Video Game / The Plucky Squire

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The Plucky Squire is a 2024 puzzle/platformer developed by All Possible Futures, an indie studio formed by former Game Freak designer James Turner (where, in addition to designing various Pokémon from generations V through IX, also directed HarmoKnight and Tembo the Badass Elephant) and The Swords of Ditto developer Jonathan Biddle, and published by Devolver Digital.

Once upon a time, there was a plucky squire named Jot, who lived in the land of Mojo. With his mentor, the wizard Moonbeard, and his friends, the witch-in-training Violet and the mountain troll Thrash, he protected the land from the dastardly schemes of the villainous wizard Humgrump. Thus goes the tale of the children's illustrated book The Plucky Squire...

...until one day, when Jot confronts Humgrump, and he reveals that he has acquired a copy of The Plucky Squire; having skipped to the end and learnt that Jot always defeats him, he uses his magical power to push Jot out of his own book and into the real world, in the room of a young artistic boy named Sam. Now Jot must navigate through the hazards of both the two-dimensional book world and the three-dimensional real world to stop Humgrump from winning.

The game was released on September 17, 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.

The Plucky Squire contains examples of:

• Alpha Bitch: Clipso and Pinny are Violet's snobby schoolmates who constantly tease her about a mistake she made ages ago, calling her "Splat". They drop the attitude when she saves them from Humgrump's mage.
• Amphibian at Large: One achievement requires the player to make a frog in the Sonnet Swamp huge, growing it to around human height.
• And That's Terrible: According to Page the Bookworm, the book's reader is a boy named Sam, who is inspired by Jot's adventures, seem by the merchandise in his room and his drawings. He is destined to be a writer thanks to the current story, but that won't happen if Humgrump changes it and the boy loses interest. Page tells Jot that saving Sam's future is vital by defeating Humgrump.
• Animal Motifs: Butterflies for Humgrump. His poem about butterflies being rejected led to his Start of Darkness, his symbol is a very simplified butterfly, and he goes into a cocoon before emerging from it as a butterfly in his One-Winged Angel form.
• All Trolls Are Different: The mountain trolls are Metalhead warriors that make their home on Trarrg Mountain. One of these trolls is Thrash.
• Always Someone Better: Moonbeard is this to his older brother Humgrump, as he was always better at things compared to him. Although as Moonbeard points out, some of this is likely self-inflicted as Humgrump's pride results in him giving up the moment his brother bests him at something.
• Ascended Glitch: The glitchbirds' design was created from an actual glitched sprite in the honey badger boxing game.
• Back from the Dead: Humgrump's duel with Moonbeard at the start of the climax ends with the former vaporizing the latter. Luckily, Moonbeard's gaseous form ends up drifting out of the book and is absorbed by a napkin, and with the help of the potion he and Violet brewed offscreen earlier in the game, he's able to restore his body, albeit devoid of color, and returns to the book just in time to stop Humgrump from finishing Jot and company off.
• Bad Boss: Humgrump treats his minions terribly, including dropping one off a cliff for something that wasn't even his fault.
• Bad Ol' Badger: Jot and Pip encounter a big honey badger feasting on Benny the Bee's honey, and attacks them for interrupting its meal.
• Big Damn Heroes: The boss fight with Alowynia seems unwinnable: she cannot be talked down, deals moderate-to-high damage every turn, and Jot's attacks don't do much damage. When Jot hits about half health, Page shows up and casts a one-time strengthening spell that restores his health to full and buffs his attacks. She also helps Jot convince Alowynia that he is not a minion of Humgrump and is in fact fighting him, which causes her to stop the fight and lend him the elven bow.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The crux of the story thanks to Metamagic. Humgrump discovers the real world outside the book world and grabs a copy while harnessing Metamagic. Jot is banished from his own book, but absorbs some of this magic, allowing him to go to and from the book with the right tools.
  • Also done more traditionally in Chapter 6, where we cut to Moonbeard and Violet working on the potion, when Violet asks if the people "out there" can see them, Moonbeard says that they can, and, turning to the camera, says he can make them out too. He subsequently greets the player, with both of them waving at you, saying that he knows that you are helping the heroes and thanking you for your efforts.
• Brick Joke: The real world area in Chapter 7 is a dinosaur-themed "landscape" whose centerpiece is an erupting volcano, which Jot has to ascend while escaping a Tyrannosaurus prowling its slopes. Humgrump's ultimate defeat results in him landing on that same volcano and breaking his staff, leaving him powerless and at said tyrannosaur's mercy.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The Sonnet Swamp, complete with water puzzles, theater loving snails, and giant bugs.
• Cain and Abel: Humgrump is the Cain with Moonbeard being the Abel. Interestingly, despite Moonbeard getting vaporized by Humgrump, after the latter's staff is destroyed and he gets stuck in the dinosaur set-piece, Moonbeard still hopes that it might give Humgrump a chance to reflect on himself.
• Central Theme: Creativity and Inspiration.
  • Each of the "Mojam" trio is introduced by expressing their creativity from their home areas: Jot writes down his adventures in books, Violet specializes in painting with her magic, and Thrash spends his time climbing and rocking out on Trarrg Mountain.
  • Page tells Jot that the "Plucky Squire" storybook will go on to inspire Sam to become a successful writer, and with every day that passes, Sam builds new arts and crafts that all form the basis of his creativity (and the environments that Jot traverses outside of the book). The ending of the game even has Jot meet Time Tim, the brainchild of Sam as the main character of their own story that Jot's stories would go on to indirectly create and would give Sam his career.
  • Humgrump's scheme to take over the book for himself threatens Sam's future career if his mean-spirited writing style causes the book to become forgotten, and Page treats this as something that must be avoided at all costs. It was even Humgrump's very Creative Sterility that caused him to become the way he is now. Instead of improving his writing skills to make something for himself, he took the rejection of his poems VERY poorly and based his entire identity on things that already existed: basing his logo on butterflies and plastering it everywhere he goes, making tanks and armies from the machines on the cover of the "Machines of Mayhem" book that also sat on Sam's desk, and ultimately seeking to usurp the throne of Artia and the entire story of "The Plucky Squire" for himself before setting his sights on reality.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Jot and Thrash are forced to deal with Humgrump's forces on Trarrg Mountain, Violet stays behind with Moonbeard to learn magic and helps him brew an unspecified potion. Later, Moonbeard is evaporated by Humgrump, only to come back and save the heroes from him just in time. It turns out that he took the very potion he and Violet were brewing, which was apparently capable of restoring his physical form.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Justified - Page the bookworm tells Jot early on that the life force of the storybook they live in is dependent on the inspiration they give to the real-world kids who read them. If they stop being read, they get put away on shelves and left to collect dust, losing their life in the process as they become forgotten. This briefly comes to pass for the "Plucky Squire" book after its conversion into "The Magnificent Humgrump", where the book has already been placed on the top of Sam's bookshelf and everything inside - the characters, objects, and any metamagic portals - freezes. It gains just enough life to keep going until the finale when Jot manages to knock it down onto Sam's desk. Violet and Pip also didn't seem to be aware of it happening besides feeling cold, only to warm up when the book's life returned to it.
• Color Failure:
  • A variant. When Moonbeard comes Back from the Dead to save the heroes from being cornered by Humgrump, all of his colors have been turned white and a few shades of pale gray. This is because, as he reveals in the same scene, he was only able to restore himself after seeping into an ultra-absorbent piece of tissue.
  • This is what happens to the storybook itself midway through the climax, as Humgrump's Hostile Show Takeover causes the book to fully lose its life force while Jot leaves to regain his book-manipulation items, only regaining it after being moved back onto the desk.
• Control Freak: Overlaps with It's All About Me. Fed up with always being defeated by Jot, Humgrump is determined to take over the entire book and put himself in charge of every aspect of its setting, up to including the story itself.
• Creator Cameo: In Artia, which is filled with references to famous real life artists, is an artist named Jaym, who's name and appearance reference artist James Turner, one of the game's directors.
• Cursed with Awesome: It's implied that being banished from the book gives Jot the ability to jump in and out at will.
• Dark Is Evil: Once Humgrump enacts his Hostile Show Takeover of the storybook, its front and back covers turn black.
• Darkest Hour: The game has just reached its climax. Jot and company are about to confront Humgrump at Artia Castle. Humgrump and Moonbeard are facing each other, with the latter attempting to talk the former down. Then Humgrump pulls a surprise move, drops cages on both the heroes and the royal family, and vaporizes Moonbeard. The book swings shut, revealing its new title and protagonist: "The Magnificent Humgrump". The very outcome Jot has been fighting to prevent has come to pass.
• Death Mountain: Trarrg Mountain, home of the mountain trolls and lots of rocky obstacles.
• Equippable Ally: Jot meets a living rocket named Zip on the decorative cover of a coffee mug who needs his help to reassemble his father. During their time together, Zip attaches himself to Jot's back to let him fly higher with his jumps. He also calls for Jot and lends his aid during the final battle against Humgrump's butterfly form in the real world.
• Evil Is Petty: It's easy to miss, but tilting the "Plucky Squire" storybook to the back cover shows a small blurb along with a price tag of ₤7.99 and quote by the Daily Badger. After Humgrump wages his Hostile Show Takeover, you can see throughout the climax how he's turned the whole land of Mojo into a Crapsack World, how he's started ruining the book in the eyes of Sam, and turning it to the back cover reveals the blurb is now praising Humgrump unconditionally... and he also raised the price by 5 quid.
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: After Humgrump's final form is beaten, he falls onto the cardboard volcano from Chapter 7's dinosaur-themed setpiece. With his magic staff shattered, he's defenseless against the T. rex that Jot encountered earlier while ascending the volcano, leaving him with no choice but to run for his life.
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: The central aspect of gameplay is Jot being able to enter and exit his book at certain points, which allows him to bypass obstacles, as well as bring objects with him in either direction. He can also switch around certain words to alter what they describe within the book, and can later tilt the book's pages to move heavy objects around. Throughout the game Jot will also acquire magical items left by Moonbeard in the real world to be able to alter his book in certain ways from just outside it, such as a stamp to stop individual objects from moving. Humgrump is also capable of this, but mostly uses it to send his mooks to gather resources for his schemes.
• Final-Exam Boss: When initially fighting Humgrump, he takes the form of past bosses fought by each of the three heroes: the Mega Eagle for Thrash, the Mage for Violet, and the Honey Badger for Jot. Even the fight against his butterfly form in the real world becomes a 3D version of the rocket shooter minigame once Jot acquires Zip's help.
• Fisher King: After reducing Moonbeard to ink and ashes, Humgrump jails Jot and co. along with Queen Chroma. Once he takes the throne, the book itself changes into a black-covered copy of "The Magnificent Humgrump" with the evil wizard as the main character and the narrator taking his side.
• Fling a Light into the Future: An inverted example. Page the Bookworm reveals that she's actually from the future, and knows that Sam, the owner of the book the game takes place in, will grow up to become a successful author himself. The catch is that The Plucky Squire cannot inspire Sam to take up this career path if Humgrump takes over, so she's using the same Metamagic he discovered to travel back in time and teach it to Jot, which she hopes will enable him to stop the villain for good.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The real world begins interacting with the book long before Jot's confrontation with Humgrump: right at the start of chapter 2, after Jot, Violet, and Thrash go down the mountain, they see rocks falling down the mountain that fall off the page and enter the real world.
  • A real-world beetle crawls on the book well before beetles become a regular enemy.
  • In some of the real-world segments, Jot passes by a book titled "Machines of Mayhem", featuring a very threatening-looking machine on the cover. Right from the start of Chapter 6, the book cover suddenly becomes empty, foreshadowing its use by Humgrump to demolish and mine Trarrg Village.
  • Sam's desk set pieces in the real world are of varying time periods including fantasy, space and prehistoric. The main character of the successful book series he would author as an adult is Time Tim, a time-traveler, hinting at Time Tim's connection to Sam.
  • Right before the first encounter with Humgrump, the party encounters a cloaked, hooded figure who quickly flees from them. At another point, Jot meets a character named Time Tim, a time-traveler who guides him to the Bomb Stamp and wishes him well. The final cutscene in the game reveals that these two figures are one and the same — Tim had donned the disguise because despite wanting to meet the character that inspired his creator, he didn't want to intrude until Jot proved to him that his merit was genuine.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In-Universe. Page the Bookworm warns that Humgrump is capable of changing the book's story and its world via Metamagic, and it can even affect similar copies all over the real world if left unchecked.
• Growing Muscles Sequence: Jot visibly becomes more muscular for a couple boss fights and minigames (see Temporary Bulk Change below). The same applies to Thrash as well.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Lampshaded in Chapter 3 by Moonbeard while instructing Jot on entering and exiting the book using metamagic.
  Walk into the portal and try holding the Y button! What's a Y button? ...not entirely sure, but you should press and hold it!
• Heroic Mime: Jot has no dialogue of his own.
• Hint System: Minibeard can be found in several places with puzzles, and can be asked for hints to solve the puzzle in the current room. In the real world, a "My Talkin' Minibeard" figurine takes his place.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Humgrump's pride made him choose to blame the world for rejecting his terrible poetry instead of improving his skills, to the point his brother offering to help him just enraged him and made him choose villainy.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Humgrump taking over the Plucky Squire book is a cross between this and Fisher King. When he seizes the throne of Artia, not only does the book change from The Plucky Squire to The Magnificent Humgrump, the game itself reboots with the same title, with the vanity plates for All Possible Futures changing to One Possible Future, and Devolver Digital becoming Dethroner Digital.
• Intrepid Fictioneer: Jot's metamagic abilities allow him to jump into images from sources other than his book, letting him explore different worlds and retrieve unique items from there to aid him on his quest.
• Jet Pack: In Chapter 6, Jot gains the aid of a jetpack with the aid of Zip, a rocket which ties itself to his back for the real-world level, asking for his help in finding and reforging his father Zap.
• Lampshade Hanging: Late in the game, a couple of guards are worried about an enemy gate, which they've noticed only get opened when a room of guards are slain.
• Magitek: Moonbeard communicates long distance with the heroes using a "runetooth" headset.
• Medium Awareness:
  • When Humgrump finds a copy of the book he is in, he reads through it and learns that, as per the ending of the book, Jot always wins. It aggravates him so much, he uses his knowledge of the book and newly-acquired "Metamagic" to eject Jot from the book in a bid to change its ending to one where he wins. Ironically, this act also gives Jot the ability to use Metamagic, which alongside other items he finds in the real world allows him to influence the book world's environment to counter Humgrump.
  • As it turns out in Chapters 3 and 5, both Moonbeard and Queen Chroma were already aware of being characters in a book as well, and Jot's companions learn about it even if they have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.
• Medium Blending: After being expelled from his 2D book to the 3D real world, Jot finds himself able to move between the two worlds through specific points; he can also bring objects from one world to another, as when he needs to bring a real-world carrot to a 2D cartoon rabbit. Notably, when an object is brought from the real world (or from another fictional world, as is the case with the elven bow from Chapter 4) to the drawn world, it retains its art style.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Jot is noted to also be a writer, who transcribes his adventures into books that are very popular among the people of Mojo.
• Never My Fault: Humgrump's descent into villainy was kicked off when he was rejected by every publisher to which he tried to submit his terrible poetry. As Thrash questions why he didn't just work to get better at poetry since it's normal to be bad at something at first, Pip responds he never stopped to consider why he was turned down, and instead blamed everyone else for treating him like crap. Moonbeard's attempt to help him only enraged him even further, leading him to become the villainous Control Freak he is today.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: When Humgrump expels Jot from the book, some of the metamagic sticks with Jot, allowing him to enter and exit the book at certain locations. This allows Jot to overcome a variety of obstacles that would otherwise be impassable.
• Nice Mice: Pip is Jot's friend/sidekick and Moonbeard's trusty helper and is known to be the bravest mouse in all of Mojo.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Almost all the residents of Artia are based on famous living and historical artists, with their names being shortened nicknames derived from the real person.
• One-Winged Angel: After being defeated by the trio, Humgrump escapes the book and plans to rule the world outside the book, and transforms into a monstrous butterfly while doing it.
• Palmtree Panic: Boogie Beach, the setting of chapter 7.
• Pixellation: The character Banx in Artia has a censored appearance, referencing the anonymity of his real life inspiration Banksy.
• Planet of Hats: The setting of the Plucky Squire books, the Land of Mojo, is a world of creativity divided into areas themed after creative endeavors. The beginning area where Jot lives is based around literature, Violet's hometown of Artia takes after painting, and Thrash's homeland of Trarrg is themed after heavy metal music. On their quest the heroes travel through lands like the Sonnet Swamp and Boogie Beach.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Jot, Thrash, and Violet are unbreakable best friends, but no level of interest is expressed beyond that friendship.
• The Power of Rock: The trolls of Trarrg Mountain abide by this; Thrash's boss battles take shape in the form of a rhythm battle. Even the trees are shaped in the devil-horn "rock on" hand sign!
• Prehistoria: The "real world" area of Chapter 7, wherein Jot has to navigate a scene Sam apparently built offscreen with an assortment of dinosaur-themed toys, stickers, and cardboard cutouts. This culminates in his ascending an active volcano, fighting off the predatory creatures stalking its slopes along the way.
• Protagonist Title: Jot's hero title.
• Punny Name: Everyone, basically. The hero is called Jot. He's also a writer. Pip is a mouse, he's small. He's a pipsqueak. Ad infinitum.
• Rewriting Reality: One of the first puzzle elements the game introduces is detaching specific words from the storybook's writing to change the properties of whatever they refer to, like opening a gate that was locked, or changing the layout of the walls to open different passageways.
• Running Gag: Humgrump's mooks will typically refer to the heroes as "troublesome persons".
• Shout-Out:
  • The fight against the honey badger heavily visually resembles the fights in Punch-Out!!.
  • The gameplay of the fight against the Mega Eagle is very similar to the Karate Man game from Rhythm Heaven.
  • The fight against the Mage is a match-3 bubble shooter in the vein of Puzzle Bobble.
  • Jot's sword can be upgraded to be thrown and subsequently recalled, much like the Leviathan Axe.
  • To enter the main portion of the dinosaur-themed real-world area in Chapter 7, Jot has to activate a gate with two pieces of amber, each of which has a mosquito visible inside.
  • When Moonbeard reappears after what seemed like a certain death, he dons an all-white outfit and rechristens himself as "Moonbeard the Monochromatic".
• Sigil Spam: Humgrump loves to paint his logo on all of his stuff, including his machines and the palace when he takes over the book.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Jot must sneak past the beetles in Sam's room in Chapter 2, as they will instantly attack him if they see him. In Chapter 9, Pip also sneaks past guards in the data centers of Deep Doom, and Jot sneaks past guards and beetles through a fortress made by Humgrump in the real world to retrieve his sword and book-warping tools.
• Stylistic Suck: While Humgrump is writing the book, the narration is mean-spirited, repetitive, and overly wordy — the opposite of the original narrator, and the exact wrong way to write a children's book.
• Temporary Bulk Change: Both Jot and Thrash tend to suddenly gain buff muscles during their minigames where they fight bosses, along with shooting down a swarm in two of Jot's bouts. A picture in the art gallery reveals that there's no real reason for this sudden bulking up beyond the creators thinking it's cool.
• Tennis Boss: All of Thrash's boss fights, with Krong, the Mega Eagle, and finally Humgrump-as-the-Mega-Eagle, involve the opponent throwing something at Thrash which he must bash with his drumsticks at the right time; while initially these items break when hit, at the end of their combo, they throw a large object at Thrash which must be hit back and forth a few times before it finally deals damage to them.
• Token Trio: Jot (fair skinned male), Violet (dark-skinned girl), and Thrash (mountain troll).
• Took a Level in Badass: During the later chapters when things are getting dire, Violet and Thrash individually decide that they need to find the courage to help Jot, and join melee combat with Jot as automated A.I. partners after typically sitting out and letting Jot handle all the combat.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Humgrump usurps both the kingdom of Artia and the entire book at the start of the climax, imprisoning the party before turning the entire setting into a dystopian hellhole. Naturally, his changes to the place are swiftly undone once Jot defeats him for good.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Although a top-down action/adventure Zelda-like at heart, the minigames and boss battles pull from a variety of genres, including match-3 puzzlers, shmups, and rhythm games, as well as homages to specific games like Punch-Out!!.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Chapter 6's climax is a schmup where Jot has to ward off an alien invasion while saving scientists. Humgrump in his butterfly form is one as well, in the real world.
• Unhand Them, Villain!: Sort of. In Chapter 6, Humgrump punishes one of his minions for dropping a saw blade by telling his minions to "let him go", only for the minion to be dropped off Trarrg Mountain. Humgrump even lampshades how clever he is.
  Humgrump: Ahahaha. "Let go". Hahaha. Am I not extremely skilled with puns and wordplay?