Ruffy and the Riverside Review – Review
A fun adventure with a few Ruff patches.
Ruffy and the Riverside is a 3D action-adventure with an open world to explore and solve puzzles in. There’s dozens of items to collect and a delightful sense of play as you control the titular Ruffy, a bear who looks not unlike a Star Wars ewok and has the power to alter his surroundings. The charm and pace of Ruffy’s journey work well, but there are some frustrations and jank can sometimes put a damper on the experience.
Ruffy’s world of Riverside is threatened by an ominous cube that wants to destroy everything in sight. It’s up to Ruffy to become the chosen hero and collect a series of letters to activate the world core and save his home. The world is divided into a major hub and smaller areas within it, not unlike Super Mario 64’s castle and individual painting levels. Along the way, you’ll encounter a host of colorful characters and all manner of unique and tricky challenges–one of which is the annoying ladders that usually have to be climbed right down the middle to successfully reach the top.
Much of the gameplay centers on Ruffy’s ability to absorb one material, object, or color and then swap it with another. While some puzzles will have more obvious solutions that employ this mechanic, others involve some (or much) trial and error. It’s a wonderful feeling when you solve a puzzle that had taken you 5 or 10 minutes to solve, but I encountered multiple situations where the solution was either less obvious or only appeared after I had exhausted all of my options and just kept hitting everything around me or retracing my steps. Like with many puzzle games, if the design clicks with you, you’ll probably have a better time. This wasn’t always the case for me, though, so your mileage may vary.
The controls can take some getting used to, with Ruffy having a lot of speed but less precision. There’s enough platforming that this becomes an issue at times, and compounding failure is a checkpoint system that can sometimes send you back an annoying distance, which forces you to redo the same puzzles or surmount the same obstacles over and over. Coins you collect can be used to purchase heart containers to boost your life meter or costumes to change Ruffy’s look, but I actually liked being able to spend them on the occasional puzzle solution so that I could more quickly progress through the game.
Just to give some context for the puzzles you encounter, some of the early ones require that you swap the water of a waterfall with climbable leaves from a nearby wall or change stone pillars in the ocean into wood so that they’ll float horizontally and serve as more effective platforms. In the pursuit of the Riverside letters mentioned earlier, you often have to traverse multiple smaller spaces before you can find the letters, and some of the challenges thrown at you end up being simple repeats of ones you’ve already done. Being tasked with completing a symbol matching exercise once is fine, but having to do two or three in a row can feel like busywork.
The sound effects and music are light and funny, pairing well with the humorous design of Ruffy himself, in all his dancing glory. The hand-drawn visual design of the environment inspires a sense of both simplicity and vibrancy, with lots of bright colors juxtaposed with sharp edges and basic structures and objects. There’s a good amount of comedy in the writing, but the introduction/tutorial is a little verbose and could be pared down.
Ruffy and the Riverside is a delightful adventure whose charm takes precedence over its jank and repetition. It performs well on Switch 2, which is where I reviewed the game, and has a lot of content for completionists to sink their teeth into. Some of the puzzles can be frustrating or obtuse, but the unique swapping mechanic makes for a fun departure compared to other 3D action-adventure experiences. It may be a bit Ruffy around the edges, but this Riverside is one that I was happy to dip my toes into.
