Ruffy and the Riverside Review (Switch eShop)

Sometimes I'll get asked to review a game that doesn't immediately feel as though it really falls within my wheelhouse. At all. And I have to admit, as much as I do love the look of Ruffy and the Riverside, with its 1980's kids-TV-show-styled characters, replete with visible marker strokes from having been coloured in, I definitely felt(tip) as though we were destined to rub each other the wrong way.

And this, my friends, is what happens when you fall into the trap of judging a you-know by its whats-it, as what's actually here is a delightful 3D platformer in the now classical 'late 90s/early 00s' style. Yes, barring some reasonably light performance hiccups (on both Switch and Switch 2), this one is well worth your time, and doubly so if you happen to be a younger gamer, or a wretched old has-been (moi) who just wants to feel the joy of millennium-era gaming one last time. It's a first try from Zockrates Laboratories as well, so hats off to the developers.

You see, Ruffy and the Riverside has got a very clever trick up its sleeve. Rather than just being a simple tribute to the knock-off 3D platformers us oldies were blasted with in the wake of the success of that 3D Mario fella and Crash Bandicoot (if I start naming more mascots, we're gonna be here all day), and instead of copying and pasting (relevant!) their homework, Ruffy brings the ability to transform his environs by...wait for it...copying and pasting textures, such as water or sand, over one another to solve puzzles, traverse environs and save the day. Hooray for Ruffy!

As it turns out, an evil alien cube of sorts called Groll has appeared and stolen a bunch of very powerful marbles that you'll need to get back because they've made him right bonkers. As Ruffy, and with the help of his genuinely fun bee assistant Pip, you'll also need to collect a bunch of letters from the big 'RIVERSIDE' billboard above the game's colourful hub town that your new idiot nemesis has just blown up. So, Ruffy, you are now the chosen one. God save us all.

Ruffy, for as harmless as he looks, can really get about. He's got a stamina gauge which goes down slowly and fills up really fast, so he can run like the wind across the game's hugely nostalgic 3D world without stopping for much of a break. He can climb up anything, so long as you've pasted some vines there, and his default jump (with a slick bee-assisted hover) allows you to clamber around rooftops and examine every nook and cranny of what is, and especially from a small team on its first game, a very impressive world to examine.

Now, I'm not sure if the draw distance, which is quite poor sometimes in how its fog instantly envelops and regurgitates entire environs in the background as you move around, is completely because of performance limitations, or if it's been done for effect. That's how on point most of the rest of this game is, you see, that it's got me doubting that it's just been allowed to be this way - but regardless, it's a happy coincidence that it's one of my favourite things about the look of the adventure.

It really does give the whole thing the feel of one of those rather janky, barely held together sorts of 3D romps we all played a ton of decades ago. Except this one is good on pretty much all fronts. As you move around Riverside you can even see joins in the scenery at times, thin black lines on the horizon, and the meeting points of polygons, all that sort of thing. I love it. And I'm just gonna go ahead and assume they did it for the immaculate vibes.

So you've got this rather large main area of game world to explore, with a few large towns full of amusing NPCs - there's a decent amount of snark and silliness in the writing for older gamers - and then the game opens up to incorporate several portals that you need to travel through in order to find those pesky letters. There's an impressive amount of variety in these zones, some of which are surprisingly large, although there's nothing entirely surprising in the environmental changes from the usual lava to ice, forests, deserts and so on. Even so, unlocking the next one and not knowing what it's gonna be is my favourite part!

Moving through these areas, the thing that impresses time and time again is just how well-implemented the copy and paste conceit is. It's just so much fun to mess with, and although it doesn't give you fully free reign - there are some rules to it all - it's still very flexible and, most importantly, something I hadn't tired of by the end of my eight hours with the game.

Combining the fun of these powers with Ruffy's spinning, crate-smashing, Crash-styled spin attacks, and his boundless energy as he moves around levels (or races through the game's haybale racing mini games), and you've got something that just feels great to play. Yes, sometimes it can be a little finicky to aim at small textures you want to change - and it's a shame we don't have gyro for fine-tuning here - but overall it just works!

Even more impressive than this though, and my absolute favourite thing about what Zockrates has given us, is just how densely packed the areas are with puzzles, references to old games, and things to do and collect. There are several categories of collectible to get busy hoovering up, and a decent mix of puzzle types, some of which younger gamers may need a little hand with from time to time. Indeed, and I'm not too proud to admit it, I was stumped a few times in this one before realising, for example, just what was needed to be done to defeat a particular shark in a pool (turn him into iron so he sinks, there's a free tip).

I love how they've stolen the 2D sections from Super Mario Odyssey wholesale, too. It's a bit cheeky, fair enough, and although they perhaps don't work out or play quite as slickly as Nintendo's efforts (understandably, perhaps), it's just fun to see the influences being so proudly trumpeted at times. Everywhere you look in Ruffy and the Riverside, there's something to do...several things to do, in fact, and that's exactly how it should be to keep younger players entertained.

Now, negative stuff. On Switch 1, the framerate struggles at times, mostly when the game transitions into new areas on-the-fly. Moving seamlessly across the world comes at a cost, it seems. It's a shame, and although they've not spoiled my enjoyment much, they are there and it'd be really nice to have a patch to sort this (and to add the old gyro).

For Switch 2 players, the performance issues present on Switch 1 do carry over to the newer console, and swapping between the two (bad puns flying out of me today), there's very little difference other than perhaps a slight improvement in loading times.

Enemies, too, are poorly designed. There aren't a whole lot of them, thankfully, and I'd suggest that the puzzles, rather than bashing foes, are the main point here, so again it's not really affected the fun I've had. So, if you're into the vibe thus far, just be aware that smashing stuff and doing puzzles, racing around on hay bales and swapping out water for lava to see what happens, or opening doors by pasting flames onto candles, is where the fun is at.