Ruffy and the Riverside Review

Ruffy and the Riverside is one of the best games of 2025 so far! What a fantastic action-adventure game with nostalgic vibes, but also feels so refreshing with the SWAP mechanic! No missable achievements, completion takes around 17 hours.

Approximate time to 100%: Around 17 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, here
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty options
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

It is such a joy to play Ruffy and the Riverside! When you start the game, there is much to do and explore right from the bat. And while it reminds me of classics like Banjo-Kazooie (especially collecting the letters), it also feels so refreshing with the swap mechanic. I’m so impressed that something like that is possible and how flawlessly it works.

You’ll play as Ruffy, who can swap textures and colors from one item to another. So if you copy flowers, you copy the color, but it is also possible to swap textures like water, ice, or vines. And manipulate the area that way. While Ruffy and the Riverside is clearly an action-adventure, it requires you to think about your environment differently: how to swap things around to get somewhere where you otherwise couldn’t. There is this cute bee that will follow you and help you glide through the air. And there are a lot of characters that will play an essential part in the story.

Ruffy and the Riverside is also a collectathon. So many things to collect, like butterflies and dreamstones. This also requires you to solve optional puzzles and explore the world even more. You can buy hints for some of the puzzles, but sadly, there are no hints to find the missing collectibles at the end of the game. I wish there was that option for like the last 2 or 3 of the main collectibles. Gladly, there are already guides with all the collectibles, so you can check those out to find the ones you’re missing.

The only other downside I can think of for Ruffy and the Riverside is how the story ends. I’ll not spoil it, but I feel a bit disappointed and hopeful at the same time. Those things will make sense when you reach the ending yourself :P.

Unlocking all the achievements in Ruffy and the Riverside will require you to play through the main story and collect everything, finding every secret. For all the collectibles, there are guides on the internet. Most of the achievements you’ll just unlock by playing through the game and exploring everything. I highly recommend checking out every tree that moves, as it might contain one of the collectibles. Completion takes around 17 hours, and none of the achievements are missable. You can go back after finishing the game.

I give Ruffy and the Riverside 4.5 out of 5 stars.

This review for Ruffy and the Riverside was written on 26 June 2025, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 47 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.