The Brave Squire (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £24.99)
Pronunciation: A real page turner
This squire is certainly brave. With his jaunty hat and gleaming sword, he bounds through the pages of a fairytale land, slaying monsters and righting wrongs. His friends—and he seems to have many, all of them crazy—call him Jot.
It is an apt name, because Jot is actually a note or illustration. When I said “storybook land” above, I meant a literal storybook: the adventures of this brave squire are played out on the pages of a children’s book.
When he’s not jumping like Mario or swinging his sword like Link, he can move words around to advance the story. The page turns. It’s delightfully clever.
And it gets even smarter. Thanks to the dark plans of the evil wizard Humgrump, Jot is thrown out of his paper land and into the real world of a young boy’s bedroom. A 2D experience turns into a 3D experience.
The Plucky Squire is a 2024 action-adventure platform game
It is developed by All Possible Futures and published by Developer Digital
The game follows the magical adventures of the fairytale characters Jot and his friends as they discover a 3D world beyond the pages of their book
Soon, thanks to another magical intervention, you’re navigating Jot between these two realms—the book and the bedroom—taking objects and ideas from one to the other, disrupting Humgrump’s plan to undermine the ending of this particular story. The transitions are seamless.
It’s such a brilliantly simple idea that you wonder why no one has done it before. Although sometimes you wish it was a little more complicated.
The unique premise of The Plucky Squire isn’t quite matched by its moment-to-moment gameplay (platforming and combat), which can feel a little too straightforward and derivative.
But if the game is as cheerful as this overall, does it matter? Not really.
This bravest of squires is a new literary hero. I hope he stays here.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £34.99)
Pronunciation: A legal eagle soars
The Ace Attorney series has always had a great reputation among gaming enthusiasts, although at times it was really just a reputation.
Stuck on older hardware or limited to their native Japan, these crime-solving games haven’t always been easy to play, with unscrupulous fans having to resort to unofficial English translations downloaded from the darkest corners of the internet.
So far, at least.
District Attorney Miles Edgeworth and the cast of family, friends and enemies who test his patience
Japanese publisher Capcom has had a brilliant run recently with Ace Attorney, polishing up all of their older games to make them shine on the Nintendo Switch. Now they’ve completed that task with the release of the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection.
Here are stunning versions of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, which first released in 2010 for the Nintendo DS, and its sequel, Prosecutor’s Gambit, which was released exclusively in Japan in 2011.
You can choose between the pixelated graphics of the original versions or beautiful new HD anime versions.
It’s no surprise that Capcom started this pair last. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re somewhat atypical.
Here you don’t play as a defense attorney like Phoenix Wright, but as the confident prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, so it’s a different experience.
The main difference is Edgeworth’s more investigative skills. He wanders around crime scenes looking for clues and drawing conclusions based on what he finds.
With these parts completed, the more traditional Ace Attorney experience of cross-examining witnesses and finding holes in their statements in order to come up with rebuttals that could break the case comes next.
Japanese publisher Capcom has been having a lot of success lately with Ace Attorney, polishing up all their older games to make them shine on the Nintendo Switch.
Edgeworth roams crime scenes, looking for clues and drawing conclusions based on what he finds
It’s a lot of fun to do, even though the cross-examinations sometimes feel a bit like trial and error.
In the cases of these two games, you are treated to compelling overarching crime stories and character studies of Edgeworth and his friends and adversaries, some of the best personalities in all of gaming.
Now Capcom just needs to give us more. Not remakes of older games, but a whole new Ace Attorney game to train our legal brains. Only then will justice really be done.
