The Indie Informer

I don’t know how to blunt the impact of what I need to say, so I guess I’ll just get it over with. The Plucky Squire is playable, mostly.

During last month’s preview, the game’s undeniably delightful world primed my expectations for a magical adventure. Unfortunately as the game unfolded, so too did game-ruining bugs. It didn’t matter how charmed I was by traveling through a dino diorama, how perfect the art-themed jokes of Artia were, how creative every unexpected genre transition was, because every step of my adventure was haunted by the fear that some technical hiccup would turn my enjoyment into frustration. And often it did.

Truely, I hope some day-one-patch magic will keep players from falling into the pits that I did because I’d love to play this title unblemished. Starting back where my previous preview ended, I was on a high note. The painterly plaza of Artia — home of this world’s ruler — is remarkable even in a game filled with striking visuals.

This has a lot to do not only with the vibrant setting, but the endless art references. Mona Lisa ambles past a pigmented fountain, Frida Kahlo stands admiringly beside a display of her favorite subjects, and a panda version of Andy Warhol are just some of the cameos art nerds like me can look forward to. The Plucky Squire’s greatest city is also home to my friend, the magic-wielding painter Violet. And while an attempt is made to hint at some kind of backstory, the game’s narrative proves a bit shallow.

The same can be said for my musically inclined companion’s hometown arc in the heights of TARRG. Lovely to look at, but very little under the surface. Both realms offers clever gameplay. In Artia — or rather just outside its pages in the 3D-rendered real world which I have the power to cross into — I discover gloves that let me tilt my 2D world’s pages. That just happens to be exactly what I need to get a rather rotund piggy to return to its home and out of my way.

Meanwhile, in the rocking mountain trolls’ domain, the boss battles get rhythmic, with gameplay resembling my favorite melody-based games, like Melatonin. It’s just not enough to keep me from wondering why I care so little for my friends’ scantily fleshed-out plights or getting annoyed with the game’s tendency to over-affirm everything. These would, perhaps, be small irritations if not for the major technical problems.

My controls have a truly unfortunate tendency to break down completely. Attempting to manipulate the storybook with my fourth-wall-breaking powers could cause my powers to simply break. Unable to do anything else no matter what I pushed, I had to, on multiple occasions, quit out of the game and come back to get anything to work.

At one point, it didn’t matter how many times I restarted the experience. I had to completely skip a laser-shooting minigame because I literally could not shoot. Luckily, the title has excellent accessibility options which allowed for this, otherwise, this might have been a bonafide game-breaking bug.

Puzzles are a core element of this adventure, and with any puzzle game, the player needs to trust there is a solution to find. The bugs I encountered cast a shadow of doubt over every challenge that took more than a few moments to figure out. I found myself worrying in these moments that faulty tech would keep me from progressing past any given point. It was difficult to embrace the magic of the game while I was under this cloud.

It speaks volumes about The Plucky Squire‘s irresistible personality that a late-game change-up had me back in one hundred percent. The narrative grew stronger, the visuals even more spectacular, the gameplay increasingly creative. I was back on board and looking forward to the climatic closing chapters. Until the final boss battle. Once again I found myself fighting against technical bugs rather than virtual ones. I was unceremoniously yeeted off the field of battle to a place where I could no longer attack but the enemy could certainly hit me. The result was a slow helpless death I had to endure before starting that phase of the fight all over again. It wasn’t how I wanted to end my eight-hour runtime. In the end, the title’s glittering potential was blotted out by its somber execution.