Ruffy and the Riverside

I was looking forward to this game for a while, but it just ended up being disappointing. It is charming and relaxing and the music is nice, and the world is fun to explore initially, but the mechanics are just not explored enough. The main swap mechanic is very limited in how you can use it, and the puzzles really don't evolve or get used in an interesting way, past the first hour. It is baffling how dumb the puzzles stay throughout, where the solution usually boils down to just using the texture of an object that's sitting right next to the puzzle. Also, there is so much yapping and mini cinematics interrupting everything you do, that at some point I just started mashing skip on anything that pops up. If you are looking for a game to play with a child or something, this could be a fun colorful time. Otherwise, I can't really recommend it.

Looks great on paper but the result is kinda meh, pretty bland to be honest

Пару лет назад видел трейлер, стал ждать игру. В итоге год назад вышел отважный паж и занял собой все инфополе, а по концепции это плюс-минус одинаковые игры. И по итогу я подумал, что ждал то, прошел, разочаровался и забыл. Но вот случайно я наткнулся на Ruffy и понял, что ждал то я его, а о нем с тех пор и новостей не видел. Что по игре - бегаем рисованным медведем и выполняем квесты от гигаесткого крота и провей живности. Главная фишка - можем копировать свойства одного вещества и превращать в него другое. То есть воду в магму, дерево в железо и тд. А уже через это мы решаем небольшие головоломки. Визуал отличный. Ну а теперь главный минус для русскоязычного населения - русского в игре нет, болтают персонажи много. И так как это будет первый отзыв на русском за пол года, а у игры в принципе с оценками туго, то добавления новых языков не планируется. В сети есть русификатор, но он не обновлялся с июля и на актуальной версии игры не работает. Это конечно не квест, а головоломка, так что догадаться что от вас хотят, можно и скипая диалоги, но тут уже на свой страх и риск. Так то игра веселая и увлекательная

I played the demo back before release and the gameplay and performance is definitely better in the full version. I picked it up on release on Switch 2 expecting to want to play my Switch 2 a lot more than I have, but I really haven't wanted to play it even for the exclusives. So here we are, I bought it again on Steam and I am really enjoying playing it on Steam Deck. Curious how it'll run on my Ayn Thor, because that would be a sick way to keep plugging away at this game. I am really enjoying it. It is fun, colorful, absolutely gorgeous artstyle. It really feels like it can stand shoulder to shoulder with the games that inspired it and honestly surpasses them in many ways. The puzzles can be simple, but are always rewarding. Honestly, even if this game was boring and performed poorly, the art is worth the price of admission alone. I really just vibe with it. The characters are so fun and colorful. The colored pencil aesthetic is simultaneously so Paper Mario and so it's own thing. Highly recommend this gorgeous gorgeous game if you have even a passing fancy for platformers, this one is a must.

I enjoyed this game the little I played. Unique gameplay mechanic and pretty fun and silly, with some puzzles that had me scratching my head. its very overwhelming when you first start, if you ignore everything and focus on the story it is way less so. my only complaint and why i cant recommend this game, the camera is nauseating. The cutscenes whip the camera around and zoom in and out so fast, your camera movement is so fast the movement period is so fast. The game literally game me a headache and thats never happened, so im getting old.

NOTE: This game was received for free as a review key via PressEngine. "Ruffy and the Riverside" was a thrill ride that made me love almost every moment of it. POSITIVES: > Excellent cartoony landscape everywhere > Characters were humourous > Action is simple > Loved the SWAP mechanic and the ability to re-design textures, made me think of my favourite game "Okami" > Puzzles are simple enough and require more action than thought process, which is pretty good > Music is weird, but kinda cool > Collect-a-thon had good purpose and made it worth collecting, like a Banjo Kazooie-like should be > Game is short, but not too short (if you skip all of the dialogue and most of the cutscenes, you can finish this game in just under 12 hours, otherwise about 12-16 hours total) NEGATIVES: > One single continuous save and no save slots (which was only a problem for me because I was trying to make a video playthrough of this game; ended up playing from a new game 3 times) > The actual ending of the game pissed me off (not gonna spoil it) Barring the negatives, "Ruffy and the Riverside" is an indie game worth playing. I highly recommend it!

Let me preface this review by saying I've had Ruffy on my wishlist for some time before recently getting it on sale. I got it for about 10 dollars-ish. I think that's a much fairer full price for the experience I was served than the asking price of 20. Ruffy and the Riverside is a cute, very inspired open world adventure game with some light puzzle elements. It wears it's inspirations on it's sleeves quite blatantly, for better or worse. The overall experience is a cute albeit very very easy game, with some relatively obtuse puzzles that I have some complaints about. The story is passable in it's best moments and frankly awful at it's worst. If I was to ascribe the game an analogy, it'd be "deep as a puddle, wide as an ocean" but even that would be a lie in some regard. There's plenty to collect and do truth be told, but the issue with that "plenty" lies in how much of the collecting is repetitive in nature or not rewarding in the slightest. Maybe I just wasn't the intended audience for this game, but the trailer also does kinda betray the game a bit too, it's an indie title so I wasn't expecting breath of the wild level open ended puzzle solving, but going off the trailer alone its easy for a potential buyer to be convinced there's more freedom with verbs in the game than is actually on offer. Your swap, the main gimmick, is quite limited in what you can do with it. Liquids are limited to being able to swap with other liquids (or semi-solids) and most of the time, you were given superfluous options for the sake of it. I don't believe I swapped things to mud ONCE the entire game and had a reason to do so, only doing it to actually try it and realize it wasn't really beneficial. The game suffers from what I'd consider a common failure of many puzzle games nowadays where the dev had intended to include bosses of some kind, and decided to focus that on combat. The combat system in Ruffy is very very basic, and thats fine, what's not fine is when the game throws a boss fight at you for the sake of it, and doesn't really utilize the main selling point of the game (the swap) in most of the fights. It's a limited gimmick, that doesn't lend itself very well to puzzle solving too often, and in the boss fights it's woefully underutilized. The game's soundtrack is pathetically lacking, I hope you like hearing the same song playing for most of your time with the game. It also has an entirely unnecessary sprint stamina meter a la legend of zelda skyward sword, a feature which I thought was ridiculous to add considering it only made most of the early game prior to unlocking bale rolling a total slog, and the one reason I can see it existing was for the sake of having the also annoying and unnecessary cape upgrade system; You're given 3 options for cape colour, the starting green, and your two unlockable (purchaseable with coins) red and blue, there's no difference between the three other than what you've given them via the upgrade casino. Thats right, spin a slot machine to determine which cape gets an upgrade, what kind of upgrade (health or stamina wheel) and how much (+1 pip, +2 pips, or +0 pips) which results in having a use for the coins in the game, at the cost of making the player feel unnecessarily restricted. It can be said that you are harshest to the things you love, for you know the potential they possess. That's how I feel about ruffy, as I think that despite the game itself losing steam near the end in it's own plot, and the frankly abysmal ending twist (That was just pitifully garbage. Why.) I did come out kinda enjoying my time. For the most part. However, it is with love that I say this; Do not buy this game full price. Don't buy this game if the trailer looks cool to you, play the demo first, then make your mind up on if you want to buy it. Honestly, if I could get a refund? I would.

This might be a really good puzzle/action platformer. It certainly has a lot creativity and uniqueness in it's presentation. Sadly it's missing basic functionality. There is no key rebinding for keyboard and mouse. This is NOT some nice to have accessibility stuff for convenience - it's basic functionality for many gamers. There are left handed or disabled people, those with different keyboard layouts like AZERTY or those conditioned to a certain layout through decades of muscle memory - many of them cannot play a game without key rebinding. For real, this has one of the most bonkers key layouts I've ever witnessed. 'Z' for speak, 'V+B' for some actions? These devs clearly never heard of QWERTZ keyboard layouts and probably never played anything with native pc input devices. The devs also don't react to my questions on the forum. In fact, this sadly seems to be abandoned, as there are no reations to any other topics. I'd be happy to switch this to positive if the game could be improved. But I fear this will remain unplayable for many people.

This is a really charming puzzle platformer collect-a-thon. It feels like an N64 era Rare platformer, updated & modernized for 2026 standards. The SWAP mechanic is inventive, and the game developers force you to use it in creative ways. There are plenty of side puzzles that are optional to complete, but allow you to collect other items. The soundtrack is great, the visuals are fun, and the controls are snappy & satisfying.

Очень понраввилась иигра. Необычный 3д платформер с большим уклоном в логические задачки. Аж напомнило рыбку Фредди. Всем рекомендую в начале игры не пытаться все собрать в первых двух областях а идти по сюжету. Хаб мне было приятнее исследовать кусочками между прохождениием уровней.