Mega's Totally Sober Review: Ruffy and the Riverside
(I wrote this back at the end of June, the site I was doing it for ended up falling through, so here it is.)
Steam code was received for purpose of review.
Started playing on Version 2025-06-18.0.
My overall impression for Ruffy and the
Riverside brings direct words of “FUN”, “JOY” and “CREATIVITY”.
The open world that is Riverside led my
curiosity to explore and see where all the little things to open and solve are,
which is contrast to something like my experience playing Yooka-Laylee, where
each level felt almost overwhelmingly big, despite being contained. Early on I
spent literal hours just running around and finding out what I could already
solve on my own before even getting to the Buried Cities to unlock the first
level of the game;
Jumping, platforming, and SWAPing until I finally
talked to Sir Eddler The Mole so he could tell me more lore and make light of
his fear of heights or important jewel addiction.
Unlocking each area itself was like
finding a new toy to play with so they made it worth seeing how different they
were, even if there was a strange amount of backtracking for a couple of them.
Things I enjoyed:
The Colorful, beautifully fun world, I loved exploring every bit of it, seeing where places went, that sense of “how do I get there” “how do I unlock this” “how do I get that visible collectible”, with very natural encouragement to WANT to look more.
The SWAP ability; trying to figure out how to use what on what, from materials for breakability, to changes objects weight/buoyancy, or even colors or symbols to activate/deactivate switches and doors, felt really fun and amazing when you realize EVERYTHING can be swapped to some extent or another, from objects to the ground to the walls, to some animals and characters. Extremely Inventive and fun in how it makes you experience the world, from how SWAP is handled to even being able to change the art textures on the WORLD itself with the Drawingboard, you can collect more of by getting Dreamstones them and edit textures from wood, to water, to the ground, and so on, turning it on and off and changing it as you will.
The Controls.
Jumping feels good, every hop to get from one point to another felt satisfying. SWAPing feels good, every time I heard the success music or saw something move differently from what I swapped it to felt really fun. Combat... feels non-existent for the most part. There’s an attack button but outside of a handful of set circumstances there’s not much to speak of, even with a charged attack. Instead of that though there’s a lot of haybale rolling! Good trade off if you ask me.
I don’t want to say there’s things I
didn’t enjoy, but there were things that stood out as just not as... good,
without standing in the way of my enjoyment.
The difficulty, something that is
entirely a ME problem, I found the games puzzles to be entirely too easy,
especially toward the end. Which it being skewed to a much younger audience is
absolutely fine, but with years of experience in this type of game a lot of it
felt like it didn’t make an impression outside of the SWAP mechanic itself.
Parts of the story, while I would usually not give note to in the type of game it is, without spoiler, I found frustrating and could see others finding just as frustrating, but these are very much told in the style of a cartoon for children under 10, so it’s hard to put much emphasis on that.
Outside of that, the time I spent with Ruffy and the Riverside was some of the best with a game I’ve spent all year thus far: pure, unfiltered joy the entire time, even without feeling like I was thrown back to being a kid playing Banjo Kazooie or Super Mario Sunshine.
I could use another game like it, and
if the ending was any hint, I hope there is a sequel. Ruffy and the Riverside
probably will end up as one of my favorite games of this year. Cheers!
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