Ruffy and the Riverside is what happens when a physics student eats a crayon and decides to reinvent Banjo-Kazooie with a glue stick and a box of felt tips. It’s the debut game from Zockrates Laboratories – presumably named during a sugar crash – and it bravely asks the question, “What if platforming was more confusing and every object could be anything, at any time, for exactly one minute?”
Gaming Heaven
To its credit, the game does present a rather lovely hand-drawn world – imagine a colouring book left out in the rain. The main gimmick, an “element swapping” mechanic, allows you to turn crates into lava and lava into crates, which is fun for about 15 minutes before it becomes a logistical nightmare. The world is packed with enthusiastic side characters, including a talking bee, a mole with opinions, and a cube villain called Groll (who presumably failed his geometry A-level and took it personally).
Gaming Hell
The game is bloated with fetch quests so repetitive you’d think they were procedurally generated by a lost intern. “Walk to place A, collect item B, then back to place A again” – it’s less of a journey and more of a scenic delivery job. The voice lines, which begin as charming, quickly devolve into a soundboard of shrill repetition, like being trapped in a lift with two toddlers and a malfunctioning Alexa. And while the swap mechanic is clever in theory, the game often gives you no clue what to do with it, leaving you to fumble your way through puzzles like a drunk magician with a box of wet matches.
Final Judgement
Ruffy and the Riverside is ambitious, occasionally sweet, but often baffling. It’s like being handed a magical paintbrush with no instructions – there’s potential, but mostly mess.
