Storybook-style adventure game The Plucky Squire received an update on Dec. 11 that adds a new “streamlined mode” for cutting down on its excessive, gameplay-stopping tutorialization.
“Streamlined mode is intended for more experienced players who want less guidance and more action,” The Plucky Squire developer All Possible Futures wrote in a post explaining the update. “For example! A door unlocks — do you really need the game to stop and the camera to pan over and look at it opening? Maybe not! In Streamlined Mode, it doesn’t! We’ve cut some fat from the dialogue in Streamlined Mode — a line here, a line there… It’s not like we’ve hacked away entire scenes, just trimmed bits for a more… streamlined… experience.”
As noted by senior Polygon editor Oli Welsh in his review, The Plucky Squire — in its default mode — is full of great ideas hampered by overbearing guardrails. I gave up on the game just a few hours in when it became clear I was never going to be allowed to play without frequent interruptions by unnecessarily lengthy cutscenes and characters pointing out obviously important objectives. Let’s hope this update allows The Plucky Squire to establish something better than the stop-and-go rhythm that hurt it at launch.
Here are the full patch notes:
- Shorter, snappier dialogue that lets you enjoy the story but gets you to the action quicker
- Fewer camera events that slow down player action
- Added dialogue portraits for major characters
- Added an in-game language change option
- Added More Save History slots and moved them to “Load Save” in the “Save Files” menu
- Fixed soft lock in credits
- Fixed bottom half of Alowynia card being blacked out
- Various fixes to collision issues
