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Ruffy and the Riverside is an Indie Action, Adventure with slight RPG elements. Developed by Zockrates Laboratories UG, with this game being their first step into the industry. Even their publisher Phiphen Games is entering the industry with this banger of a game. If the title didn’t let you know that my experience was through a demo of the game. Which I quite enjoyed…even if I beat it all in less than an hour. When I do a full review of the game, I won’t be like Ruffy and copy & paste everything here on there….or will I?
You ever told to change my environment before, but this is taking to a literal sense.
Gameplay
Ruff and the Riverside has you starting on a falling piece of land with almost no explanation as to why this happened. You’re taught the one mechanic you’ll be using like crazy is Ruff’s Copy & Paste ability. We copy a vine’s texture and paste that sucker onto a waterfall. I wonder if this has huge consequences for the environment at large. Once you escape the fall, we arrive at our first location and doors to continue the adventure.
Most of what I got from the demo was to collect these stars to open the door, ie Super Mario 64 style to advance further into the game. Even though there is a barrier preventing me to go further, the locations look huge! There’s even an event where you do tricks on a half pipe to earn a star and the 20k score did take a while to do. Even the puzzles are creative in their execution.
Graphics & Audio
When it comes to the graphics, we all see Paper Mario’s influence when doing the background 3-D, but the characters 2-D. However, what I feel they did better than Paper Mario was the angles you see on Ruffy’s model. You don’t just get a back that’s just looking one way and then mirrored another. What we get is Ruffy’s body actually turned at an angle or running in a specific side from the camera. Sure, they could have taken the normal route, but they didn’t and went above when doing this for a few of the characters I’ve seen.
I even loved the little chalk sections that would also have a puzzle element to them. Though we did get a preview of what’s in store for this series, I’m curious what else they’re hiding.
Now when it comes to the audio portion, I pleasantly enjoyed listening to the background music. Even the sound effects had me wondering what tools or objects they used to simulate each and every one. Mostly Ruffy’s sound effects have me wondering who in the staff volunteered to make those sounds.
Final Thoughts
For someone who’s used to playing Collect-a-thons like this is practically my bread and butter. I really enjoyed my short time playing the demo and might go back into it to play some more. It’s a little chaos here or there because why not? This game is a great tribute to both the Banjo series and the Paper Mario series. So, if you love both those games and want to sample it yourself, the demon will be available during NextFest.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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