Ruffy and the Riverside

Ruffy and the Riverside is a laudable game in many ways. Any fan of Nintendo 64-era platformers is likely to take one look at the trailer for Ruffy and immediately start scrounging around for their wallet to buy a copy. Ruffy absolutely nails the look and feel of classic 3D character-driven games, with fun characters, bouncy music, and a bright, chunky world to explore. And I actually had a lot of fun playing Ruffy, once I figured out how to overcome the sudden, random nausea that would overcome me after a half-hour of play.

Let me explain, as this is not likely to be an issue for most players. I was surprised it bothered me at all. I’m not one of those people that get motion sickness from 3D videogames very often. But there is something about Ruffy’s mix of 2D characters and 3D spaces, and something about the way the camera swings around to capture the action, and something about the way that every single character in Ruffy just seems to be bouncing all the time, and something about how the characters and world seem to be operating at different frame rates. Cumulatively, this all makes me a little unsteady, and ultimately uncomfortable. My guts get a little liquid-y, and I find myself taking breaks and looking at the floor to steady myself. I eventually solved the problem with Dramamine (gamer pro-tip), and was able to play comfortably after that.

I didn’t mean to start my review of Ruffy by shrieking, “Ruffy will make you sick!” because it likely will not. Pretty sure this is a me thing, and for the record, I am absolutely not letting this experience impact the game’s score. In fact, the game looks absolutely amazing, with a unique art style that is unlike any other I’ve seen before in gaming. Ruffy and all the other characters in the game are hand drawn, and kinda 2D-ish. Picture Paper Mario characters, who always seem to shift to face the camera. The world itself is a modern take on old-school Banjo-style levels, all brilliant colors and flat polygons painted to give the illusion of depth. The combination is deeply striking; developer Zockrates Laboratories managed to find a look that is both nostalgic and unique enough to be instantly recognizable.

Ruffy himself is a bear (?) with a terminal case of jazz hands and a very unique powerset. Along with the prerequisite jumps and butt bounces (and a nice bee-buddy assisted glide), Ruffy can absorb the textures from certain objects and then lay them down on other objects. To use the game’s most simple example, if you find yourself blocked from an area by cement blocks, you can use the R1 button to grab the wood texture off a nearby tree, then slap it onto the blocks with R2. This allows you to plow through the blocks (because they are now made of wood) and move forward.

The game offers a never-ending variety of puzzles that can be solved with this core mechanic. Turn water into lava! Or turn water into ice! Turn a waterfall into scalable vines! And it only gets more expansive and complex from there. An interesting point about Ruffy and the Riverside is that the game is much more puzzle based than I expected. Yes, there is platforming, but it takes a back seat to the basic joy of monkeying around with the environment in a way that invoked Super Mario Sunshine to me. Different mechanics, same vibe. A lot of the expected running and jumping takes a back seat to exploration and pondering. Enemies are likewise present but make an almost negligible impact on the gameplay. No, it’s all about exploring the hub world, solving riddles, and making your way to the smaller sub-levels for more of the same.

The story in Ruffy and the Riverside is simple but fun. When an ancient power (which takes the form of a sort of Rubik’s Cube-looking thing) is awakened, it rises from the ground and starts wrecking shop on The Riverside, which is essentially the overworld where Ruffy and his buddies live. The cube guy (his name is Groll) starts sucking “Marbles” out of the ground, which knocks down the big Hollywood-style Riverside sign, which is somehow linked to the World Core – the most sacred and powerful marble of them all. Just go with it.

Ruffy basically needs to run around the world and restore the letters to the Riverside sign, which means, that as the player, you have to head out into the world, unlocking new sub-levels to find the letters. Along the way, expect tons of distractions, as the world of the Riverside is positively stuffed with characters, toys, mini-puzzles, and other fun stuff to interact with. In fact, I daresay that new players might just want to put on their blinders for the first couple of hours and steadfastly follow the storyline until it opens up a bit, then circle back for some exploration and tinkering. It is very easy to wander off into the Riverside and spend hours futzing around with stuff just for the fun of it.

The puzzles themselves are amusing and fun. I’ve become more of a puzzle guy over the last few years of reviewing games, so I really enjoyed the way that Ruffy and the Riverside manages to work so many environmental puzzles into its gameplay. Every now and then I would get stumped in a way that had me wandering away bewildered, but usually giving the puzzle a bit of time to breath would cause the solution to pop into my head, and I would excitedly scurry back to try my solution. (Here’s a tip: you can totally use your texture swapping ability on the wall puzzles. You’ll know them when you see them.)

Many of the objects and interactions in Ruffy seem to be there simply for the joy of existing. For example, very early in the game, players might discover that Ruffy can jump onto round haybales and ride them around the environment to get places faster. Is there any mechanical purpose for doing this? It’s fun. You like fun, right?

And that’s the thing about Ruffy and the Riverside. It’s just good old-fashioned fun – which is not to be mistaken for “dated” or “tired.” This is a game that is 100% stuffed with life and an obvious love for classic gaming, but it is not a retread, a remake, or a reboot. Ruffy and the Riverside is something entirely new that will give you the same happy feelings that games you know and love have given you over the years. Just beware the bouncing. Oh, the bouncing…