Ready to run

River Tails: Stronger Together, developed by Kid Onion Studios and published by GRAVITY GAME ARISE Co. with a release on March 16, 2023, is in Early Access and is available for Microsoft Windows, Linus, macOS, Xbox Series X/S, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.

I'm talking about a game with a very cartoony graphic signature, extremely colorful, reminiscent of cartoons, and for the cooperative proposal it is a mechanically simple game, with some problems, but overall very well done. The cooperative experience is fun and brings good laughs.

The dynamic presented aims to celebrate the friendship, even if between a cat and a fish, who meet by chance and see in each other the means to achieve their goals, which in the end turns into a very unusual but true friendship.



Together for a greater purpose

The great goal of the game is to demonstrate a relationship of friendship and companionship, and how these characteristics are fundamental to the advancement of the game.

As River Tails is still in the Early Access phase, there isn't much of a story yet, at the beginning we get a cinematic that introduces the main characters and shows us the beginning of the story, being the meeting of Furple, a cat, and Finn, a fish.

While Furple ventured far from home, encountered great danger, and ended up lost, Finn lost an object that for him is very valuable, and the moment they meet in the middle of the forest, practically inside a river, they understand that they can help each other and a friendship arises from there, with the proposal to show the true meaning of friendship in difficult times.

The dynamic of River Tails: Stronger Together consists of each player taking on a character. The goal of the game is to overcome forests, swamps, and bosses in a cooperative way between two people.

Remembering that there is a mode for solo play, called "Lone Wolf", in which a player only controls the two characters, using both halves of the controller, one for each.

The experience of the project is always thought in cooperation, seeking to encourage friendship, and the "Lone Wolf" mode was implemented to create a greater challenge for the more advanced player who wants to play alone and have a more difficult experience. The intention of the game is the thrill of playing with a friend and consequently transforming the experience into something more unique. That said, for PC gamers, the game can only be played with a controller.

To begin with, the two new friends can only advance if they work together and overcome the challenging environments that the game has, besides the bosses, our biggest problem is the piranhas that roam the water and want to kill Finn, which introduces, for me, the most interesting mechanics of the game.

Such mechanics are based on Finn swimming and helping Furple to cross obstacles, Furple scaring the piranhas, and jumping on big mushrooms to kill them. But on the other hand, Furple also clears a path for Finn to cross from one side to the other in the water, but there is the possibility to jump out of the water to get fruits that serve as coins.

These coins have no commercial value, they are just collectibles, along with some birds that we find along the journey, in some hard-to-reach places, serving those players who like to reach 100% of the game, to have a goal in mind.



Cooperation to Advance

River Tails: Stronger Together has systems that are very simple, consisting only of walking, jumping, and interacting with the scenery, in addition to the direct cooperation mechanics between players.

It is worth noting that the interaction between the characters is only through cooperation, there are no dialogs, at most some sounds.

The game is dynamic and fun to play, with the negative point that hinders the dynamics of cooperation being the way the camera behaves, which is by far its most negative point.

The camera is controlled based on the position of the characters on the screen, but it is not smart enough to provide enough angles and a sense of depth, it constantly moves and changes angles with a frequency that is annoying, which prevented me from playing for long sessions because it would cause a malaise.



Overcoming Obstacles

Apart from the camera, the game is quite fluid, only failing in the camera positioning that prevented us from making simple jumps accurately, or deviating from deadly obstacles.

Regarding the audio of the game, overall it is good and quite nice, with music and ambient sounds, the construction of the environment is overall quite satisfactory.

River Tails: Stronger Together is very captivating and funny, despite being completely dependent on cooperation, Flurple and Finn have unique abilities and are special, which complement each other, always highlighting the friendship between them.

Mechanisms that go beyond the initial proposal

I believe there is not much to talk about regarding the optimization of the game, I had the opportunity to play in local cooperation with the aid of Remote Play Together, provided by Steam, and at some moments I had large drops in frames, but I believe it is exclusively by using the platform to play together, and as it does not require the latest generation equipment, the experience is very satisfactory.

There will be a weirdness with the controls in "Lone Wolf" mode, as we assume the two characters, each side of the control will work for one, and until you get used to it, it is somewhat difficult. In practice, it's two buttons and the analog to have control of each character, but it doesn't make as much sense as it sounds.

These are two alternatives to the way the game was really meant to be played, although they have their value, the local game experience will always be the highlight of the game.



Forgivable sins of Early Access

As the game does not have lines, and the game instructions are given through texts entirely in English, however, I believe that only temporarily, as the Early Access develops and until the definitive release of the game, more languages will be added and I am rooting for the presence of Brazilian Portuguese.

In some moments, there is a bug in the audio, and as soon as we advance from the scenario, there is a very loud noise, which bothers by the unexpected scare, a problem that needs to be corrected with the advancement of the project.

Since this is a game made by a company not so big, localization is essential for popularization, our market is very strong and for sure it will be an excellent addition to our range of subtitled/dubbed games.

Remembering that the game still has no online cooperation, being necessary a program to simulate local cooperation, or relive the old days of playing on the couch.



A good experience

My experience with River Tails: Stronger Together was very good, the game is very beautiful, well-presented, very vivid, and challenging. The camera can be a challenge to overcome in the beginning, but it reminds a few classic games, where you need to get the hang of calculating the direction and distance of jumps in particular.

I had the opportunity to experience the game as it was developed, with friends. In order to celebrate what friendship is, I had the privilege of having a friend to play with me and other friends to watch and it was clear how much the game values companionship, at all times one depends on the other to make the advance possible and help each other ends up being rewarding and challenging at the same time.

That said, it is a cooperative experience, which despite being simple, is very challenging and fun, definitely not a repetitive game of the genre.

Its proposal is to try to do everything it proposes in a satisfactory way, however, it leaves something to be desired in the camera layout, I believe that with this detail reformulated, for sure it will become an excellent gameplay set, anyway, the background story is inspiring and the cult of friendship is very present in this game and it was a pleasure to play it.

Because it is in early access, the game is not extensive, it has two worlds, with three stages and one boss each.

For this review, we used the PC and the Steam platform.

Thanks to the developer Kid Onion Studios for providing the early access key.