Hooooly ♥♥♥♥. From the sound design and music to the art and gameplay elements, this VN OOZES charm. I had an absolute blast with it and if anything, I'm 1000% on the hook for future episodes, I had already been heavily anticipating the release of this since seeing it randomly on bsky, but now I'm certain the team has some talented chops. The characters are funny and relatable, the art is stylish and absolutely kills it, the music toes that line between easy to tune out somewhat and perfect for setting the mood excellently. I adore how the track during the debate/investigation swells with each completed section.

If you're into visual novels, especially furry ones, do NOT sleep on WHODUNNIT.

Let me preface this review by saying I've had Ruffy on my wishlist for some time before recently getting it on sale. I got it for about 10 dollars-ish. I think that's a much fairer full price for the experience I was served than the asking price of 20.

Ruffy and the Riverside is a cute, very inspired open world adventure game with some light puzzle elements. It wears it's inspirations on it's sleeves quite blatantly, for better or worse. The overall experience is a cute albeit very very easy game, with some relatively obtuse puzzles that I have some complaints about. The story is passable in it's best moments and frankly awful at it's worst. If I was to ascribe the game an analogy, it'd be "deep as a puddle, wide as an ocean" but even that would be a lie in some regard. There's plenty to collect and do truth be told, but the issue with that "plenty" lies in how much of the collecting is repetitive in nature or not rewarding in the slightest. Maybe I just wasn't the intended audience for this game, but the trailer also does kinda betray the game a bit too, it's an indie title so I wasn't expecting breath of the wild level open ended puzzle solving, but going off the trailer alone its easy for a potential buyer to be convinced there's more freedom with verbs in the game than is actually on offer. Your swap, the main gimmick, is quite limited in what you can do with it. Liquids are limited to being able to swap with other liquids (or semi-solids) and most of the time, you were given superfluous options for the sake of it. I don't believe I swapped things to mud ONCE the entire game and had a reason to do so, only doing it to actually try it and realize it wasn't really beneficial. The game suffers from what I'd consider a common failure of many puzzle games nowadays where the dev had intended to include bosses of some kind, and decided to focus that on combat. The combat system in Ruffy is very very basic, and thats fine, what's not fine is when the game throws a boss fight at you for the sake of it, and doesn't really utilize the main selling point of the game (the swap) in most of the fights. It's a limited gimmick, that doesn't lend itself very well to puzzle solving too often, and in the boss fights it's woefully underutilized. The game's soundtrack is pathetically lacking, I hope you like hearing the same song playing for most of your time with the game. It also has an entirely unnecessary sprint stamina meter a la legend of zelda skyward sword, a feature which I thought was ridiculous to add considering it only made most of the early game prior to unlocking bale rolling a total slog, and the one reason I can see it existing was for the sake of having the also annoying and unnecessary cape upgrade system;
You're given 3 options for cape colour, the starting green, and your two unlockable (purchaseable with coins) red and blue, there's no difference between the three other than what you've given them via the upgrade casino. Thats right, spin a slot machine to determine which cape gets an upgrade, what kind of upgrade (health or stamina wheel) and how much (+1 pip, +2 pips, or +0 pips) which results in having a use for the coins in the game, at the cost of making the player feel unnecessarily restricted.

It can be said that you are harshest to the things you love, for you know the potential they possess. That's how I feel about ruffy, as I think that despite the game itself losing steam near the end in it's own plot, and the frankly abysmal ending twist (That was just pitifully garbage. Why.) I did come out kinda enjoying my time. For the most part. However, it is with love that I say this;

Do not buy this game full price. Don't buy this game if the trailer looks cool to you, play the demo first, then make your mind up on if you want to buy it. Honestly, if I could get a refund? I would.

This game is like 4D Chess, and it has the bonus modifier of making me feel like an idiot and kinda making me pissed off sometimes when I make obvious mistakes because I couldn't think 30 million steps ahead.
Trust me, if you think FTL was good, and this would be right up your alley, reconsider. This is not FTL, it is chess. It's chess with extra modifiers. ♥♥♥♥'s hard man.

Consider this;
Difficulty selection lies. Easy is normal, normal is hard, anything above normal is headache inducing. This game hates you.

I'm mixed. This is an interesting game, it looks good visually and it is certainly a good first step for a first project, but whether its just me or its the game, some things feel clunky. Lets go over the good and bad;

What I dislike:
- The red flash that can appear on your screen with some attacks is honestly probably my biggest gripe. It lingers for far too long and it is fully opaque, so if it's on your screen you're not dodging anything intentionally.
- A boss I will admit filtered me and caused me to give up (possibly just for now) has an arena that is too slim for him, he is very consistently moving and has a decently wide range and wide berth shotgun attack that even at full health, if not dodged, will instantly kill you.
- Speaking of that shotgun, he will sometimes backflip before shooting, which will be impossible to avoid the damage of entirely. I could be having a skill issue here but even when dashing, you will take a tiny bit of damage from it.
- Some bosses are quite tanky, feeling more or less like damage sponges. Primary example is the shotgun boss.

What I do like:
- Visually, the game is very cool. Yes its obvious what it's inspired by but imitation is a form of flattery.
- The first few bosses are kinda fun, I dig the gameplay loop and while apparently the weapon selection is limited, the intended method of shooting to gain heat so your melee is stronger provides a great cycle of ranged to daring melee hits.
- You are rewarded for being able to master parry windows with the boss being generally stunned for a second or two, as well as parrying rewarding you with some slight health.
- You can re challenge bosses for better times, this is great, I am not too interested in doing that myself but I know many people who would love to do that.

What I'm mixed on:
- Audio mixing is sorta iffy. Voices are *so* low, and the music is quite loud generally.
- The bloom/glow is a bit much. Some things give off this glow that is personally a bit bright and hard to look at.
- Hard hard hard personal thing but I couldn't help but notice it. The first boss tip has two or three spelling mistakes.
- Options menu is scarce, there's SFX and Master Volume sliders, and a delete save data button. No window options, visual options being missing is nothing surprising considering the visual style.
- In game pause menu, is also very scarce. It's just a pause screen with a return to title button. No options.

Do I recommend this game? Kinda? Its hard to say, yes I do because its got potential, and it's not particularly expensive for what you're getting. If it looks interesting, take the dive and give it a go. Just another case where I wish steam would allow me to specify SOME in between of whether I recommend a game or not.

I really REALLY wanted to like this game more, but it has so much holding it back, and currently also has some insane bug where it just EATS cpu usage like nobody's business. Pathetically unplayable now as it repeatedly stutters where several hours ago it was perfectly fine. Even fresh installs have this issue and I can only assume its some save data thing as it seems to only ever happen after playing a save long enough. Given that the devs have abandoned this, I severely regret my purchase and recommend others do not make the same mistake. Fun game, but it's the gaming equivalent of a hersheys bar, good at first but gone in an instant and it'll leave you feeling gross after you've finished.

Story also is as most say, pretty dogass haha.