge may be made out of a ruler and Post-It blocks might lean together to form a rudimentary house.

It’s a reminder that childhood is often a time of looking at things up close and for prolonged periods. Wood grain. The scuffed backs of playing cards. The domestic world has the power to slightly hypnotise when you’re a kid, I think. It has the power to present endless cascading possibilities, to merge day and day-dream. The Plucky Squire captures this beautifully.

In turn this explains why a game made of such simple, even basic pieces – combat, a little platforming, regular puzzles – comes together to create something singular. By building itself from the same things a child’s imaginative world is made from, it transforms a nicely built game into something ingenious and quietly moving.