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Tag: impression

  • Impressions: Ruffy & The Riverside

    Impressions: Ruffy & The Riverside

    Thanks to Pirate PR, I’ve been playing this retro-feel 3D platformer adventure.

    With its cute hand drawn 2D-characters-in-a-3D-world inspired by Paper Mario, and unique copy-pasting mechanics & puzzles, this well-made indie game feels like a blast from the past collect-em-all that the whole family can enjoy.

    Developer

    Zockrates Labs UG

    Platforms

    PC
    PS5
    Xbox Series
    Switch

    Completion Time

    ~11hrs

    Posted @

    5hrs

    + + Intuitive Gameplay
    + Family Friendly Fun
    – A couple of puzzles were inconsistent

    The game starts by introducing you to Ruffy, the plucky protagonist who appears to be a bear in a world full of multiple species of sentient animals. You and your sassy bee friend Pip, are plummeting to your demise (well, just you, since you can’t fly). Not to worry, because there is a waterfall nearby, and you inexplicably have the ability to copy and paste materials in this world – which appears to be the key concept differentiating this game from other platformers – so you copy some vines, and paste them onto the waterfall, and hey presto – an instant way to climb out of danger!

    Key concept out of the way, we are exposed to some story beats, harking back to some great simple classics like Bango Kazooie or Spyro the dragon (introduce the world -> do some basic gameplay -> introduce the villain -> set forth on the adventure). Rather than being a boring rehash of tried tropes, the simple formula for the story allows a relaxed environment to explore the world without too many interruptions to the gameplay, which is where this game shines.

    At the heart of the loop is a collect-a-thon. An entire menu page is dedicated to showing what you’ve collected and what you’re missing via “who’s that Pokemon” style outlines. Various dialogue from the numerous NPCs scattered about give hints as to how to collect a nearby item. The variety of puzzles keeps the game interesting, with some seemingly once-off (such as a “simon-says”-like colour puzzle encountered a few hours in) while most other, like the shape-matching 3×3 copy-paste fest, are scattered around most generously.

    Zones in this game are divided into large sections with “doorways” into the next, each littered with many interactive elements, feeling large, but not too big that you can’t just run around. While i haven’t yet played enough to unlock it, I have talked to a few NPCs guarding a barrel dispenser, and it is heavily implied that running on top of a moving barrel is the transport of choice in this land.

    There was a minor inconsistency from my perception with some of the puzzles – specifically the main copy-paste mechanic. There are arbitrary limits to what you can copy and paste, where you can’t paste water onto solid objects, except sometimes you can, such as a railing or a tree, but not a footpath. Overall, it is logical – wood, stone and metal are interchangeable, with wood being destructible, and also Lava, water and ice can be exchanged. But there was a point where I was stuck for way too long trying to set a shark’s water into lava so that it would burn, only to find out that the shark’s base material itself was the thing to be changed – despite the fact that you can’t change the material on almost any other living creature.

    Overall, I enjoy this game as a nostalgic platformer, and would recommend it to those seeking a title that is friendly to younger audiences while still being fun to watch. The character art is gorgeous, the animations short-looped but fun, and the gameplay is solid, even if there is a couple of small hangups as mentioned.

  • Impressions: The Alters

    Impressions: The Alters

    I’ve played and streamed a fair bit of this game, and was blown away. What I thought I was getting was a simulation game with your character creating copies of themselves to produce more product efficiently, in a sufficiently sci-fi settings. What I did not expect was the heavy focus on humanity, self, and morals.

    Developer

    11 bit Studio

    Platforms

    PC
    PS5
    Xbox Series

    HLTB

    ~23hrs

    Posted @

    16hrs

    + + Compelling Story
    + Gameplay Loop
    – AI controversy

    There are spoilers to the nature of the game ahead: The game starts you off in a mining survey gone wrong. You’re alone, you’re in imminent danger of the sun cooking you to death, and you can’t do this by yourself. Luckily for you, Rapidium is this galaxy’s new rare resource and you crashed on a planet full of it. Rapidium (helpfully named much like Avatar’s Unobtanium) speeds up time – useful for so many applications such as allowing crops to grow in hours. I bet you can already see what we’ll be using it for.

    So we take our rapidium, and apply it to some of our DNA, and suddenly we have clones. but we don’t want copies of ourselves, we want specialists. We want Scientists, Miners, Botanists, an entire crew worth of different experienced people to make a proper team and this is where The Alters really lets loose.

    I don’t know about you, but I have often wondered “what if i had have made a different choice in this part of my life”, what if i didn’t listen to the guidance counselor or my folks in 2002, and studied game design despite there being “no future in it”. What if I had paid more attention to relationships better, what if I had taken that job that was too scary. The Alters takes this question and opens it further – what if you could talk to those people who lived that life, and face those choices and see how it might change you, and what lessons they could teach you. It’s a fascinating thing, and even though this is a character, I still felt so much connection and empathy to the story.

    Speaking of which, the story gave me vast flashbacks to Death Stranding. The way you interact with NPCs, the vague Sci-Fi explanations, the lack of contact and not knowing who to trust, definitely seemed inspired. Being that the game is about a journey from A to B, with acts involving constant retreading of the same grounds but slowly increasing your tools and exploration, I was heavily reminded of Hideo Kojima’s latest works. On the upside, I found this story (so far – at the time of writing, I have only completed act 1) much more grounded in plausible Sci-Fi. Themes of corporate greed, exploration, and humanity felt much more in line with movies such as Duncan Jones’ Moon, and I have enjoyed every second I’ve played so far.