Ruffy And The Riverside – Review

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It’s special to find a game that recaptures something from your childhood, that is able to transport you back to a time that I’m sure many of us wish we could return to, even just as a short reprieve from the present. While reviewing Ruffy and the Riverside, I was immediately whisked back to being 10 years old, sitting next to my best friend on his bedroom floor, our backs against the bottom bunk, taking it in turns as we played through games like Banjo Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon; games that would define my tastes for decades to come. That’s right, I had my Ratatouille critic meme moment.

I understand that some will read this as plain old hyperbole, but trust me when I say this, everything about Ruffy and the Riverside feels so close to the late 90s platformers that inspired Zockrates Labs, that it could easily be mistaken as a contemporary of those games. But Ruffy and the Riverside is more than just an imitation; it is a fully realised world and adventure that wears its inspirations on its sleeve, all the while innovating with its creative gameplay in a way that kept surprising and delighting me throughout.

If there were one word to describe the world and vibe of Ruffy and the Riverside, it is “wacky”, so it feels right at home within the family of 3D platformers. You play as Ruffy, an upbeat bear in a cape with a bounce in his step, who is accompanied everywhere by his cheeky bee buddy, Pip. A new dynamic duo to add to the roster! Ruffy lives an easygoing life, helping his foster parent in their painting shop, and that’s because Ruffy has a special power: the Swap. Ruffy can swap a great many things across the world of Riverside, from numbers and symbols to full environmental textures! It is the Swap that is the crux of the game’s story, and it is this unique mechanic that sets Ruffy and the Riverside apart, opening up its gameplay in some truly mind-blowing ways.

After a rather startling yet charming opening scene that swiftly introduces the player to the Swap mechanic, Ruffy and Pip reflect on 22 days and 7 hours prior, when our adventure begins. When Ruffy helps his gem-obsessed friend, Sir Eddler, begin gathering the Marbles – magical stones able to change the world around them – they accidentally summon the evil Groll, a six-sided fiend intent on obtaining the World Core and bringing doom to Riverside. What started as a simple treasure hunt quickly turns into a mission to save the world, with young Ruffy and his buddy Pip becoming the Chosen Ones. Their goal: to collect the Sacred Symbols scattered across the world of Riverside and return them to the Basilica of Besties, where they will be used to restore the Riverside Town sign (think Hollywood) that was destroyed by Groll, and in turn restore power to the World Core. Did you get all that?

It’s a bizarre set up to a wild adventure, and I had a big, silly grin on my face whenever some new crazy detail was added in the mix. Ruffy and the Riverside is not asking to be taken seriously, but to be enjoyed, and recognised for the hotbed of fun and creativity it offers to the player. It’s a story of MacGuffins, which is par for the course when it comes to collect-athons, set in a land that could only be dreamt up using a vivid imagination, or a lot of illicit substances.

The first thing that grabbed me was Ruffy and the Riverside’s visuals; an incredible blend of hand-drawn 2D sprites and blocky 3D environments. The developers have said before that it’s a visual choice inspired by Paper Mario, and you can see the level of dedication to achieving this aesthetic in every hand-made texture and pencil stroke. I can’t imagine the number of individual sprites the devs made just for Ruffy, but every time I’d watch him stand idle, clicking his fingers with a big smile on his face, I quietly thanked them for their hard work.

Animations are smooth and full of expression, communicating all sorts of information about a character in just a few seconds. Along with eye-catching particle effects, Ruffy and the Riverside looks and feels magical.

A personal favorite is watching when Ruffy is using his Swap ability, hovering above the ground ready to absorb a texture or colour, and then taking a hunched stance as he prepares to fire the Swap at an object, almost exactly like Dragon Ball’s Goku powering up his Kamehameha!

Riverside is a surprisingly large world to explore, with a central hub zone and several other regions linked by pathways. Each area feels distinct, whether it’s the gloomy graveyard in the Realm of the Dead or the rustic atmosphere of the Bale Farm; each place has its own feel and colour palette. Even the large central area is broken up into different biomes, with amazing landmarks to help orient yourself (the game also has a map with icons for important locations). Need to get your bearings? Look for the giant geyser of lava to the North of the hub zone, that’ll steer you straight!

It’s that level of care, without losing any character, that makes Ruffy and the Riverside’s visuals work so well, and helps make the world feel complete. It’s a place teeming with life, colour, and creativity, and I found myself becoming as familiar with it as the worlds of those old 90s platformers I grew up with.

At a glance, Ruffy and the Riverside is a traditional 3D platformer and collect-athon. You run about big, dazzling environments, solving environmental puzzles, completing challenges, and finding hidden collectibles. Ruffy can jump, sprint for a short time using a stamina bar, punch, do a spin attack, and a ground pound. He can also call upon his ever-present friend Pip to grab onto and glide until stamina runs out. This is the 3D platformer mascot’s toolkit (copyright pending), standard controls that are easy to understand and implement.

Ruffy and the Riverside’s visuals may help it to stand out from the crowd, but it’s the game’s revolutionary Swap mechanic that defines it. Ruffy has the power to change the visuals of almost anything in Riverside using the Swap. By holding down the RB button and highlighting a particular texture, colour, number, or symbol, Ruffy can copy it and hold it for a short amount of time. Holding down the RT button, or right trigger, he can then pick an available surface or object to paste what they have copied. A literal copy and paste function in your video game! Possibly its greatest strength is how intuitive the Swap is, with just two buttons giving players so much control and agency over this fantastical world. It was a joy every time I saw a waterfall, copied some nearby ivy, and then swapped the raging rapids into easily climbable vines, unlocking new areas to explore and further opportunities to test out the Swap.

I took at least an hour to get the game’s story in motion, because I was too busy seeing what I could swap and what the results would be. I haven’t felt such curiosity and excitement about a game mechanic in such a long time, and the game does an excellent job of introducing new ways to use the Swap as you progress.

Like I said earlier, Riverside is a big place, but it is far from empty. Besides the main story, which I estimate would take between 5-6 hours to finish, Ruffy and the Riverside is full of collectibles and side quests. The game’s main story is always marked on your compass, creating a standard gameplay loop of gaining access to and visiting 7 other areas, helping deal with the issue or challenge there, which coincidentally helps Ruffy get a Sacred Letter, then returning to the Basilica of the Besties to return it to the Riverside sign and learn what your next destination is.

Each Sacred Letter is earned through a variety of means, from coming first in the Steep Slope hay bale halfpipe championship to helping a ghost win first prize in the Realm of the Dead’s annual gravesite pageant. The game had me constantly guessing what obstacle or puzzle was coming next, my curiosity only matched by my eagerness.

As for side content, well, it is hard to miss, as it is everywhere! There are several side quests in Ruffy and the Riverside, which are all tracked in the game’s pause menu. Again, I found the variety of what you need to do to help the inhabitants of Riverside quite surprising, and they could all be undertaken at the same time, with no time restraints. Between kicking Bully Sharks out of fish ponds, matching mushrooms, jumping into 2D wall puzzles, cleaning up waterways, and racing on hay bales (you can use hay bales to get around quicker and grind on rails as well), I was never at a loss for things to do.

Then there are 3 main collectibles to find, butterflies, dreamstones, and Etoi, as well as gold coins you use to purchase new capes and upgrade their related health and stamina stats at the casino in Riverside Town. Butterflies are gathered for Quintus, Ruffy’s fox friend, who is an amateur lepidopterist, Etoi are little fuzzballs hiding around Riverside, and dreamstones are brought to Pix, a pixelated doppelganger of Ruffy. While the first two are purely tied up in aide quests and not much else, dreamstones also let you manually adjust a texture, and then apply it across the game. Let me tell you, it takes a moment to adjust when you change the yellow sandy beach to a vibrant pink!

There is combat in Ruffy and the Riverside, but it isn’t the focus of the game. There are only a couple of enemy types that can be beaten with one or two hits and pose very little threat. They also don’t require your Swap to beat them, which could have led to some fun combat encounters. I didn’t die once during my time with Ruffy and the Riverside, which led to both combat and health upgrades feeling vestigial. It’s an easy game that doesn’t put the player under any real pressure, instead inviting you to experiment and explore. There are also a few boss fights, and while they were interesting and included the Swap, I felt that the addition of enemies and bosses only draws attention to something that the game didn’t necessarily need. It’s the only area where the Swap doesn’t feel like it is utilised enough, and now it makes me think of what could have been.

The challenge of Ruffy and the Riverside is found in its puzzles and events, with varying difficulty found spread across the game. There are so many different things I found that I couldn’t figure out straight away, but an hour or two later, often after doing something different with the Swap, I would return with the solution. I felt rewarded for being observant, looking out for the telltale signs of where an Etoi was hiding, or spotting a butterfly high up that I would have to reach somehow.

It was never a dull moment over the 14 hours I played Ruffy and the Riverside, but I will say that the pacing is a bit wild, and the ending feels as though it was adjusted to make certain narrative allowances. It certainly didn’t ruin my experience playing the game, but it did strike me as somewhat unnecessary and led to an ending that felt a bit awkward. Honestly, this and the way combat is handled are really my only gripes with Ruffy and the Riverside, and they are vastly outweighed by all the other elements that truly shine.

I would be remiss in not shouting out Ruffy and the Riverside’s soundtrack, which is headlined by the funkiest main theme of 2025! Each song captures the atmosphere of their respective zone brilliantly, adding to the Saturday Morning Cartoon energy that permeates throughout the game. Those great animations and particle effects I mentioned earlier are accompanied by big, expressive sound effects, and with every move, Ruffy and Pip let out a chuckle or a cheer. There are only good vibes to be found in Riverside, even when Groll is on the loose!

I want a sequel to Ruffy and the Riverside desperately. Not because of how the game finished, but because I want to see what other ways to use the Swap the team at Zockrates Labs can come up with! The game offers such a robust, polished, and satisfying experience, and yet it feels like it only scratches the surface of what is possible with a mechanic like the Swap. By the end of my time with the game, I was convinced that while games like Astro Bot have done a lot to bring 3D platformers and collect-athons back into the limelight, it’s the Ruffy and the Riversides of the industry that will push the genre forward and expand it.

Ruffy and the Riverside is an incredible culmination of inspiration and innovation, offering hours of fun in a wacky world with a wonderful new duo. Zockrates Labs have gone beyond my expectations with their first game, and I hope we get to have more adventures with Ruffy and Pip in the future.

In short, it’s Swap-tastic!