The Plucky Squire ups the difficulty with free Challenge Update

The Plucky Squire was an adorable kid-friendly action game from last year that touched the heart of just about anyone who played it. While it nailed the “playable children’s picture-book” aesthetic, the game wasn’t known for its gameplay difficulty, and may have come across as a bit toothless for players looking for a more challenging experience. That has changed with the new Challenge Update, a free patch for the PC version of the game which introduces new difficulty options, enemies and minigame variants for you to make the Plucky Squire’s quest as arduous as you choose.

“We’re landing a huge game update packed with new features that will completely change your experience with The Plucky Squire!” writes developer All Possible Futures on Steam. The post goes into many of the new game modes introduced in this update. The first of which is Challenge Mode, a variant on the original game. It provides new enemies, harder minigames and bosses as well as some alternate level layouts. Players can now also fast forward through the dialogue, if they desire.

⚔️ Introducing The Challenge Update! ⚔️A huge free update that transforms your Plucky Squire experience with:💥 Challenge Mode💪 Iron Squire Mode😈 New enemies & variants🎯 Minigame updatesThink it was too easy? This update might just change your mind…

— The Plucky Squire (@thepluckysquire.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T17:18:49.214Z

The new enemy variants include glowing metamagic variants of Barfer Bug, Bat, Goblin Spear Trooper and Popuff. In Challenge Mode, various enemies are granted new modifiers, including foes that hit harder, explode or are invulnerable. In addition, nearly all of the minigames will include new difficulty settings and layouts, keeping them fresh for a new playthrough and letting players dial up the challenge.

Finally, if you thought all of the above was too much of a walk in the park, you can also engage the Iron Squire Mode. Just like it sounds, this Ironman mode for The Plucky Squire removes all continues; if you get a game over, your save file is deleted. The Challenge Update includes four new achievements for the game associated with the new game modes for players to unlock.

The Plucky Squire was always intended to be a family-friendly sort of experience. That said, it’s nice of All Possible Futures to cater towards the game’s periphery fanbase of older gamers keen on more of a challenge. The Challenge Update is already available for players of The Plucky Squire on Steam, and will be heading to the console versions “soon“.