PAX Australia 2023: Learning all about The Plucky Squire
PAX Australia is a wonderful show, where there are games galore, dice to be rolled and of course, lines to stand in. While not showing anything at the show, I was able to catch up with All Possible Futures co-founder and co-director of The Plucky Squire Jonathan Biddles.
We spoke about many things, so take a read to see what it takes to make a game that can leap from the page at anytime.
Maxi-Geek: We got to speak about a month ago, after the game was being shown off at Gamescom. How was the reaction to that showing?
Jonathan: Really good, we showed the game here and at Gamescom and we go a lot of the same response. We found a lot of people warmed to the same things that we thought was fun. You know we have sections on the desk where you can go in and out of different media, sliding down flags for example, going into the walls of a castle. That has been such a bit hit with people and its made us take that sort of stuff and work it a bit more into the rest of the game, which has been really useful. People are also really loving the colourful characters in the animated scenes, so it’s gone down really well.
People are saying that it’s a charming thing, that it makes them feel that warm nostalgic, almost like it’s a childish thing, but at the same time not. It’s been quite heartening as well, because we had to work quite hard to get that demo in a place where we could show it off. But it’s been worth it, it galvanised us and getting the game in front of people, seeing their smiles, it makes it worth it.
Maxi-Geek: So to me, when I look at The Plucky Squire, I get vibes of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but you know made by not-Nintendo. Have you found that people are getting that same reaction, or are they enamoured with the games striking visuals?
Jonathan: Well, I think we definitely have brought people in with how it looks, the first thing they see is Jamie’s art and they love it. Then they find out about the main mechanic, that you know it doesn’t just take place within a book, you can leave it and the desk is part of the adventure and I think that is what really resonates with people so much.
From the moment we showed the first trailer, people loved it, they did this sweep of the room, with the games big animated characters and people were saying that ‘this is nice’. At that time, we were in amongst a lot of shooters and horror games, so we kind of stood out and people were just excited by that, but when Jot leapt out of the book, it was a real mic drop and that is really where our strength has been.
People love that idea, it sets their imaginations going and our job really is to live up to those expectations and we definitely do, we tend to go to a lot of places that people don’t expect and that whole idea of 2D and 3D, that’s our heart. We actually made a lot of decisions around that, because if it was just a 2D or 3D action game, there are studios out there that will do that much better than we could but the swapping between, that is where our heart is and its something only we can do.
Maxi-Geek: You mention about swapping between 2D and 3D and my brain goes to Super Paper Mario on the Wii. That is not a 1-to-1 comparison of course, but have there been any games that have provided inspirational elements to The Plucky Squire?
Jonathan: It is interesting, Nintendo games have always been at the heart of what Jamie and I have been interested in, they have driven a lot of our tastes and its informed the kind of games that we want to make. There are a lot of games around at the moment, but we are so busy making our game, we don’t really have enough time to play them and be influenced by them. A lot of what is in our game has come from the mechanic first, we didn’t set out to make a game like A Link to the Past, that form has been taken by the idea of a book that you leave and then everything is informed from that. What is a book? What does a book look like? What can you do in a book? What happens to the desk with that book? Those sort of things were what we were thinking, so we have purposely taken inspiration from other games, but our love of classic games has informed things.
Jamie and I have made a lot of smiles, we have both worked at Nintendo and made original titles for them, so we learned a lot doing that. The way that the game is structured, being based in a book, is quite freeing, as we can express ourselves in any way as a page can have anything on it, it doesn’t need to be a Zelda presentation or a Mario sidescroller. So we’ve taken that idea and its allowed us to just put things in that we’ve always wanted to make, like a boxing game and a fighting game.
I play a lot of Street Fighter and the idea of making my own little fighting game, I mean I put a lot of things in there, its commentators, stamina gauges, hit boxes, it has everything a fighting game does, but its over in sixty seconds. But everything is about expressing the things we want to make and finding the fun in things that interest us.
Maxi-Geek: I suppose to that tonally book number 2 in a series can be quite different to the first or the third, so if there were more games, you are not limited to the basic structure you have made.
Jonathan: Yeah
Maxi-Geek: With the game having its unique visual style and its gameplay mechanic, has there been anything from what you have shown publicly that people have connected to that you didn’t expect them to?
Jonathan: Interesting question. Well they’re interested in the characters, we have 3 characters in the game, the main one being Jot. He is the hero of the book but he has his two friends, Violet and Thrash and the have been friends going way back. They have always taken a back seat as the book is about the Plucky Squire, so as part of the story they do become a bigger part of the tale. I guess when people see these characters following you around, people have been asking who are these characters? What can they do? Why can’t they do more? And the story does mean they get to do more later, but its been interesting to see how people resonate and what these characters to be part of the game up front. It is interesting that people make that link, that these people should be doing something and we agreed that they were right, they should be.
Maxi-Geek: So platform wise, you are hitting all of them. Was there a platform you wanted to hit, you did and then thought we could do more? Or was it always the plan to be on all?
Jonathan: We are platform agnostic, we just wanna make games for everyone and the more people we reach, the better. Doing what we do is a real privilege, like my job is to make people smile, I just love that. People who don’t make games, they ask what my job is and I say I make videogames and they smile. So yeah its my job to make people smile, it’s a great job and the more people I make smile the better. More platforms, all good.
Maxi-Geek: We have both touched upon the art style of the game, which is drawn by Jamie. Was there any sense of this was the style we wanted, or was it that compared to other titles by Devolver Digital, it was purely the best style to stand out?
Jonathan: So we have an already mature art style, because Jamie has been spending a lot of time drawing and he’s a very capable artist in lots of other styles as well, it’s not the only style he can draw. We looked at other concepts before we did this, we looked at them and it ended up being ‘this is my style, how about we make a book in that style’. That ended up being what came before anything else, before we worked with Devolver, and I have worked with them before and when we put the game in front of them, they instantly got it. I don’t think it was ever an ideal we were chasing, that we needed to have a unique style, it came again from the opposite direction, that we have style we want to push forward.
So that’s where that came from and it just so happens to fit with the Devolver aesthetic, not like literally as we don’t have the blood and gore, not that all their games do, but we do have that uniqueness.
Maxi-Geek: As we talk, we are standing across from the Devolver Digital booth and we see a game about reincarnation and on the other side of the booth its about sacrifice, so they have range.
Jonathan: Exactly.
Maxi-Geek: Myself personally I am a story guy, a good story can draw me in, regardless of what the game looks like, so if its not interesting then I am not interested. Have there been any discussions about the characters and introducing them to players, before the game launches?
Jonathan: Yeah, I think we’ll definitely do something in the lead up to the game, so people have an understanding, or at least if they want to follow, because there are a lot of characters and the story is a huge part of the game. We have a game set in a book and what we didn’t want people to do is think that story didn’t matter, because it was set in a kids book. When something goes wrong in a kids book, there are not really obstacles or consequences, but this actually goes much further. The story is something that affects the real world and the future of creativity of the kid who owns the book.
So we’ve made sure that these things are a big part of the game and the characters in the book are a big part in saving the book, which affects this child’s life. So yeah there is a lot going on.
Maxi-Geek: Something that I was curious about when I first saw the game, the leaping from 2D to 3D and you said the mechanically, that sort of came together first before gameplay. Was there ever a time when you doubted that the mechanic would work, like maybe it was too much? Or was it like, the moment you came upon it, it was like liquid gold?
Jonathan: Yeah it was the latter and the problem was limiting it, like we didn’t want to as there were so many ways we could push it, it’s astounding and we pulled back from that. We had to, because we knew we’d never be able to ship if we looked into all the ideas, so we never really once doubted it, it was more to make sure we didn’t go to far with it.
Maxi-Geek: Something I always like to ask at the end of an interview, is there anything that you’re excited about yourself, that is in the game and you can’t wait for people to see?
Jonathan: Yeah, I wonder if people underestimate it a little, there is more to it than is in the trailers. We’ve worked really hard, like I said the 2D and 3D are at the heart of of it and we’ve done a lot to magnify what is a book and what does that mean to people, what does gameplay set in a book look like? So there is a lot more and I’m looking forward to seeing what people think about the depth in there.
Maxi-Geek: That was all I had, so thanks for speaking with me.
Jonathan: Yeah thank you.
