The Plucky Squire

 The Plucky Squire

Notation: If you haven't noticed, there is a reason why I'm not properly reviewing this game in your typical fashion. After playing 280 minutes and reaching Chapter 8, my game failed to have enough video memory to load the next part in the story. Now, I noticed something happening very early in the game where my gameplay was rather sluggish. I turned down the graphics a smidge. Around Chapter 2, my game oddly crashed. I took steps to lower the graphics a little more. Unfortunately, I should have taken that as a warning that there might be a chance of not being able to reach the end of the game. There is this consistent presence of handling both the 2D-space in the story book and the 3D environment that permeates around the realistic room. 

Story: What I did play through reminded me a lot of Adventure Time. You do not know how the story is going to evolve as you encounter unusual beings and travel through unknown lands in the pursuit of reaching some destination in the far future of your game. While you take on a Zelda-like adventurer that can only use a sword in the general world, you do have the assistance of your wizard guide, magic caster friend, and very playful side-kick. The main villain finds out that he loses every encounter because the story is written that way in a book. So, he takes matters in his own hands by manipulating events with objects from the outside world. Similarly, you can manipulate the world by changing the written words and using tools from other stories. 

Mechanics: While the game doesn't give you a variety of ways to fight your enemies directly, it throws a ton of new ways to interact with the world. You'll learn how to flip the book to skip between chapters, tilt the book to make big objects slide across the landscape, a stamp that freezes things in place, and another stamp that throws a bomb into the world. Another big aspect is exploring the living room for one of these new devices. The volume of the room doesn't change each time but what exists fits a certain theme when you go exploring. The game also has a fascinating way to throw a number of mini-games at you (like Punchout). 

Collectibles: What I really liked was the number of hidden scrolls that review some original concept art with notes written on the side. There's also glitchbirds (that were formed from an actual glitch in the game). Lightbulbs can be gathered within the landscape to buy new attack patterns. These will upgrade the damage you deal with your sword and allow you to throw your sword, attack in the air, or attack in all directions.

Saving: The way your game saves is kind of unusual. Since there are ways to backtrack through the story again, the game doesn't quite save at every flip of the page. It doesn't save you at a certain point in the story if you collect something, but your file will know when you picked an item up. The game always saves before a major event. You will hear your friends talk about something all over again if you quit during the cutscene. There isn't a way to manually save, but the game informs you how long it has been since you last saved.