Judging by the demo—out now—Ruffy and the Riverside might be one of this year's best platformers

pcgamer.com:

We've had no shortage of great 3D platformers these past few years, but I reckon that Ruffy and the Riverside might be one of this year's best already—if its new demo on Steam is any indication. It certainly has me convinced that its core gimmick—the ability to copy and paste the textures and physical properties of its environment—is one of the most intriguing puzzle mechanics I've seen in the genre for a while.

What you're getting here is a familiar, comfortable 3D platformer with satisfying but simple movement, paired with a very clever conceit. Playing as the eternally grinning bear Ruffy, you've got the wizardly power to pull materials from the world and apply them to other sources. Need to cross a lake? Ruffy can't swim, but a little patch of ice can turn the whole surface frozen. Copy the fire from candles to ignite others, or turn impassable stone blocks into crates by copying the wooden property from a tree onto them.

Even early on, it's used smartly. Sometimes it's just a matter of copying one material to another to open a path, other times you'll be asked to alter images or solve riddles by copying tiles around. My favourite puzzle in the demo involved trying to turn several rock columns into a stone staircase in the ocean, allowing me to reach a high ledge. The slabs are too big to be broken after turning them to wood, but the solution impressed me: Turn the rocks I didn't want into wood first, then turn the entire ocean into lava to strategically burn down the stacks to more manageable heights.

The demo gives you a walled-off sample of the game's overworld to explore, plus portions of three larger levels from the full game. It sounds limiting, and it does end just when it feels like it's picking up speed, but I can't deny that it made me want to dive straight into the full game and see where those mechanics take me. The demo constantly teases future adventures, with the rest of each level visible, but blocked off with a transparent barrier, and it looks