Ruffy and the Riverside Demo Preview

When I fired up the Ruffy and the Riverside demo, I instantly entered a bright and colourful world of joy and exploration. It was something that I wasn’t prepared for, but one I embraced without hesitation. I couldn’t stop having a big smile on my face the entire time I was playing, thanks to the pure happiness and positivity that oozed out of the screen at me. 

The premise of the game is a straightforward one where Ruffy has been recruited to protect the scenic, picture-esque world of the Riverside by stopping the evil Groll from destroying the world core and taking Riverside along with it. To do this, you have to explore a 3D open world and gather stars. These are acquired through solving puzzles and by helping the residents with their problems. 

The main skill you have to do this with is one of the most ingenious mechanics I’ve experienced in a game. By copying and pasting elements, pictures, and substances, you can go about gathering up as many stars as needed. An example would be right at the start of the demo, where you copy some ivy and paste it over a waterfall to create a climbable surface. Another example was having to copy requested pictures for certain art students and pasting them on their canvases! There are some really clever uses of this copy and paste mechanic throughout the demo, and I was constantly in awe of the ideas I was experiencing. What this has managed to do is give this genre a fresh lick of paint and make it feel new and exciting again. Yes, there’s plenty of the expected that we all have seen before, including collectables and a whole host of chippy animal characters to talk to, but there’s something special here, a certain sparkle, that I’ve not felt from a 3D platformer for a long time.

One other aspect of this sparkle was the absolutely gorgeous visuals. Taking inspiration from previous games of the genre and mixing it up with Paper Mario-style characters, the developers at Zockrates Laboratories have created a really interesting and beautiful world. One area that especially caught my eye were the textures that were used on the characters. Ruffy himself has this coloured look to him as if a child had scribbled on him, which was shown with some thoughtful movement to those scribbles. It was these little details that made this play through all the more pleasurable.

Speaking of Ruffy, I fell head over heels in love with him, as he has such a cool and cheeky personality that I warmed to straight away. With a constant happy expression on his face, I couldn’t help but feel happy myself, even through some of the more challenging puzzles. The highlight from Ruffy, though, has to be his unique movement animation style that screams originality. Yet again, I couldn’t stop myself from just admiring this and it leaving a big grin on my face. 

Still, I tangent away from telling you what the stars Ruffy is collecting actually do. This stems from Super Mario 64 inspiration, as when you hit a certain total, you open doors to mini-worlds where you can collect even more stars. These areas made for a nice break from the bigger open world of Riverside, as they were quite compact but still held a few tasty puzzles. One other welcome inspiration from Super Mario 64 is the multiple stars that can be found in each area, bringing with it a multitude of reasons to revisit each stage and investigate every corner. I do have one issue here though, as every time you pick up a star, you’re taken back to the main open world, and I would have liked to have carried on exploring to find the next star instead of having to re-enter the stage. Thankfully, I was informed by the publisher that this has actually been implemented into the game and should be live in time for when the demo goes public. 

Otherwise, it was a real pleasure to spend some time with Ruffy and the Riverside, and I have an inkling that it will be included in many conversations come game of the year season. I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t, especially when you consider the enormous potential that it holds. With Ruffy’s copy and paste abilities, it’s really opened a world full of possibilities with its puzzles and how we will interact with this world, and I urge you all to give the demo some time, and hopefully you’ll fall in love with Ruffy and the Riverside as much as I have. 

You can find a first-look video on our YouTube channel where I play around 35 minutes of the demo. It is quite a generous demo, with around an hour of playtime available. Please wishlist Ruffy and the Riverside on Steam and keep an eye out as the demo will be released publicly on the 11th of February 2025. 

Ruffy and the Riverside will be available on all major platforms and is due to be released in Q1 of this year.