Making The Plucky Squire (before someone else did)

gamesindustry.biz:

There's something uniquely exciting about a game with a novel twist, and that's exactly what The Plucky Squire brings to the table.

All Possible Futures' long-awaited debut title explores a perspective-shifting mechanic in a fresh way, with its characters existing inside a 2D book but able to jump out of it to explore the world in 3D around it. The title is launching today on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC, and was unveiled at its publisher Devolver Digital's 2022 summer showcase – a reveal that the developers were eager to get out.

"We were always worried that someone from Nintendo, or Ubisoft, or just someone, would do a game where you're a character in a book and you get out of the book – because it's an idea that, as soon as you think of it, it just goes somewhere and you know there's something in it," Jonathan Biddle tells GamesIndustry.biz. All Possible Futures' co-founder (and the game's co-director) previously co-founded Curve Digital, leaving it in 2015 to become indie. He then went on to have great success with 2018's action RPG The Swords of Ditto.

"We released the first trailer quite early because we were so worried about that, we thought what we had was so unique that if someone else had the same idea, we would be screwed basically," he smiles.

This first trailer immediately garnered a lot of positive reactions and interest from players, which is down to the game's exciting mechanics but also to the "message it's sending," Biddle says.

"It's the heart in the game," he continues. "People want to feel joy. And sometimes it's lacking in video games. Obviously there's a bunch of great video games around that do have plenty of joy in them, but the general way the games are going is becoming more serious, more grounded, more realistic. And we're just trying to have fun. And people pick up on that and I think that's why it's gone somewhere."

He says that the team loved seeing people's reaction to the original trailer, witnessing the moment where it switches from