The Plucky Squire managed to melt my E3-hardened heart

I gotta be honest: when the trailer for the Plucky Squire (opens in new tab) opened with a view of a Toy Story-esque child’s room, softly lit in the afternoon light, I was prepared to check out. “This is probably not for me,” I thought. But as the Plucky Squire storybook opened up to reveal top-down, Zelda-style gameplay in a gorgeous, 2D animation style, I changed my tune quick.

That wasn’t the only Nintendo homage in the game’s all-too-brief trailer at Devolver’s E3 season show: hero Jot also engaged in Punch Out-style fisticuffs, and, most surprising of all, jumped off the page of his storybook into the “real” world, with the game taking on an art style similar to the gorgeous, tilt shift, toybox look of Yoshi’s Crafted World or the Link’s Awakening remake.