The Plucky Squire

We've been absolutely spoiled by excellent platforming games recently, and The Plucky Squire is up there with the best of them. Controlling Jot in this fourth-wall-breaking adventure is an utter delight. It's a shame a few bugs persist, but they're not quite enough to stop The Plucky Squire being one of the highlights of the year so far.

The Plucky Squire is a fantastic experience with a unique way to complete puzzles, and it is playable on the Steam Deck with some compromises.

The Plucky Squire is charming, offering an involving story and enjoyable gameplay with unique hooks, even if it takes some time to open up.

The Plucky Squire is a joyful, beautifully visualized adventure game, bursting with inventive ideas that will make you feel like a kid again.

The Plucky Squire is that clever. It’s a game that is impossible to dislike, young or old gamers, a breath of fresh air and a colossal display of creativity and talent. Finding a game that looks like it is a daunting task, and while it may not win a GOTY award because it’s not something designed for the masses and with AAA marketing, it will be game of the year for many, many players who love new and original experiences. The Plucky Squire is a story that is certain to have a happy ending, right as it should be, and no evil wizard will be able to do anything about it.

The Plucky Squire is an incredible action-adventure game combining 2D and 3D, but needs just a little more shine

This cute puzzle-platformer that goes brilliantly off-book.

The Plucky Squire is both a familiar and predictable, and gorgeously ambitious and creative title. At its best, it's a dimension-hopping romp with excellent meta-writing, standout set-pieces and mini-games, and undeniably creative puzzle mechanics. However, the game does suffer from an aggressively accessible approach, which makes the moment-to-moment combat and exploration feel like a derivative Zelda-clone at times. Plus, each puzzle mechanic feels like an intriguing concept that has not developed to its full potential. That being said, The Plucky Squire is an undeniably feel-good and wholes...

An ingenious puzzle-platformer that takes players from a children's book and out into the wider world around it.

While The Plucky Squire could have benefited from being fleshed out even just a little bit more, it still provides a unique genre-hopping adventure, one that perfectly captures a feeling a childlike wonder in Jot and the land of Mojo. With fun gameplay, cool puzzles and a great use of different mechanics and genres, and eye-catching artwork, it easily stands out as a storybook adventure worth checking out.

A Plucky Squire might entertain a younger audience, but it offers little to engage those of a more mature disposition, which is disappointing coming from a publisher such as Devolver.

The Plucky Squire can’t compete on either count. It’s a fantastic concept but a lackluster design that neither surprises players nor meaningfully empowers them. It’s a classic example of a game that must have made for a thrilling half-hour demo at the pitching stage, but that never quite found itself in production. For all its borderline-smug jollity and borderline-twee sense of wonder, and for all the careful craft and evident effort that went into its making, it lacks inspiration in itself, and engenders none in the player. The light bulb is there, but it never pops on.