The Plucky Squire - Steam Deck review

 


The Plucky Squire
a review

I've been wanting to play The Plucky Squire since it was announced and finally got around to buying it a few weeks back. It is Steam Deck verified so I dusted off the Deck and had a go.

The story is simple enough - you are The Plucky Squire, Jot, of the land of Mojo. Jot has had many adventures in his time most of them fighting, and defeating, the evil wizard Humgrump. This story is of how Humgrump learns that he, and all inhabitants of the land of Mojo, are characters in a book. Knowing this, he finally comes up with a way of ridding himself of his nemesis, Jot, by simply chucking him out of the book and into the real world. Once rid of Jot, Humgrump can take over the land of Mojo.

First impressions - the game is beautiful. It's split into two worlds - the book (gloriously presented in pen and ink like a child's story book) and the 3D world of the child who owns the book's desk, which is full of all kinds of cool stuff 10 year old kids should have on their desks all beautifully rendered.  Throughout the game you regularly play in both worlds.

The 2D world


Out of the book in the 3D world


The game itself is easy enough. I only struggled on a couple of the puzzles and I completed it in around 10 hours. 

The problem I had with it was...it was a little bit boring. Once you got past the wowness of the graphics and the two worlds idea, the gameplay was very samey all the way through. The other issue I had was that the controls could feel rather clunky at times. A good example of this is turning the pages of the book from inside the 3D world. It feels like something is wrong in the way it's been implemented and I often found myself flipping to the wrong page - rather frustrating.

The dialogue was a little long winded and the jokes, whilst coming thick and fast, were often just not funny. The voice over was great though!

My favourite part was when you got the jet-pack. It was cool flying around the desk and it plays a big part in the finale. My least favourite was the rhythm games. They were quite dull. Luckily, you could skip them.

Final thoughts: I grabbed this when I could get a key for less than £10. For a tenner it's worth it. It plays very well on the Steam Deck, though it does eat up battery power if playing at full whack. I only noticed a couple of frame drops here and there. It's good enough to enjoy a few hours of play before the novelty wears thin. I think the game was probably a bit too long overall.


Final score: 3/5 (mainly for the incredible graphics and the charming voice over - especially in Chapter 9 when his whole manner changes).




 



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