Ruffy and the Riverside: Ruff Indeed

A whimsical trailer about a paper-thin raccoon—or wait, is that a bear?—living inside a happy Nintendo 64-era inspired collect-a-thon 3D environment convinced me to keep close tabs on the upcoming release schedule. That raccoon/bear—in a later cut-scene, his companion does employ the term “bear”—is called Ruffy and lives in the Riverside. The previews enthusiastically referred to the game as a magical hand-drawn open-world action adventure game. The question is: does Ruffy and the Riverside provide the unique gameplay it promises or is this yet another cheap knock-off that fails to deliver? First, a word of warning: I played Ruffy on the Nintendo Switch through Limited Run Games’ physical release. The game was originally developed for the PC by Zockrates Laboratories and ported to the three console platforms by Meteorbyte Studios. Most of my frustrations from the game stem from the horrendous port job. It was so bad that it even sucked the joy out of Ruffy’s good parts. It felt like a…