We had the pleasure of playing a preview demo of Ruffy and the Riverside. Ruffy and the Riverside is being developed by Zockrates Laboratories UG and will be coming to Steam and consoles in April. The demo will be available to the public from 11 February 2025.
A colourful world
As Ruffy, our job is to explore the game world and solve various puzzles. What makes Ruffy and the Riverside so special is the power of ‘SWAP‘, which allows us to take materials from the world and transform them into other objects. For example, we can turn stone into wood to break down barriers, or water into ice to cross points that would otherwise be unreachable.
The focus of the gameplay is then on finding creative ways to use this enormous power to our advantage.
In this demo, we get a small taste of what the full game will be like. As well as the main quests, which allow us to earn stars to unlock access to new worlds, there are side quests to find collectables and other hidden items.
Ruffy and the Riverside impressed us with its distinctive art style, with characters appearing as two-dimensional drawings in a 3D world. It is clear that the developers are aiming to appeal to nostalgic tastes, and indeed this platformer is very reminiscent of great classics such as Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64.
The resulting atmosphere is very addictive, both because of the evocation of the classics of the past, but also because of the peculiarity of the gameplay, which invites us to use logic to find creative solutions to puzzles.
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