Developer Interview: Ruffy and the Riverside

We started as a bunch of artists and grew into being a real game studio. It was a steep learning curve, but I am happy we started with what we had at the time. That's basically the reason why everything is still drawn by hand, and the game has its unique look.

The idea of swapping textures came to me when I went through some old drawings. A black-and-white drawing of a waterfall caught my eye. I wondered if it was supposed to be a waterfall or a stream of lava; that was basically the moment when I realised that it could just be both water and lava. That must be a crazy game mechanic. Changing textures to transform the game world, what a cool idea. To get a first impression, I copied the waterfall drawing and coloured it with red and orange instead of blue, and this basically was the first SWAP. Of course, instantly, it became clear that we could do very unique puzzles with that. Every swap had to have effects on the game world. A lava stream, for example, should burn obstacles away, a stone in the sea should swim when it gets swapped to wood and so on. In the end, that small drawing of a waterfall brought us into a whole cosmos of unique gameplay with so many possibilities.

I think it's not a surprise that it means to draw a lot. Not just dozens but hundreds of drawings and maybe thousands of early design sketches. Ruffy’s walk animation alone has eight perspectives with five drawings each, so 40 drawings for that. By now, Ruffy has been redesigned three times, so 120 drawings (are) just for Ruffy walking, and each drawing needs about 10-20 early sketches. Of course, Ruffy does a lot more than walk — he swaps, fights, climbs, (and) cheers; of course, there is far, far more than just Ruffy.

So it is great fun to work with all [those] drawings, but the downside of it is that you cannot change a design by just changing the 3D model or its textures. Instead, you have to draw it from scratch all over again.

The good thing, though, is that you can visualise so many details because, you see, you have to draw that bear anyway, so why not just add some more funny things to it? As it takes much time to draw, there is always enough time to come up with all those nice little detail ideas, so it is a very meditative and inspiring work process.

I think it's not a surprise that it means to draw a lot. Not just dozens but hundreds of drawings and maybe thousands of early design sketches. Ruffy’s walk animation alone has eight perspectives with five drawings each, so 40 drawings for that. By now, Ruffy has been redesigned three times, so 120 drawings (are) just for Ruffy walking, and each drawing needs about 10-20 early sketches. Of course, Ruffy does a lot more than walk — he swaps, fights, climbs, (and) cheers; of course, there is far, far more than just Ruffy.

So it is great fun to work with all [those] drawings, but the downside of it is that you cannot change a design by just changing the 3D model or its textures. Instead, you have to draw it from scratch all over again.

The good thing, though, is that you can visualise so many details because, you see, you have to draw that bear anyway, so why not just add some more funny things to it? As it takes much time to draw, there is always enough time to come up with all those nice little detail ideas, so it is a very meditative and inspiring work process.

Oh yes, of course. Where can I even start? I think every adventure should have some Zelda vibes in the way secrets can be discovered and solved. In our game, many of those secrets can be hidden under a "wrong" first texture. Could that rock be something else? Could I climb that waterfall if I just swapped its texture? So you really need your imagination when you go exploring. Then there are all those wonderful platformers from the Nintendo 64 and [original PlayStation] era like Crash Bandicoot, Banjo-Kazooie and, of course, Super Mario 64. We sometimes even joke if [we] should name the game "Ruffy and the Riverside 64".

Many people think we got inspired by Tomba, but the truth is, I didn't know Tomba until people told me about [the] Tomba vibes in our game. Now I can see what they mean, but it wasn't on our radar from the start.

Also, many people think we got inspired by Paper Mario, but we never tried to copy that. Of course, I see that the games look similar, but that's only on the surface because both have that hand-drawn look.

The biggest challenge is to keep going with it, even if you see that it grows bigger every day. This is just because there are so many great ideas and visions you want to add to the game, and it gets bigger and more complex every week. Sometimes it seems like building a mountain while climbing to its top, so the challenge is to say: okay, we are set; this is our game, and let's finish it like it is now. Let's shift all the other fantastic ideas to the sequel or to a DLC.

I think the most important change was from having [an] inventory of textures to the copy & paste system we have now. In an early version, you were able to collect textures in an inventory and paste them later again and again. Then we realised that the game world itself is a much better inventory; just look around and grab whatever is there. What you see is what you get. This copy & paste system improved the gameplay a lot because you never had to browse an inventory again. Also, it got so much easier to design good puzzles because now we could define what textures are available in each situation: Ruffy needs some iron here? Well, let's hide a small iron bucket under that tree there.

Sure! The challenges were mainly conceptual. Most important was which textures could be swapped and to what. We decided on some physical rules, like liquids could only be swapped to liquids, but as soon as you set up those rules, you have to break them again because, you see, ice is not a liquid, but the player will feel that it should be possible to swap water to ice. So besides our physical rules, we decided on some common sense ones. In the end, every swap should feel right and have a meaningful outcome. Then again, there was the question [of] what you should get when scanning a texture; it's not so easy when you scan a red-coloured wooden wall. Should you get wood? Should you get the colour red? We found a solution in all cases, but it takes a lot of thinking to have a mechanic that feels right for everybody, especially as Ruffy and the Riverside is all about imagination, and everybody can imagine different things. The way we did it is easy to understand, and I think everybody will grow into it very quickly.

Hahaha, yes, very retro, but in a good way. Basically, this is just the way we can bring our content to life. You see, we are an indie studio, and we want to make a truly epic game. We might not be able to make it look like the latest Assassin's Creed, but we can create a wonderful world with amazing miracles, great characters, and a deep story. So the retro look is just to make all that amazing stuff happen and make it work. Think about it, the first planes were built from wood and cloth only, so it is really about bringing a vision to life with the tools you have and not just about looking retro. Also, it is safe to say that we love games from the N64 and PSX era for how focussed they were on their core gameplay and story.

Well, [being a] game dev is hard work, I knew that before, and it turned out that way again. But what really changed is my view on small things in daily life. For example, whenever I see a bale of straw, I instantly want to jump on it and start rolling through the countryside because Ruffy is just doing that; bales are just so cool in Riverside. Also, I wish I could do some texture swapping in real life too. Guess I would swap some potatoes into gold nuggets and maybe some grey hairs to blond again.