Review – Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest

He is a Brazilian who proves how it is possible to do a lot with little. Developed and published by Cacareco Games, a studio from São Paulo, the game arrived on Steam at the end of March 2026 and has already been accumulating extremely positive reviews from the community. With approximately five hours you will be able to complete the end of the game and reach the true ending, but this brevity is rewarded by a fun, competent game capable of proving how an indie title, made by a team of just five people, can break the paradigms of unnecessarily complex and long games.

In the story, we follow Alex, a child who is on vacation with his family visiting an archaeological site of pyramids. Bored with the guided tour and talks about rocks, he decides to escape the group and explore the surroundings on his own. Upon hearing a mysterious voice calling him to open the great Ruby Chest, Alex ends up falling into the underground bowels of the ruins and needs to find his way back home.

To do this, he needs to borrow equipment from explorers who weren’t so lucky, including a hat and a whip, and face all sorts of stone creatures while searching for the key fragments from the chest. The narrative is simple, following the classic adventures that inspired the game, but the text is funny and uses light irony to accentuate the character of a curious and daring child’s play, both in the dialogues with the parents and the tour guide and in the comments on each item found.

The nostalgia of laptops

One of the main innovations that Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest brings to the indie metroidvania scene is its metalinguistic approach to the portable format. The game screen reproduces in high definition part of the housing of a Game Boy Color console, complete with scratches on the plastic cover, fingerprint marks and even the possibility of choosing between different colors for the console, as well as hidden collectibles that add sets of stickers.

For the retro and portable style, Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest represents an affectionate and authentic tribute to Game Boy Color classics such as Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Metroid II, without simply copying their mechanics. The look of the scenarios avoids empty walls and always evokes Mesoamerican archaeological themes, with enemies that sprout from the walls. The pixel art aesthetic is heavy and colorful, with a very strong retro personality from the beginning. The developers seem to have thought about the limitations of the original hardware, bringing this feeling of actually playing on a Game Boy Color.

Within the platform genre, Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest stands out for being a minivania, those short metroidvanias lasting a maximum of five hours, which manage to maintain a good pace of progress and discoveries without leaving the player wandering aimlessly. Even with little gameplay time, the journey is made through very competent level design, giving the feeling of being a complete campaign with well-planned and executed content.

The game has six distinct areas and eight bosses, an impressive amount for a title that only lasts four hours, as well as a map made in a classic style, with small squares, but which reveals the complete layout of each room, which is crucial for exploration as it allows you to notice where there is a transition between locations and even secret passages.

Two buttons making magic in gameplay

The mechanics and gameplay are simple and efficient, reflecting the limitations of a portable console with only directional pads, two action buttons and two menu buttons. The jump button is unique while the other button is versatile for different attacks. The combat works well, but it is not the game’s strong point compared to exploration, as the common enemies are easy to defeat and little varied. The bosses, on the other hand, offer good diversity and a reasonable dose of challenge, making good use of Alex’s capabilities and his two action buttons.

Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest has an art direction with beautiful pixel art and pleasantly detailed scenarios, which avoid showing empty walls. The soundtrack exudes its retro style, perfectly complementing the aesthetics of the Game Boy Color with exciting music that immerses the player in each puzzle and platform. The combination of colorful graphics with the musical style of music ends up creating a nostalgic experience while remaining current, appealing to nostalgia without being a mere reimplementation of the past.

The game from Cacareco Games is an adorable metroidvania that seeks to evoke the charm of naive adventures from the Game Boy Color era and manages to achieve this goal masterfully. With excellent level design, compact and efficient, the game maintains a good pace of progress and discovery of secrets aided by the map and useful mechanics. Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest proves that a small team can deliver a polished and enjoyable experience without unnecessary padding, respecting the player’s time while delivering a complete campaign with a true ending to reach.