The Riftbreaker news & patch notes

Hello Riftbreakers!

In the past few weeks, we’ve shared some of our design choices and how your feedback has shaped The Riftbreaker. You’ve seen that being a designer means making creative decisions while working within the limits of the game’s world and genre, and giving you what you expect. Today, we want to discuss one of our toughest challenges with every World Expansion: designing Mr. Riggs’ weapons. Combat is a big part of what makes this game unique. Our goal is to let you feel powerful while still keeping the game challenging. In this article, we’ll go over the rules, limits, and ideas we use when creating new weapons for The Riftbreaker. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/70daeb4508f3583a826fd22c9bb2b213.webm?t=1756478584 Since there are dozens of enemy creature types in The Riftbreaker, we made sure to give you a lot of toys to deal with each type. However, coming up with new weapons is not as straightforward as it might seem at first! Coming up with new weapons for the game is always exciting. We often have very different ideas for what Mr. Riggs should use, but they all share one thing: they’re based in science fiction. This setting is fun to work with because it lets us imagine powerful weapons, but also gives us some ‘semi-realistic’ limits to follow:

• Every weapon we create must be a human-crafted device. Sorry, D&D fans, no Staff of Firebreathing this time - unless you want us to attach a flamethrower to a stick.
• Weapons need to have a clear and satisfying effect when you use them, but not go overboard. This means we have to skip some of the wildest ideas that would be hard to explain or make work. For example, a weapon that creates sinkholes would be amazing, but there’s no way to make that happen in The Riftbreaker.
• Each weapon should focus on one type of damage. For example, when you fire a rocket, you expect it to explode and cause area damage - not split into lasers that cut the battlefield in half.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/48a0d7404d4ea2a1f1651e25d9a33bfb.webm?t=1756478584 We sometimes bend the rules to accommodate some of our wildest weapons. The Gravity Grenades are a good example of this. Usually, rules and limitations don't facilitate creativity, but for us, it’s the opposite. These guidelines help us quickly decide if an idea will fit in The Riftbreaker, saving us time and effort. It can be tough to invent a new rocket launcher that feels different from the ones already in the game, but figuring out how to make an idea work in our world is part of the fun. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/4248802ca834e47efaee1151f3ea287f.webm?t=1756478584 In the world of plasma guns and handheld nuke launchers, swinging a regular old sword can be a nice change of pace! The other fun part is making sure the weapon fits the game’s rules. Getting it to shoot and hit enemies is just the start. Guns in The Riftbreaker can have extra features that really change how combat feels. Besides damage, here are some of those features:

• Ammo cost - How much ammunition the weapon consumes per shot. If a gun can deal a lot of damage with a single shot, you likely won’t be able to keep firing it for long. Some weapons do not consume any ammo, but they are limited in other ways. For example, even the strongest Blaster won’t come close to the power of a Plasma Gun. You can, however, fire it even when your base has been turned to ashes, and you’ve run out of bullets for everything else.
• Rate of Fire - How many times per second you can shoot. Enough said.
• Target Piercing - A percentage chance of any single projectile fired to pierce the first target hit.
• Cluster Projectiles - A percentage chance for a projectile to ricochet off the first target hit and fly off in a different direction.
• Homing - Projectiles with homing will actively try to bend their trajectory to hit the target.
• Auto Aim - Weapons with auto aim will adjust the shot angle to maximize the chance of a hit.
• Spread - This specifies whether the projectiles fired from your gun will follow your crosshair exactly, or if you can expect some variation between shots.
• Hit Point Gain Per Hit - A percentage value that returns some of the damage dealt by Mr. Riggs back to him as healing.
• Splash Damage Radius - How far from the initial hit site the damage spreads.
• Projectiles per Shot - How many projectiles can fire simultaneously per one trigger pull
• Projectiles per Burst - How many projectiles can fire one by one per one trigger pull

Not every feature works for every weapon, so we adjust each one as needed. For example, the Laser or Flamethrower don’t use the “projectiles per shot” stat because they don’t fire projectiles. But we can’t treat them the same across all stats. The flamethrower doesn’t need piercing since its flames go through targets, while the laser works differently. Our designers have to consider all these interactions - some combinations can make a weapon much more powerful, leading to significant differences within a weapon class. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/28cdd5cc13da59ca8c591d5b6e945090.webm?t=1756478584 We gave the Blaster infinite ammo to make sure that you are never defenseless in ranged combat. It is not very powerful, but with the right mods it can be a nice "support" tool. Our weapons can also use mods to boost their abilities. Mods bring extra challenges because they aren’t tied to one weapon type. For example, you can use the same rate of fire mod on both a machine gun and a nuke launcher, but the effect should be different for each. One additional bullet fired from a machine gun that shoots 30 RPS is nothing. One additional rocket per second for a launcher with 1 RPS is a 100% damage boost. Our designers set the right ranges for each mod by hand. It’s a lot of work, and we can’t always test every combination. But since The Riftbreaker isn’t a competitive game, we let some really powerful combos exist. After all, it’s your game, and you should get to play how you want. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0e095cf8ba4224cd45587d17ea8835a7.webm?t=1756478584 Cluster projectiles can open paths to some unconventional combat approaches. Pic related. When we add a new weapon to The Riftbreaker, we also think about its role in the game. We look at how it’s meant to be used and what kind of damage it does. Most weapons aren’t good at everything. Some are great for single targets but not for crowds, while others are better for close-range crowd control but can’t reach far-off enemies. We want all our weapons to work well together, so you can build your own set for any challenge. That’s why, instead of just making a bigger rocket launcher, we focus on weapon types that need more variety. This led us to create the Root Gun, Shard Gun, Wasp Launcher, and Charged Bomb. Each one fills a gap in the arsenal and gives you new ways to play. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/cda5187d744731747855c59f363b1600.webm?t=1756478584 The right combination of mods can turn a single-target weapon to a devastating AOE cannon with pinpoint precision. Next, we have to think about damage types, which has been trickier than we expected. For each World Expansion, we wanted to create special weapons you unlock after finishing the story. These weapons needed to feel iconic and fit the area’s theme. For Metal Terror, set in Metallic Valley, we thought Laser Swords made sense - metal and energy go well together. In the next expansion, crystals made us think of ice, so we designed a Cryo weapon: a machine gun that fires ice shards to slow enemies. These ideas seemed fine, but after the second expansion, we realized the rewards didn’t work as we hoped. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c26406c6acb8057adcf720e534bd91cf.webm?t=1756478584 The Root Gun is a unique blend of melee and ranged weapons. The infinite ammo aspect plays nicely with many mods, such as rate of fire! Many of you felt let down after unlocking these weapon blueprints because the creatures in the new biomes were immune to their attacks. After stopping a huge threat, you expect your reward to be powerful in that area, but that didn’t happen. The Laser Swords couldn’t hurt Wingmites, the most common creature in Metallic Valley, and the Shard Gun barely worked in the Caverns biome. The first time, it went unnoticed, but after it happened again, we got a lot of feedback from disappointed players. We learned from this in Heart of the Swamp. At first, we planned for the Root Gun to be the final reward, but it wasn’t very useful in the swamp, so we switched it with the Flame Blades. This time, everyone loved the fire-spewing blades that burned everything. Lesson learned! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/e2ef1e4c6d6f1904e384e91367d6a2c9.webm?t=1756478584 If you find a nuke that can shoot multiple rockets with one trigger pull, it is obligatory to use it. We want to give you as much freedom as possible, but come on. Even we have our limits. As you can see, even in a made-up world, we have to follow a lot of rules to make weapons fit the game. The good news is, The Riftbreaker is very mod-friendly, so if you want to make some wild creations, you can - maybe even a tower that shoots towers! While we get back to working on World Expansion 5 and some surprises, stay connected with us by signing up for our newsletter or joining our Discord at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios, where we share news first. See you next time! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

As game developers, we have the incredible pleasure of building games that we would want to play and sharing them with millions of people around the world to enjoy. As awesome as that is, we are often quite anxious about every new release. After all, the release day is always the ultimate test for the game - not only when it comes to the technical side, but also from the game design standpoint. Luckily, playtesting exists, and players are usually more than happy to play the game early and share feedback. This allows us to fix the vast majority of serious errors, but also reveals that real players play the game very differently from developers. Today, we would like to share some things we observed when watching you play the game - what we saw in live playtests, streams, YouTube videos, and co-op sessions. Some of these things really were eye-opening! https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/3d3ef4c973db40ad3bd9136395860455.webm?t=1756478584 Going back to the 2019 demo was an experience for sure. We didn't even remember that old Sentinel Towers did not need any power back then. The Riftbreaker was first revealed on the 8th of March, 2019. The first opportunity to play the game itself came just three weeks later, at PAX East in Boston. We prepared a special “event demo” for the show. It was a very early version of the Prologue we have in the game today, but it had one significant difference: you started with a pre-built basic outpost. It wasn’t anything fancy - just a couple of factories, some walls, and a couple of Sentinel Towers. Our intention was to let you jump into the action straight away, skipping the building phase. We assumed that the trade show floor was not really optimal for staying longer and building up a base on your own. However, while observing our visitors play the game for the first time, we realized they put a lot of effort into the building phase, actively upgrading the structure we had made. Sometimes, players would go even further and sell all buildings to build the base on their own. We were surprised, to say the least, but we were determined to learn from this experience. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/1a43f6b35631d8f598404b3983066b98.webm?t=1756478584 We made the effort to make all the buildings look nice, and players dismantled them anyway :( The event demo remained largely unchanged for the rest of the 2019 shows we attended (shoutout to anyone we met there, also RIP in peace, E3). Back at home, we were already preparing to come back better and stronger. We all know how those plans ended, as 2020 had thrown us all a curveball. Still, the game industry tried to fill this gap with online showcases, including the very first Steam Next Fest. We presented our new and improved Prologue during that event. The biggest difference was that the player had no buildings at the start. The ‘new’ first objective in the demo was to dig up some carbonium and build a Headquarters. It gave us a natural opportunity to teach players these mechanics while also allowing them to build everything on their own. More importantly, it was the players themselves who showed us a good way to do so. Two birds, one stone! https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/da133537961914ae9578695ebd3922a7.webm?t=1756478584 This is the 2019 final Prologue wave, considered unbeatable and completely overwhelming. We had no idea what our own game had in store for us! Observing our players' behavior is also a useful tool for tailoring the difficulty. Before we launched our alpha test, we invited some gamers to our office to try out the early version of The Riftbreaker. They all had one thing in common - they were not fans of top-down, real-time-strategy games. The task we gave them was simple: just play the game as if we weren’t there. They could comment on what they wanted and ask questions, but we would not say a word. After the test concluded, we gathered their feedback and tuned the game accordingly. The idea behind inviting players who were not expert at the genre was to make the game accessible and easy to pick up for anyone, without any prior knowledge of this type of games. This allowed us to tweak the difficulty to a level suitable for as many players as we could. We also made a conscious decision to allow difficulty customization and all sorts of cheats and mods. This allows you to adapt the game to your expectations and needs, increasing accessibility. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/6c8560cb4761326e4bf0ac174dbea509.webm?t=1756478584 In 2021 we would have had no chance at beating today's Cryo Fields Brutal survival. Luckily, you taught us how to play! We took a different approach when it comes to the Brutal difficulty mode. At a couple of points during the game’s development, we “overtuned” the difficulty ramp and the general power of the enemy creature attacks in Survival mode. Our intention was to purposefully give the players too much to handle, and then dial it back just a little to keep it challenging. We got close to the final wave on several occasions, but ultimately always failed. We got so confident that no one would be able to beat the game on Brutal that we even issued a challenge to our community: beat the game, record a video, and receive a prize. We didn’t expect anyone to complete it, but many people did - with ease. We had to know how it’s done, and we had video evidence, so we started analyzing the footage. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/647427d725de7623405e5898723e4e35.webm?t=1756478584 Back then there was no co-op and no buddies who could help you with organizing the base, exploring, and fighting. Still - you showed us it was all possible! As it turns out, we played our game completely wrong. We got completely schooled on how to play Survival. Instead of building and fortifying a relatively small base as we did, the “pro” players cleared the entire map and claimed all of the resource deposits. The early game was more difficult for them due to a less structured defensive setup, but in the late game, they crushed their enemies with an overwhelming economic advantage. By the time the final waves arrived, these players could afford to build an absolutely incredible amount of defenses. We thought our Survival mode encouraged a more careful approach to gameplay. Instead, we learned that aggressive industrialization was one of the keys to victory. What is even more important, it was not the only difference between our and our players’ styles. They were much faster, chose a build order that suited their needs, and pushed to get the maximum out of every resource. In short, they showed us how to play the game on Brutal. Naturally, we continued tweaking the difficulty levels well after the event, but it gave us a fresh perspective on the game's skill ceiling. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/940aad511f38a1b6e3addb823630d8b1.webm?t=1756478584 Sometimes, all you want to do after a hard day at work is chill and build a megabase - and that's completely cool! We made sure you always had the tools to do so at your disposal. After the game's release, we continued monitoring how you played and where we could introduce features to improve the overall quality of life in The Riftbreaker. These observations, combined with tons of feedback we received from you over the years, resulted in a multitude of changes and additions that made the game simply more fun. However, we also discovered something much more interesting. A large portion of our player base preferred to customize the game’s difficulty rather than choose one of our presets. They either made the game significantly harder by increasing the number of enemies and their damage, or built their own creative mode by shortening building and research times and making resource deposits infinite. We expected that to some degree. In fact, the sandbox and custom difficulty modes were present in the game from the very first day. We also kept adding more and more decorations to use over the years to give those players more tools to play with. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/5dae5014681e4eb0543cc62023401f61.webm?t=1756478584 Please excuse the unacceptable behavior of the red mecha. We will take disciplinary action. However, the real shock came after the release of the online co-op mode. While reviewing streams and other videos, we realized that mission objectives were not a priority for many co-op player groups. Again, this is somewhat to be expected among returning players, but many new players also preferred this playstyle. Completing missions was a means to an end for them; the players were more interested in unlocking new biomes and decorative elements than in progressing the story. We realized that for a large portion of our playerbase, the main source of enjoyment was hanging out with their friends, smashing through a horde of creatures every now and again, and building cool fortresses. It was about the journey, not the destination. Somehow, The Riftbreaker became a much more popular social experience than we expected. It was a heartwarming feeling for us. After thousands of hours we spent with the game over the past couple of years, it is sometimes difficult to take a step back and look at The Riftbreaker from the perspective of a fresh player. You know the saying - after this much time, you stop seeing the forest, and start cataloging the trees. Moments like these pull us out of that headspace and remind us why we started making games in the first place. Thank you for that! https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/da7c9cac259eabe84971f6d8a4ef99bc.webm?t=1756478584 I guess we should call co-op Riftmender, because it encourages so many nice interactions (❁´◡`❁) We guess most of you experience something similar in your day-to-day jobs and activities. Car mechanics always look for things that can break down, musicians can’t listen to their own songs, and workers at a potato chips factory won’t touch another potato chip in their lives. What we wanted to say in this post is: we see you, and we know why you play. Our goal is primarily to give you a break from the mundane and offer a fun experience. We will keep making games with that goal in mind. The fun factor comes first, even if sometimes we’re too deep in analyzing bug reports and optimizing code to acknowledge it. Join our Discord at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios and our newsletter at https://www.exorstudios.com/blog/#newsletter for more insights like these. See you next time! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

It is often said that good game design is largely invisible. It subtly affects your decisions and gives you a sense of direction, without many obvious clues. We do not mean to say that painting ledges yellow is necessarily wrong. On the contrary, overthinking simple scenarios may complicate them beyond what's necessary. Today, however, we won't be talking about simple scenarios. It's the complex moments that truly allow a developer to create something memorable. In this article, we will examine a couple of moments from The Riftbreaker's campaign that posed a challenge for us. We will explain what we wanted to achieve through our design, and show you what we didn't want you to notice. Warning - spoilers ahead!

THE PROLOGUE

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/9c35527885aadc10851e04731997186d.webm?t=1756478584 Even in the prologue mission, you can get into some pretty intense situations. We made sure that everything is under control, though. We will kick things off by taking a look at the Prologue mission. For many of you, it was the first experience with The Riftbreaker. We had to nail the design on this one, as this one mission carried profound consequences. You only have one chance at making a good first impression. It was a challenging process, as we had to pack the entire Riftbreaker gameplay into a bite-sized demo. Our heads and hearts were engaged in a tug of war. The hearts wanted to show off all the cool things we have been working on. The minds, on the other hand, were doing their best to keep us in check and stick to the good old "less is more" rule. After much trial and error, including several rounds of playtesting, we concluded that we need to balance freedom and guidance while minimizing potential problems. Let this table show you what we mean. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/8066471773d3c0c2144c2520eca862e5.webm?t=1756478584 We wanted to give you enough freedom that you can get a taste of building a real base. Did you even know that you could research new tech in the prologue? It has a special, modified research tree! GUIDANCE FREEDOM MINIMIZE PROBLEMS We want the mission to be completed in 30 minutes… …but we won't force you to end it. Take as much time as you need. Always display objectives that tell you how to progress, but don't enforce them. We would like players to build some basic defensive structures… …but Mr. Riggs shouldn't feel weak in these early moments of gameplay. We gave Mr. Riggs a custom loadout with "special" weapons so that you get the taste of all game aspects. We want you to build an Armory, AI Hubs, and some towers during the mission… …but we don't want to punish you if you spend those resources elsewhere. We quietly "boost" the resources you need to build key structures as part of the mission objective flow. We want you to experience fighting a horde… …but we don't want to display a "Mission Failed" screen. Cut to black before the base goes down in flames. We want you to gather some resources and get a feel for the game's logistics… …but we don't want you to run into the resource cap too early. Give the player a couple of Solid Material Storages beyond the visible map boundaries. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/2ee754720461646eb10e3e4789358fd8.webm?t=1756478584 Apart from building, you can also explore the Prologue map and discover surprises we left for you here and there. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/262b907a0c5b81b75c23da0bad4446fb.webm?t=1756478584 And look, we weren't joking about having storage buildings off the map. It was much easier than creating a separate mech entity only for the prologue. The list goes on and on. Designing the Prologue meant solving hundreds, if not thousands, of such problems. We solved some of them quite quickly. Others took months of iterating to get it right. However, taking things one step at a time allowed us to build a tutorial sequence that allows you to set your own pace. We don't increase the pressure when it's not necessary, and when we do, it is just a taste of things to come in the full game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/04e29e2474e1fa64c0573d63b79e1531e3285730.png Most players played the demo for more than 40 minutes, which is exactly what we wanted to achieve. The surprising fact is that more than 31 thousand people played it for more than 200 minutes, wow!

RESEARCHING YEAST

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f5ae4dd3626a2e50027de3cef49c7327.webm?t=1756478584 This research mission seems simple, but we create tension and pressure by layering various design elements. Let's now take a look at a moment that is designed to put pressure on you. During one of the missions in the Acidic Plains biome, you have to build a Research Station next to an Acidic Yeast colony root. It is not an easy task, especially when it is your first Campaign run. Not only do you have to protect the Research Station from the ever-expanding Acidic Yeast colony, but you also have to repel attacks from powerful enemies, some of which you might have never seen before. Baxmoths, Bomogans, and Nurglaxes will gladly bombard your station from afar, often with the additional protection of the Acidic Yeast, preventing you from dealing with them face-to-face. What seems like a standard research mission quickly turns into a frantic fight for survival. We wanted you to feel a bit on the back foot - and here's what we did to facilitate that feeling. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/09f4c8c2ae9fdf06d5f8131ed573ede9.webm?t=1756478584 From ever-growing yeast, to hordes of angry creatures, this mission has it all.

• The first time you encounter Acidic Yeast colonies, they are just baby roots - they do not spread very far. In this mission, things are different. The roots will try to take over the entirety of the map if you do not spot them.
• Before the mission, you gain access to Acid-Resistant Floors. They will prevent the Yeast from growing; however, you have to clear some of the smaller cells first. You will most likely want to use an Area of Effect weapon to do so. That, in turn, may destroy the root, forcing you to find a new one.
• The main mission objective seems simple at first: build something, power it up, keep it around for a while, and come back home before dinner. Unfortunately, Galatean creatures have other plans for you. They will attack in large groups, and very often, sometimes forcing you to build up a small outpost to keep the Research Station alive.
• The increasing presence of the Yeast cells will limit your available space very quickly if you don't secure it quickly enough - and why would you? This is a simple research mission after all!

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/70d2f443ee33d7791505f2b0dc7a89ae.webm?t=1756478584 It's not all doom and gloom! Once you start scanning the root of the colony it becomes completely indestructible. This prevents sad accidents. There are plenty of little traps that you can encounter during this mission. They are all there to give you a sense that this biome is not as cozy as the Tropical Zone was. It's not all doom and gloom, though. Once you start scanning the Acidic Yeast root, it becomes completely invulnerable. Thanks to this little trick, you won't blow it up with a stray nuke, and Bomogan bombs won't affect it either. As long as you keep your Research Station alive, you won't have to look for a new root. We probably saved at least a few controllers from a rage-throw incident with that decision. Designing missions like these is always about striking a balance between challenge and fun by delicately twisting the rules of the game.

LOOK MOM, NO HANDS

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c6c1a73ab86eeed78ec5228c5931384a.webm?t=1756478584 First, we let you take baby steps with the Gravitational Modulator and sample transportation mechanics. The core pillars of The Riftbreaker gameplay are exploration, survival, combat, and base building. Most of the missions in the Story Campaign blend these core characteristics to varying degrees. Sometimes you encounter a more combat-heavy objective, other times, you are free to build up an outpost of your dreams and dig up all the resources you want, but you can always rely on Mr. Riggs and the tech you already researched. From a designer's perspective, staying within those four cornerstones of gameplay is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you know how to design missions that fit the narrative and style of the game. On the other hand, an outlandish gameplay twist might feel out of place and alienating to some of your players, limiting your creativity. We don't want to risk any "stealth mission in a fast-paced shooter" or "underwater temple" scenarios, after all, unless it's a side mission! https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c37d852e04486d95bc7bf1377765b22a.webm?t=1756478584 Second, we give you an incentive to use it on your own. Optional objectives provide space for experimentation and allow us to stray from the "traditional" bounds of gameplay. Players can complete these objectives for additional rewards, but they are never necessary to finish the game. One interesting side mission in The Riftbreaker takes place during the Heart of the Swamp campaign. At one point in the story, you get an optional objective to find a Phirian Lair. Ashley is curious as to what she may find there, as all the Phirians she faced before were solitary creatures and she never suspected them to be social enough to form packs, let alone build entire lairs. Mr. Riggs warns Ashley that investigating the lair is risky. At this point, you are faced with a choice: abandon the idea or risk it for the biscuit. Obviously, we hope that your curiosity gets the best of you here! https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f4fc0dbd70e259a14d9f9c7b409f9853.webm?t=1756478584 Then, we send Phirians in hot pursuit after you. This is the first time you are defenseless and have to run for your life. If you do decide to investigate, you must first navigate a maze of rocks, trees, and other natural obstacles deep into the heart of the swamp (see what I did there?). It is a confusing labyrinth, full of false exits and dead ends. At the end, you find something unexpected: a Phirian egg. Here comes the problematic part: the egg can't be scanned on the spot, and sending it through the rift to an Outpost is out of the question because of its size. The only choice is to carry it using Mr. Riggs' Gravitational Modulator. That comes with an additional risk: when carrying something, Mr. Riggs can't use any weapons or movement skills, which leaves our duo vulnerable to attacks. Ashley decides to risk it anyway. What comes next is a mad dash to the Outpost via the twisted maze, running away from an entire swarm of very unhappy Phirians, and juggling a one-of-a-kind egg that you definitely do not want to break. https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/28eb05bfbcf3255e7078a2daa7f2716f.webm?t=1756478584 Escaping the creatures' chase can be quite difficult, but the reward is pretty cool. Plus - this is an entirely optional objective, so if you're not into this kind of adventure, you can safely skip it. What makes this mission special is our deliberate choice to take away a large chunk of your abilities while carrying things with the Gravitational Modulator. Up to this point in the Heart of the Swamp campaign, you had to transport things utilizing this tool several times, either delivering samples to your HQ or gathering Garlimonium fruit. At those points, you faced almost no danger. This time, it is different. Instead of being the predator, you become the prey. The chasing Phirians require you to not only plan your route through the maze, but also actively observe your immediate vicinity and dodge their deadly dash attacks. This completely changes the game's dynamics and puts you in an unexpected and inconvenient position. This is the ultimate test of your mastery of the new game mechanic. We knew that such a design might be controversial, as it breaks the power fantasy. However, by making this mission optional, we can reward your curiosity and risk-taking nature after testing your skills in an unprecedented manner.

CONCLUSION

We hope that these examples show that designing a game is not a straightforward process. It is an exercise in patience, planning, and, surprisingly, psychology. However, it is also very rewarding. There is no better feeling than seeing countless players enjoy the challenges you set for them. We will always be grateful for that. If you'd like to learn more about The Riftbreaker, read our other articles about game development, or get exclusive behind-the-scenes insights, please consider signing up for our newsletter at https://www.exorstudios.com/blog/#newsletter and joining our Discord at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios. See you next time! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We often mention optimization in our articles, release notes, and other interactions with you. It is one of the pillars of programming. It is usually not a problem to program the computer to do something for you. It is much more of an issue to make the computer do what you want quickly, without using 100% of CPU/GPU/RAM while at it. The Riftbreaker is a collection of thousands of such features. Making sure they all play nice with each other often takes more time than developing the feature in the first place. In today’s article, we would like to show you that optimization comes in many forms and is never an afterthought but an integral part of the development process. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/640734b237241b553735350555b6f355.webm?t=1756478584 Just like you strive to optimize your bases, we are constantly fighting for every bit of performance we can get. If we had to define optimization, we would say that it is the process of finding a compromise between functionality and resource utilization. You want to lower the performance cost of a feature while maintaining the intended function. One of the easiest examples of that is how our 3D models are made. First, our artists sculpt the model with very complex geometry. Polygon counts for our raw models can easily reach millions. If we wanted to use such models in-game, the GPU would give up after displaying just a couple of them at one time, let alone if we wanted a horde of such creatures. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f90d5e04e5f248805ea5fdc04095d7ec.webm?t=1756478584 A typical late-game attack wave is just about this size, maybe slightly smaller. Displaying so many enemies is not an easy task. However, since The Riftbreaker offers only a top-down view with the camera mounted at a fixed height, we can get away with lowering the polygon count. After the initial model is accepted, the artists create a low-poly model with simplified geometry. Sphere shapes become less spherical. Angles become sharper. Legs start looking like sticks. You are unlikely to notice these things at a distance of 25 meters (that’s how high our camera is), but they make models easier for your GPU to handle. This process can reduce the polygon count from millions to thousands (single thousands, like 9001, for example). Optimization makes it possible for us to send epic hordes at your base - in more ways than one! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/83b6a96bc494ad7fe4eef0a646eb6ac65a5df437.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/fe997c1e7207944dce98bdb3cd5f0785c44212dc.jpg These two images portray how the original models differ from game-ready ones. All the details our artists sculpt are not lost in the process - they are replicated via normal mapping. Another method we use for creature optimization never appears on your screen, but it is essential to the game’s operations. Maps in The Riftbreaker are quite large, with many naturally occurring obstacles sprinkled all over the place. If we want an enemy creature to reach your base, the game must calculate its path that does not violate the rules we set. Most creatures can’t fly over walls and canyons, for example. Moreover, the navigation system must refresh this path several times per second to account for changes in the game world. Props can be destroyed, altering the optimal path quite dramatically. That sounds like a lot of work already - now multiply it for every single creature and enjoy the slow motion because the PC can’t keep up. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/e9ebbd0fc5502ba3b3fdd1e9682097f6.webm?t=1756478584 This is a video from 2018 showing creature navigation in its simplest form. The creatures must reach the target (the base) only using available grids and avoiding blockers. Sometimes creatures may block each other, requiring them to look for another path. So much to calculate, so little time. To solve this problem, we decided to divide the game world into 64x64-meter zones. A zone can exist in two states: active or inactive. If the zone is not covered by the “fog of war” or within radar coverage, we consider it “active”. Enemies located in these zones run a full navigation simulation and are always ready to headbutt your walls. Units in inactive zones are “packed” - the game knows they should be there, but they do not take part in the simulation of the game world. When you approach an inactive zone, we unpack the units so they can take an active part in gameplay. It’s similar to a game of chess. The board is divided into squares. Game pieces can take any of those squares, but you don’t have to calculate all the possibilities at all times. You just have to figure out which pieces are relevant right now and count the possible moves for those (and then blunder your queen anyway - just play Gambit Sandomierski. It's OP). Thanks to this, you free up a lot of mental resources - just like packing creatures saves a lot of CPU power that we can utilize elsewhere. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/dc6d107adc65b3902e24591bed46045b.webm?t=1756478584 It's hard to show what this 'packing' process looks like, but we could see glimpses of it in the days of early multiplayer beta - you could sometimes see empty husks of creatures with stuck animations. They had no hitbox, no health, almost nothing, really. They simply existed. Mr. Riggs could get stuck like that as well! One last bit of optimization we would like to share with you today concerns the economics of your outposts around the planet. If you’ve ever built a base with lots of pipes, factories, power plants, and defensive structures, you might have noticed that time slows down a bit. This happens when the calculations for all the systems related to your economy are so complex that they exceed the 33 milliseconds allocated for updating the gameplay state. It is a deliberate choice - by lowering the game's pace, we allow gameplay calculations to catch up with rendering, which is often several times faster (the alternative was to drop frames, so we chose the lesser of two evils). Now, imagine if you had several such bases, scattered all over the planet, and wanted to update their status in real time. We would never make it in 33 milliseconds. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/7f5819f71dc681aeedd8526f8d7a0442.webm?t=1756478584 Building ginormous bases got easier with the addition of multiplayer. If we had to run real-time economy for all your huge outposts, we would probably need to call CERN, NASA, and other four-letter institutions to do calculations for us. We considered many optimizations, but none of them worked. They either affected the feature’s functionality or had limited performance potential. Without additional months of development, we wouldn’t be able to dynamically track conditions at your outposts. We had to make a compromise and chose fun over realism. Whenever you leave your outpost and travel to a new planetary location, the game takes a snapshot of your base’s economy. Based on that snapshot, we simulate a simplified version of your outposts. Your factories keep working, and depleting the resource deposits they need to operate. Once the deposit is gone, the production stops. Moreover, power is not taken into account. Thanks to these simplifications, we don’t have to update the full economy every frame. This already is a radical solution, but it’s not the entire story. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/9096ddff3abb8530adffaad966da7551.webm?t=1756478584 Galatean creatures are so nice that they will wait until you're home to come to your doorstep. We also decided to prevent enemy attacks while you are away from your outposts. Early on, we planned those remote outposts to be targeted by enemy hordes from time to time. You would have to come back and repel the attack, or leave it alone and accept that some of your buildings would be destroyed. That would also force us to update the outpost simulation much more frequently, leading to even more issues. After talking this feature through amongst ourselves and discussing it with you, we decided to let this feature go. It allowed us to limit the simulation to the economy alone and remove a potential pain point, all in one go. In hindsight, this was the best compromise we could have made. The Riftbreaker is complex enough without forcing players to babysit several outposts at once! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/89848b12d935e54cd89eef3aa5686b33.webm?t=1756478584 We decided to get rid of attacks on remote outposts in your absence for simplicity's sake. From what we heard - it was a good decision. There are hundreds of examples like that. Each of our programmers could spend hours talking through the optimizations they have introduced. Our 2.0 Update alone required them to revisit almost every piece of code and adapt it to online play, which was usually synonymous with heavy optimization. We hope that, thanks to this article, you will now know that optimization is never an afterthought. It is an integral part of software development. If you’d like to learn more about this or any other aspect of game development, feel free to ask us questions here and on our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios. Also, remember to sign up for our newsletter right here. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

There is an old saying in the game industry: “Getting the last 10% done requires 90% of the total effort.” This “proverb*” essentially says that the final layer of polish for any given game is a difficult, demanding process. The game needs to hold its own without any additional fluff, but the attention to detail and subtle features make the difference between a mid game and something special. During the final phase of production, developers often come up with a ton of small details that bring the game world to life. It was no different in The Riftbreaker's case. Today, we would like to highlight some small features that often go unnoticed but play an essential role in shaping the game's atmosphere. *The word ‘proverb’ implies the existence of ‘noobverb’, and I find it amusing

Where the Wild Wind Blows

One feature we are particularly proud of is our dynamic vegetation system. The trees, bushes, mushrooms, and tufts of grass play a large role in creating the right feeling for the players. If these elements were static, you would feel as if you were trapped in a diorama. To avoid that feeling, we have developed a system that allows both you and the atmospheric conditions to interact with the elements of flora. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f508078449b69748570168ef4aee762d.webm?t=1756478584 Most living things in the game (we count Mr. Riggs here as well) affect nearby plants by making them bend. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f076788ddb79d62045d7d8b5cdd5615b.webm?t=1756478584 Bending vegetation is made possible by attaching a special component to an entity. Here, it is visualized by the red sphere - that sphere is what collides with the grass and produces the effect. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c64fc3a5adf32c55f1148fed571d460d.webm?t=1756478584 Rockets can do it as well! The possibilities are endless! To facilitate those interactions, all the entity files for our plants include a VegetationComponent. It is a set of instructions for our game engine that marks those props as interactable plants. The first thing you will notice after equipping a prop with this component is bending. As you walk through the grass, the individual tufts bend away from you, imitating what would happen in real life. This applies to trees as well - if you collide lightly with a tree trunk, it is going to bend away from you and spring back to its original shape. If your angle of approach or speed is too high, you will exceed the maximum bending force. The tree will snap in half as a result. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/36dd60b9a59f43c2ef5a6fb00a902618.webm?t=1756478584 You can try playing around with wind power in the game using the developer console. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/73a03e05c3d5b81c996710b1c89334bf.webm?t=1756478584 Just be careful not to go too hard, you might get unexpected results. Our plants also react to other things. Shockwaves, rocket propellers, air turbulence behind bullets - all of these have the potential to bend the vegetation a little. If you want to see this system in full effect, you have to wait until the weather changes. A good portion of the Galatean weather events increase wind speed. Thanks to this, you will see all the plants on your screen sway from side to side in response to the wind forces acting on them. And if you manage to catch a large meteor flying above a forest, you can marvel at the trees ‘giving way‘ to their new cosmic neighbor. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/34be69e4da988459ad724753482f0da0.webm?t=1756478584 This clip was made in 2020. Still looks quite nice, even with the old version of crystal shaders. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/2c77b5a9496e429ae99c247d6e02df1f.webm?t=1756478584 And here's a special tornado fired from our debug gun. The purple lines depict the wind forces that affect the trees. Developing this system was demanding, as we had to research and implement the ‘springiness’ equation that felt right, but the effects are immediately visible. It doesn’t affect the game's performance much, but you can turn it off in the options menu. We kept it because we understand that some gamers need to reduce screen movement for various reasons, but we are mentioning it to encourage you to experiment! Try disabling this option. You will see why we’re saying it was 100% worth the effort. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/9d6f100354ebae9a7310a2744590f2de.webm?t=1756478584 Experimenting with bending forces values was quite fun!

Putting Skeletons in the Closet

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/6b82c13623c3901a031f22cd39748bbb.webm?t=1756478584 It's safe to say that we had a lot of ideas regarding hiding bodies back in the day... One of the key features of The Riftbreaker has always been fighting overwhelming hordes of enemies. Apart from the obvious fun gameplay implications, a large number of creatures inevitably poses a problem: what do we do with all the bodies after you’re done hacking, slashing, and kabooming? We needed to limit the maximum number of corpses because even though they are no longer active entities, they still consume system resources that could be better utilized elsewhere. At first, we handled this problem with a magic trick - now you see me, now you don’t. We simply deleted the “oldest” corpses as soon as the number of them crossed the threshold. It’s good enough when you see a pile of dead meat, since you’re very unlikely to notice that one of 483 ex-canoptrixes has gone missing. But what do we do when you have a single enemy body lying on the ground? Do we abracadabra it and have it vanish after some time, or do we keep it forever? https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c90d386e2fddbd9258e5c7a0e2e0e39e.webm?t=1756478584 Cockroach apocalypse: Galatea 37 edition. We decided to take inspiration from nature. Nothing goes to waste - scavengers will happily take care of any organic matter that has reached the end of its road. This is how Quelver came to be - our own take on a super simple scavenger creature. It’s so small that it doesn’t need any animations, detailed geometry, or even complex logic. Quelvers exist in one of three states: wander aimlessly, run away from Mr. Riggs, and, most importantly, eat the corpse. Whenever a dead body appears on the ground, all Quelvers in the area will swarm it, as it gradually disappears. We were very happy with the results - thanks to the little red bugs, we solved one of our problems and made the Tropical Zone feel much more lively. Later on, we made custom scavengers for each biome. Which one is your favorite? https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/3815db85d9dc5a4e38ef8b823778e10e.webm?t=1756478584 Oh well, only one thing to do if there is too many of them.

The Next Best Thing After Smell-O-Vision

As game developers, we have to convey most of the information we want to give you through audio and video. That’s only 2 of the classic 5 human senses, and we must compress everything essential into the images you see and the sounds you hear while playing the game. However, there are ways to go beyond this limitation. Luckily, no one can force us to smell or taste the games we play (imagine the Poogret missions with Smell-O-Vision!), but we have some options to add a little bit of touch and movement to the mix. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/fc07fcfd4f91f07bf73fe8e9c33990ed.webm?t=1756478584 Just imagine how TOTALLY AWESOME it would be if we could smell this scene! The first way to do so is through screen shake. It is a controversial effect. Some people love it; others turn it off the instant they see the option in the main menu. Still, by adding screen shake to certain events in the game, we can simulate high-intensity situations, big impacts, the footsteps of giant creatures, and explosions. While this technique is purely visual, it does add a sense of movement and immersion. It is very important to get the potency of the effect right. Too little and you end up annoying the player without much positive effect. Too much and you can induce motion sickness or other conditions, from unpleasant to downright dangerous. The sensitivity to such effects varies from person to person, so that this feature can be adjusted on a 0-100% scale rather than a binary on/off toggle. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/580c48c53e35ddc4f17f7771e466fa30.webm?t=1756478584 Without screen shake, this nuke-throwing minigun would look completely unrealistic. We wouldn't want that. If we want to go one step further, we can use the various features built into gamepads these days. Apart from the usual vibration feature, modern pads also oftenr offer additional options for developers. The Xbox gamepad allows us to modulate the rumble effects felt through the triggers. We make use of that to give our guns a slightly different feel when firing. The DualSense controller gives us even more options, as we can modulate the amount of resistance each trigger provides. Thanks to this, we were able to emulate a real trigger mechanism for Mr. Riggs’ weapons. There is a short “preload” period as you start squeezing the button. Then, the resistance increases as you approach the trigger point. Only after you cross the required force threshold does the gun fire. We have separate trigger effects for various types of weapons, and also alter the behavior of the triggers when you have no ammo. It is a cool way to enhance the feeling of control over your mech’s guns. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/b20cfbab0fd0511da5f10ea06dd0ebcb.webm?t=1756478584 Here's some organic, free-range, corn-fed human-generated slop trying to explain how the adaptive triggers work. One last, tiny detail that DualSense controllers allow us to put into the game is haptic feedback. Unfortunately, haptics are only supported on the PS5, and other controllers rarely have this feature. However, with the introduction of the new Steam Controller, we might find a way to implement this in the future! This tech enables developers to emulate various tactile sensations using highly specialized rumble motors built into the gamepad itself. They are very different from the usual, vibration-generating ones. Haptic feedback generators can modulate the intensity, frequency, and character of the effects they produce. Thanks to that, you can feel it in your hands when Mr. Riggs is walking on sand, snow, or wading through mud. You can feel the droplets of rain hitting your gamepad when it’s raining in the game. And the way these effects are generated is quite genius - you provide a custom, simplified sound sample to the gamepad’s software. The sound is converted into instructions for the haptic motors, without the need to program every minute vibration or bump. If you get the chance, try it on the PS5. A free demo is available there, too! And that’s it for today! We hope that you learned something interesting today. As always, remember to follow us for more Riftbreaker news and gamedev articles. Sign up for our newsletter here, and join our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios! Have a great weekend! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have always said that keeping in touch with you, our players, is one of the most important things we can do as game developers. Publishing our thoughts consistently, weekly, opens avenues for constructive discussion and allows us to plan for new features and content. In fact, over the course of The Riftbreaker’s history, we have added, removed, and modified countless things in the game thanks to you. Some of those features turned out to be the best parts of the game. Today, we would like to highlight our personal top picks for features we added thanks to our community at various points in The Riftbreaker’s history.

Click-And-Drag Walls

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/6b5b13c45e92da1dd6ac3401cb77d35e6eaffe8a.jpg A closer look at the first version of our defensive walls from the Riftbreaker World Editor. All the individual wall pieces were 2x2 structures back then. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/4271be97aed2397339e662f6e7b829bc0526875e.png Wider wall pieces were supposed to reduce the number of structures you have to place in order to have a functional defensive setup. Here's a look at the wall pieces with the gate in between and some notes about the planned animation elements. We have no idea how many of you will remember this part, since it is ancient history by now. We’re going back to 2019 - the year of our first trade shows with The Riftbreaker and closed pre-alpha tests of our demo. It is not a surprise that we changed a ton of things since then, but we want to focus on one structure you always use when playing the game - the walls. In 2019, they were much different from what you’re used to now. First of all, they were 2 grids wide (the same width as the current Wall Gate). Second, they came with the Heightened Wall Floor part as a default, making the wall a 2x2 structure. Last, but not least, each piece had to be built individually. Needless to say, you found these to be a bit cumbersome and suggested improvements. We got to work. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/1d2bb6bd77cfe72f4cfe7b0cd8cd2f1a.webm?t=1756478584 We wanted Mr. Riggs to stay inside the base and shoot over the defensive walls using the attached heightened platforms. You still have this option, but now you are free to build these platforms only where you feel you need them. The width of 2 grids was problematic because it shoehorned you into building bases in open areas with very little natural protection. If you wanted to build a wall between two rocks, you had to measure whether the gap spans an even number of grids. Otherwise, you had to fill in the gap with a defensive tower. Given the fact that our grid culling algorithm (the part of the code that determines where you can actually place buildings) wasn’t very precise back then, it often resulted in walls that enemies could easily walk past. You also pointed out that the included Heightened Wall Floor made stacking wall pieces awkward, as it greatly reduced the range of defensive towers behind walls. We decided to resize our wall pieces to 1x1 and make them fully stackable. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/e3be58c9371c990c170f251820a26175.webm?t=1756478584 Even after we changed the walls to 1x1 pieces, you couldn't drag the cursor and build wall segments. Each piece started construction immediately when your cursor left the grid. It was very easy to misplace single pieces of the wall, which was a frustrating experience. However, the most problematic aspect was the building process. Placing hundreds of wall pieces one by one left a lot of room for error. A simple slip of the mouse when clicking, or an imperfect touch of the gamepad analog stick while moving over, would result in building the structure in the wrong spot. Then you would have to select the deconstruction tool manually, wait for the structure to dissolve, and rebuild it. It was a frustrating and lengthy process. Many of you expressed your concerns about this, so we decided to implement the ‘click and drag’ building method you know today. You simply point to the point where you want the wall to start, and drag the cursor to the end point. It is not as simple as it sounds - we had many problems and edge cases to solve, but it was worth it. All thanks to you! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/e4ba93f224c47d65596e1fce8899bb9e.webm?t=1756478584 Years later, building up your base is free of the teething problems we experienced in alpha and beta!

Mass Repair Tools and Building Ruins

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/b90f0af9e986eca08b1dd52171908927.webm?t=1756478584 Back when dinosaurs still walked the Earth, this is how we repaired our walls... The next change you brought about is in a similar vein, but came much, much later in the game's production cycle. This was around late 2020 and early 2021. Many of you had your chance to try the game, either in the (wildly popular!) demo version or during the Closed Alpha and Beta tests. You were tested against the power of the Galatean hordes, and while many emerged victorious, the walls and buildings in your base took tons of damage. Unfortunately, repairing buildings was not easy. All damaged buildings had to be repaired by clicking each and every structure individually. Moreover, you had to keep track of what buildings got destroyed during the attack and manually rebuild them as well. Initially, we planned to make Repair Towers and Mr. Riggs’ repair drones more relevant, but your feedback showed we needed to solve this in another way. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/5ad8b71eab2fb671604899bae12fc576.webm?t=1756478584 We quickly added the repair/upgrade/sell tools after your feedback. Later, we added the option to increase the selector up to 8x8 grids. First, we developed tools for mass building repair, upgrade, and deconstruction. All of them work essentially in the same manner. Your cursor becomes a building selector of a chosen size (anywhere from 1x1 to 8x8 grids), which you can simply drag around your screen (in a calm and collected manner, of course!). As long as you’ve got enough resources stored up, your structures will be repaired or upgraded, according to your wishes. Just be careful with the deconstruction tool. That thing doesn’t care about your bank - it will just sell everything and swallow it all up like a supermassive black hole. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/5e89fd54d623832b6fc32e0153c34643.webm?t=1756478584 Thanks to Houdini and our graphics team's invention we can procedurally generate building ruins. It saves time for all of us - we don't have to model all ruins manually, and you don't have to guess where your structures were before they got destroyed. Another upgrade for mass building repairs had to wait until 2023. In 2022, we participated in the Game Development World Championship, where we placed second. One of the prizes for that was a one-year license for Houdini - a powerful tool for procedural generation, visual effects, and much more. There was one small caveat - it is just as powerful as it is difficult to use, and none of us had any previous experience with it. Nevertheless, our brave graphics team jumped on this opportunity to learn something new. As a result, they created a script that procedurally generated building ruins from a game-ready model. Thanks to this, we could prepare decent ruin models for all the structures in the game, retaining their shape, size, and recognizability. From that point onwards, you’d never forget to rebuild your armory - just select ‘repair’ on the ruin, and it is done!

Customizable Minimap

Another change that came about relatively late into development is the addition of minimap-related filter toggles and icons. The minimap in The Riftbreaker is quite simple, since it is generated automatically. It takes the map's topography into account to show you where terrain obstacles and resources are. All the other dynamic objects, like Mr. Riggs, base buildings, and enemies, are drawn on top of the terrain representation. We only specify the color and size of the squares that appear on your end. It was good enough when playing survival, but when you started building up headquarters spanning entire maps and added more outposts in different biomes, it was a bit hard to find your way around. You asked us to make some improvements. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/d7f811b8abe033e7b627009f5b21b40adb612236.jpg We won't bore you with pictures of the minimap. Have a pretty base instead. To make it a bit easier to get a grasp on the minimap, we have added several icons for the most important objects and buildings around the base. Resource deposits are now represented by their corresponding icons, eliminating guesswork. You can immediately tell how many Armories and Comm Hubs you have, since they got their own icons as well. However, the most important addition, in our opinion, is the filter toggles. With just a couple of clicks, you can now scan your base for any damaged or destroyed structures. You can see which buildings are upgradeable. You can turn off the display of drones and mines on the map. It seems like a small quality-of-life change, but the potential benefits are massive.

The Co-Op Mode and the 2.0 Update

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0a29713e221edb10917549354f42803e.webm?t=1756478584 And now, we come to the biggest fan request we have ever completed: the co-op mode. Requests to add co-op mode began as early as 2020. Back then, we were hesitant to promise it - our engine was geared towards single-player mode only, and we weren’t sure if we could even pull this off. However, when the game launched, we received such overwhelming support that we decided to tackle co-op mode. What happened over the next four years was an insane uphill battle: reworking every aspect of the engine, redesigning it, and sometimes losing our minds. Luckily, we documented every step of the way in our “Co-Op When?” articles, which you can find linked below.

Conclusion

Naturally, there are thousands of things big and small that you influenced over The Riftbreaker’s production period. Going over them in full would take ages, so we hope that today's brief stroll down the memory lane has been enjoyable for you. You will even have the opportunity to influence us further, as we are planning to give you another large free update towards the end of the year. The update will focus on Survival Mode and increasing the game's replayability. If that sounds like fun to you, make sure to join our newsletter and the Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios - we will run a beta test period, where every voice matters! See you next week for more Riftbreaker news! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

Long time no see! We apologize for the radio silence these past couple of weeks, but our plans have been thwarted by various issues beyond our control. We're happy to let you know that things are back on track, and our regular content schedule should resume without much issue. We are grateful for your patience. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/759f7641785d66f234048be0f9dee4eec0a0fb7c.jpg Many of you have already started using our Dedicated Server app. It works just fine for most people on its default settings, but it is not exactly “headless”. The app still shows a simplified UI that lets you configure basic gameplay options. In some cases, this is a problem, especially if you want to control the server fully remotely. While we do offer a Command Line Interface (CLI), it’s not exactly trivial to figure out how to configure the app, especially since it is still our custom-built game engine. Today, we want to give you a crash course on how to set up the Dedicated Server app so that you can “run it and forget it” - without the need to click any buttons whatsoever. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/ad973681f3a45343983fb03a884ae2c743c9f5f0.jpg As we mentioned, the server launches in GUI mode by default. The app shows you a window with several options that allow you to configure the basic server settings - the name of your server, game mode, map, difficulty level, and a couple of others. These are all crucial parameters for the app to run - without them, it simply doesn’t know what it should do. It’s not a big deal when you’re running the server on a PC that you can control directly. A couple of clicks, and you’re in the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/17610fc772d401927f11c8ad36434de73b872a37.jpg Things are not so simple when dealing with completely remote servers managed via the command line. The Dedicated Server app supports Command Line Interface mode, which skips the GUI altogether. This mode is enabled by adding the following parameter to the command line while starting the app: cli=1 However, enabling CLI mode alone is not enough. If you start the server without a UI but don’t provide a full startup configuration, the app will get stuck on loading while waiting for input from a user interface that doesn't exist in this mode. To fix this problem, you must provide the app with a startup configuration that specifies the following:

• What mode to run
• What game type to start
• What map to load
• and what difficulty to use

To do that, the game needs a configuration file. We have recently released an update to the Dedicated Server app package that includes a sample config. It is located in the folder where you installed the server, right next to the DedicatedServer.exe file. You can edit it with any notepad app. It will allow you to set up the most commonly used options. The sample config.cfg file looks like this (if you mess something up and do not know how to revert to the original state, simply copy the example below): // SETUP SERVER PARAMS set server_name "Server name!" // Password required when connecting to the server set server_password "" // To enable RCON commands on clients, this password must be set on both the client and the server to the same value! set server_rcon_password "" set server_max_players_count "4" // Public/Private set server_broadcast_enabled "1" // Pause game server logic flow when there are no players connected set server_pause_game_when_empty "1" // Skip the menu and start the game! set app_mode "server" // Choose whether you want to use Steam for connectivity //set disable_steam "1" // SETUP GAME PARAMS // Open campaign params: // set campaign "open/open" // Setup starting mission: // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_jungle" // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_metallic" // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_acid" // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_ice" // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_swamp" // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_caverns" // set mission "campaigns/open/headquarters_desert" // Difficulty for open campaign: easy/normal/hard/brutal // set difficulty "normal" // ---- OR ----- // Story campaign mode! // set campaign "mp_story/mp_story" // Difficulty for story campaign: coop_campaign_easy,coop_campaign_normal,coop_campaign_hard,coop_campaign_brutal // set difficulty "coop_campaign_normal" // ---- OR ----- // Survival mode! // set campaign "mp_survival/mp_survival" // set mission "survival/jungle" // set mission "survival/acid" // set mission "survival/desert" // set mission "survival/magma" // set mission "survival/ice" // set mission "survival/metallic" // set mission "survival/caverns" // set mission "survival/swamp" // set mission "survival/swamp_lakes" // Difficulty for mp survival: coop_easy,coop_normal,coop_hard,coop_brutal // set difficulty "coop_normal" // ---- OR ----- //! Load existing game save: // set mission_save "SAVE_NAME" {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/f9d2c68eb95f6cfe801a762d0f9a5a5817d8c495.png Now, you can run the game with the following parameters: cli=1 config=config.cfg This will ensure the headless mode and force the game to read settings from your config file. With this example config, the app will immediately boot into server mode and start a new Open Campaign on Normal Difficulty, starting in the Radioactive Desert biome. Let’s start listing all the available parameters so you can configure the server exactly how you want. Let’s start with the key line: set app_mode "server" This line is required to work correctly. Without it, the server app will wait for the menu state and get stuck in an infinite loop. Setting the app to server mode skips that. Include this line in your config and never change it. set campaign "TYPE" This line defines the game mode to run. There are three modes you can choose from:

• open/open will start a new Open Campaign
• mp_story/mp_story launches a new Story Campaign
• mp_survival/mp_survival will send you on a Survival mission

Replace the TYPE in the option above to choose the game mode you want to run. Remember to keep the “quotation marks”. set mission "TYPE" This parameter is required for the game to start correctly in the Open Campaign and Survival Modes. It will tell the game which map to load. Without it, the game will fail to load. If you intend to play the Story Campaign mode, skip this option. Story Campaign always begins in the Tropical Zone biome. Here’s the full list of mission names to use, according to the game mode you choose: Open Campaign:

• "campaigns/open/headquarters_jungle"
• "campaigns/open/headquarters_metallic"
• "campaigns/open/headquarters_acid"
• "campaigns/open/headquarters_ice"
• "campaigns/open/headquarters_swamp"
• "campaigns/open/headquarters_caverns"
• "campaigns/open/headquarters_desert"

Survival:

• "survival/jungle"
• "survival/acid"
• "survival/desert"
• "survival/magma"
• "survival/ice"
• "survival/metallic"
• "survival/caverns"
• "survival/swamp"
• "survival/swamp_lakes"

set difficulty "LEVEL" This is also required. Choose one of the following, according to the game type you want to run: Open campaign:

• easy
• normal
• hard
• brutal

Story campaign:

• coop_campaign_easy
• coop_campaign_normal
• coop_campaign_hard
• coop_campaign_brutal

Survival:

• coop_easy
• coop_normal
• coop_hard
• coop_brutal

Optional Server Settings: set disable_steam “0/1” - Setting this option to 1 will disable the Steam-operated networking protocols. This can be useful if you intend to run the game on LAN. Otherwise, skip this option or keep it set to 0. (This does not apply to our users on other platforms. You can skip this option.) set server_name "My Server" - Sets the publicly visible server name that other players will see in the server browser. set server_password "" - This allows you to protect access to your game session with a password. Leave it blank if you don't want to set up a password. set server_max_players_count "1/2/3/4" - Sets the maximum number of players allowed to join the session. The officially supported maximum number is 4. Each player above that number tanks performance considerably. Experiment at your own risk. set server_broadcast_enabled "0/1" - Setting this to 1 will make the server visible in the in-game server browser. Set it to 0 if you don’t want that. set server_pause_game_when_empty "0/1" - After enabling this option, the server will automatically pause the game progress when nobody is online. It will prevent your base from getting destroyed when you are away. Once someone joins, the server will resume play. Note: the game ignores everything after // symbols. If you put these at the beginning of a line, the corresponding setting will be skipped. Deleting // and saving the file will re-enable that option. It works just like a toggle switch. We also support remote execution of commands on the server if you are the client. We call this RCON, short for remote control. The relevant option is included in the sample config file above. If it is enabled, clients can activate commands on the server remotely by typing in the console. Rcon needs a password to be set up on the server to allow for remote control. If you want to execute any commands from a remote client, first you must enter the password using: server_rcon_password YourPasswordGoesHere Then, you will be able to execute remote commands like this: rcon command argument, for example: rcon cheat_god_mode 1 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/1daff56fb483b59274d13c402d4fa6e8a8ef8b3f.png Simply uncomment the options you want to run, and you’re all set! If you have any additional questions about running the Dedicated Server, customizing its options, or changing its behavior, feel free to let us know. We will do our best to help you! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released an emergency hotfix for severe performance and game cursor update issues that were caused by the recent Windows Update KB5086672 (Windows 25h2).

The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, April 2nd, 2026. Changelog:

Changes:

• fixed severe performance and in-game cursor update issues caused by Windows Update KB5086672 (Windows 25h2)
• fixed mission name display for missions locations found using the Planetary Scanner in Open Campaign Mode. This fix only works for freshly generated missions. Thank you for all the feedback so far, keep it coming! EXOR Studios

UPDATE: - These changes are now live on the default branch of the game.

Hello Riftbreakers!

We hope you've been having a lot of fun with the World Expansion IV Update! We're happy with the current state of the game, but it doesn't mean our work stops there - we still have a lot of things we can fix and improve! Today, we are bringing our Experimental branch back to life. This is a special branch where we test our upcoming patches in preparation for their official release, usually a couple of days later. This Experimental Release is available to everyone on an opt-in basis. Please be aware that things might not work as intended, and you may encounter problems. If you don’t want to take any risks, please wait for the public release of this update. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe.

With all these warnings out of the way, here’s how to access the experimental branch:

create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)

disable Steam Cloud save backup for The Riftbreaker

go to your Steam Library

right-click on The Riftbreaker

select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game, and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback.

The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, March 26th, 2026. Changelog:

Changes:

• blocked the ability to sell the Prime Rift Station when it has already started charging
• low caliber tower ammo added as reward to shredder tower research in all research trees (fixed dependency)
• added cry tornado upgraded description
• added a few missing Chinese localizations (flowers and new neutral monsters)
• added sample headless dedicated server config file
• fixed floor eraser problems
• fixed building time calculation problems
• fixed missing localizations translations from some of the new WE IV strings
• fixed magmoth and magmoth_ice description
• fixed wrong dialogue line in ice_falling_rocks weather event
• fixed earthquake event spawn position
• fixed tornado event spawn position
• fixed precache generation for cultivator saplings
• fixed wrong dialogue line in one of the Cryo Fields encounters
• removed DLC options when setting up an Open Campaign in multiplayer ( it does not and can not require DLC ) Thank you for all the feedback so far, keep it coming! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just published a patch that will help you with the following problems:

The Riftbreaker Hotfix, March 6th, 2026, EXE: 1179 DATA: 837 changelog:

• Fixed crashing issues with the Cryo Fields Survival mission on Easy difficulty.
• Meteors, stalactites and ice rocks weather events have been added to precache and should no longer cause stutters.
• Supercoolant Refinery lvl 2 and 3 have been added to the Survival Mode research tree.
• Ionizer lvl 2 and 3 have been added to the Survival Mode research tree.
• Loot added to all frospore mushrooms. They now yield rewards for cultivation.
• Added a missing tree species to the cultivation saplings list.
• Added the blue Crystal formation from the Cryo Fields to the Cultivation saplings list.
• Fixed switched icon names for frospore mushrooms skins 1 and 2.
• Special Into the Dark bioanomaly added to precache and should no longer cause stutters.

Outstanding issue: We are currently fixing a bug that causes the building speed reduction bonus not to work correctly in multiplayer. The current workaround: the host of the session should equip building speed mods - everyone on the server will have the buff. Any building speed buffs taken by clients will not work. We apologize for the issue. Expect more fixes to arrive next week. Have fun with the free weekend! EXOR Studios

If you want a TL;DR of this article, this commentary trailer will give you all the essentials in a nutshell.

Hello Riftbreakers!

We are very pleased to announce that the new World Expansion IV Update is now live!

We have just released a huge, free content update for The Riftbreaker! It features the highly anticipated World Expansion IV, including the brand-new Cryo Fields biome, as well as an entirely new way to play the game - the Open Campaign mode. This update brings many changes and improvements to the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/3af59c129bd99eee490ff5b3499fa66ec12864f2.png We might be a little biased, but this artwork hits all the right notes for us. All the features of the World Expansion IV Update are available both in solo and co-op play. If you want to test the co-op mode, please make sure that all players are on the same version of the game. You can check the build number at the bottom of any menu screen in the game. This is also important if you want to play using the dedicated server. You must update the server separately from your main copy of the game. All the features from this free update are availalbe both in solo and co-op modes. Invite your friends to try the game - it's free to play for the weekend! It’s also a great time to try The Riftbreaker if you haven’t played yet! The game is 66% off right now, the deepest discount to date! Moreover, The Riftbreaker is free to play on Steam as part of our Free Weekend promo - you can play the game absolutely for free until Monday, the 9th of March. Promo starts at 10 AM PST, March 5th, 2026.. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/d876ff864f319b749671ea562a73aa3b5de84cd7.jpg Judging by the intensity of Brutal Survival such a layout would never happen. However, freedom is the name of the game in World Expansion IV - you can set your game up in a way that allows you to build pretty bases like this one.

Open Campaign Mode

The Open Campaign Mode is finally here! This new game mode allows you to skip the Story part of the regular Campaign, and gives you full control over how and where your mission on Galatea 37 begins. In Open campaign, you can start where you please. You can choose any of the biomes available in the game as your starting area. No DLCs required! Each biome will put you in a completely unique early-game situation. Starting in the Tropical Zone is perfect for those who want a smooth start with few threats from the environment. Choosing harsher regions like the Volcanic Area or Acidic Plains will immediately test your survival skills with environmental hazards and limited technology options. However, we can guarantee that all biomes are viable starting points that allow you to complete the game - we checked ourselves! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/6a89d6adf9caab6f4213b194a91c6d9c7bd36623.jpg Some biomes offer a more relaxed start, others are complete chaos from the first minutes. This mode is not intended as a first-time experience, but you can try! There are no dialogues suggesting what to do next. There aren’t any short-term objectives to follow, either (apart from dynamic, random encounters). Your only goal is to construct and activate the Prime Rift Station. How you go about completing this task is completely up to you. Resource availability, environmental threats, and expansion strategy will all depend on the starting biome you choose and the decisions you make along the way. Building a structure that requires a ton of liquids in the desert just because a buddy said it would be funny? Sign me up! Open Campaign Mode is available in both single-player and Co-Op. It’s a great alternative for players who want a more open-ended experience and greater control over their progression from the very beginning. You’ll also enjoy it if you like figuring things out on your own - no hand-holding whatsoever! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/c9a7e1bc015ab8c0e14aae8179eb795c6a13e27d.jpg The new Cryo Fields biome can sometimes look serene and beautiful. Sometimes being the key word. Prepare for mayhem.

Cryo Fields - A Completely New Frozen Biome

This is a permanently frozen region where nearly everything behaves differently from what you’re used to. One of the first things you’ll notice is how far apart the resource deposits are. They’re much larger than usual, but rarely close to each other. During our internal playtests, this quickly pushed us toward building multiple smaller outposts rather than a single centralized base. Trying to stretch a single base across the entire region usually creates more problems than it solves. Unless you want to take over the entire map, we recommend building smaller extraction outposts. Resources are spread far apart in Cryo Fields. You’ll also find natural Supercoolant deposits here. Until now, Supercoolant was something you had to manufacture yourself. In the Cryo Fields, it occurs naturally in large quantities, ready to be extracted and transported wherever you need it. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/ddd70eb3e598dacef78c95c36163aecaa7b124e3.jpg How many of you are wondering what will happen if we touch this thing? The local ecosystem is very much alive. Creatures that evolved in these conditions won’t behave like anything you’ve encountered in other biomes. Some of our usual early-game defensive setups performed surprisingly poorly here. We had to adapt and come up with new strategies for survival, and you will likely need to do the same! Wonder no more. You can access the Cryo Fields biome in the Story Campaign through the Mission Generator after completing the Palladium Handling research. In Open Campaign, you can start there immediately. Godspeed, you brave soul! Pro tip: attack waves in Cryo Fields are often accompanied by strong wind. Make sure to have a couple of turbines ready to take advantage of this effect. The Cryo Fields biome is also available in Survival Mode. If you’re looking for a more intense and demanding Survival experience, this is it - Brutal difficulty level does not forgive mistakes here! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/77bb13cde675d314542c25c72bec29798e54cc45.jpg If the sheer number of storage buildings shown previously is making you dizzy, we have some good stuff for you, too.

New Buildings and Defensive Towers

We’ve added larger versions of the Solid Materials Storage and Energy Storage buildings. These are significantly bigger and more expensive than the regular ones, but the capacity increase is hard to ignore. Once your base reaches a certain size, replacing several smaller storages with a single large one simply saves you space. A typical solar farm in the Radioactive Desert. The Solar Panel/Energy Storage split is roughly even. Now, you can replace the smaller storage buildings with the new large storage. It's a lot more space-efficient and will allow you to better utilize the room in your base. Both storage types are available in three upgrade levels. At higher tiers, they can support much larger production chains without running into a storage cap every 15 seconds. Be careful, though, the Large Energy Storage gets volatile when damaged… {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/5c40bf1e193c1f4df2d32d34131dbc0cb0a55d18.jpg And here are the three levels of Large Solid Material Storage. There are also three new defensive towers. ICICLE TOWER A complete opposite of a 'warm welcome.' The Icicle Tower fires a cryo projectile that breaks apart on impact and slows enemies in the area. It doesn’t deal a ton of damage to most creatures, but if you target something that’s vulnerable to cryo-damage, the effects are pretty spectacular. The added bonus of crowd control gives you and your other towers time to deal more damage. We think it’s a great addition to the lineup. INFERNO TOWER If you like the idea of HCM, but are afraid of pipes, this one is for you! The Inferno Tower launches cluster fire projectiles that split mid-air and ignite the ground. It covers a wide area and works well as a mid-range defensive option. It’s like a mini-HCM. Perhaps it doesn’t deal as much damage, and the range is much shorter, but it’s only a fraction of HCM’s cost! Plus, you know, there’s fire. We like fire. There are also several explosions. We like those, too. When fire and explosions are put together, we are happy. Does this tower make you happy? SHREDDER TOWER Acid-laced, splitting, razor-sharp needles are a nightmare scenario for me. Also for these Krocoons. The Shredder Tower fires a rapid stream of acid projectiles. The individual hits aren’t the strongest, but the sustained fire adds up quickly. The little acid needles split on impact, hitting several other enemies with every single impact. It’s primarily a single-target weapon, but thanks to the extra cluster projectiles it will hold its own against groups, too. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/3c461b3d36c3784b6e3c77686b125628c355b0e1.jpg The various rock structures will make you feel like you are inside a cave at times.

That’s not all!

World Expansion IV also includes plenty of smaller features, changes, optimizations, and bug fixes. Take a look at the full changelog if you would like to see what we were up to these past couple of months! This is an official invitation to the "build a functional Prime Rift Station in the weirdest place you can find" challenge. No rewards, this is just for fun and pushing your limits!

The Riftbreaker World Expansion IV Update, March 5th, 2026 Changelog:

Additions and Changes:

• Added Open Campaign Mode
• Added Cryo Fields biome
• Added Large Energy Storage building
• Added Large Solid Material Storage building
• Added Icicle tower
• Added Inferno tower
• Added Shredder tower
• Added Colgan species
• Added Frigmon species
• Added Frostiroth species
• Added Glaciogan species
• Added Hibernus species
• Added Spikodon species
• Added Temperoth species
• Added Brabice species
• Added Mantnice species
• Added Iceder species
• Added spline-based attack events in the Fungal Swamp, Crystal Caverns, and Cryo Fields biomes in Survival mode and on generated maps
• Added two new unlockable skins for Mr. Riggs - Snowman and Mr. Freeze
• Added Blizzard weather event
• Added Snow Devil weather event
• Added three versions of the Ice Bobardment weather event
• Added alternate Sunburn weather event voice lines if the player has Sun Shielding researched
• Added Cryo Fields specific cultivator rules for all plant species
• Added new destruction effects for multiple flora species
• Open Campaign objectives don't have the "Always Visible" flag anymore. Only the final Prime Rift Station opening sequence has the "Always Visible" status. This change will only affect newly started campaigns
• All research items are now visible in Open Campaign Mode. Their research requirements are unchanged.
• Added new Ambient Creature Spawner feature
  • creature nests can now be placed in missions during map setup
  • ambient nests are initially inactive
  • ambient nests are activated on player proximity
  • spawn numbers based on biome, map size, and threat level
  Open Campaign is not any easier than the regular campaign. Every battle can turn into a full-scale war.
• Added ambient creature nests across the story campaign
• Added new flora species and decoration prefabs to the Cryo Fields biome
• Updated Mr. Riggs' lines with final VO recordings and Ashley with temp silence
• Added dedicated Bioanomaly meshes for the Cryo Fields biome
• Added translations for WE IV for all languages
• Added ice material to ice spawners
• Added idle effect with sound to all spawners - to easily identify direction and distance
• Added missing advanced resource cost to some mech superior upgrades
• Added ice flora missing icons
• Added specimens for new creatures and flora species
• Added Colgan nest objective to the debug menu for testing
• Added Cryo Fields creatures to the discoverable system
• Added missing new species icons
• Added loot to new big loot containers in the Cryo Fields biome
• Added new creature and loot spawners to precache
• Added new player skins to the debug menu
• Improved the scanning speed of the Standard, Advanced, and Superior Bioscanners. Extreme level remains unchanged.
• Open Campaign Prime Rift Station final attack waves support metallic, caverns, and swamp waves if there are outposts built in these biomes
• Improved fighting music blend between DOM-based attack waves
• Tweaked emissive time and factor in all new towers
• Removed duplicated BurstWeaponComponent from icicle towers
• MainMenu: new_headers, and a new label for Open Campaign and Survival screens
• Objective markers - changed material on sparks, fewer particles
• More loot drops from Shegrets
• Changed destruction particles in all frospore props
• Changed ammo fire rate and ammo cost limits to fix the ammo powerwell
• SettingsMenuScreen: added a hint on how to change monitor setup
• Inventory: fixed crafting parameters display
• Improved palladium, titanium, and uranium handling research description for Open Campaign mode

The Open Campaign does not have any objectives that tell you where to go next. Random encounters can still happen, though! Fixes:

• Fixed Health Bar update problems
• Fixed wall gates receiving damage from quicksand and magma when they were placed close to these surfaces, but not directly on them
• Fixed hiding "always visible" quests
• Fixed the missing tooltip from global awards on the Research Screen
• Fixed multiple loot system bugs
• WeaponItemUtils: fixed ammo cost modification (min scale is set by config variable weapon_max_ammo_cost_modification_factor )
• Fixed specimen names for new species
• Fixed Cryo Fields creature names in blueprints
• Fixed metallic biome spawners appearing in ice biome survival mode on easy
• Fixed partially missing loot from all elite spawners
• Fixed loot missing from elite alien towers
• Fixed "no wind" weather event in ice biome
• Fixed the scale of units that walk out of crevices
• Fixed the Minimap solar power display value
• Fixed the elapsed playtime gameplay statistic
• Fixed quicksand damage announcement
• Fixed alpha mask in new vegetation props
• Fixed debris limit calculation - improved performance in high-density scenarios
• Optimized destructible parts limit for the Steam Deck
• Open Campaign: fixed hardcore mode
• Open Campaign: fixed the open campaign warning pop-up saving
• GameServerOptions: fixed SetServerPassword
• Multiple other small fixes and tweaks

Enough talking, go and fight for peace on this planet engulfed in interstellar war, that you most certainly had nothing to do with! As always, we are grateful for all the feedback and support that allowed us to finish this expansion so quickly. We hope you will have a lot of fun with the Open Campaign. We also hope that the falling ice blocks in the Cryo Fields biome won’t hurt you too badly (they absolutely will). Have fun conquering these new challenges! If you would like to always be up to date with The Riftbreaker and EXOR Studios, sign up for our newsletter and join our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios. EXOR Studios PS. Sorry, Wirawan, for breaking your mod again!

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have some good news for you today! The Riftbreaker World Expansion IV will be released on Thursday, March 5th, 2026!

This free update brings you an entirely new way to play the game in the form of the Open Campaign mode, a new biome to explore, and new buildings to expand your logistical and defensive options. In just one week, it’s all going to be in your hands. Let us remind you what awaits you in this update:

Open Campaign Mode

If we had to describe this game mode in one phrase, it would be “freedom of choice.” In Open Campaign, you decide where you want to start your adventure on Galatea 37: chilling in the Tropical Zone, or fighting for your dear life from the first minutes in the Volcanic Area. All the biomes are available right from the get-go. There are no dialogues, no story-based locks, or objectives to tell you what to do next. Your only task is to build the Prime Rift Station and get it running. How you go about it is entirely up to you. This is a game mode designed for those of you with previous Riftbreaker experience who do not need any hand-holding. It is also a great starting point for new players looking for an extra challenge in learning all the game’s mechanics on their own. Open Campaign can be played solo or in Co-Op.

Cryo Fields Biome

This is a previously unexplored, permanently frozen region in the northern parts of Galatea 37. Mr. Riggs has discovered large Palladium deposits in this region, making it a valuable travel destination for Ashley on her mission. The Cryo Fields biome will not allow you to take its resources without a fight, though. It is home to various species of creatures and plants (some of which are thirsty for your blood!) that are uniquely adapted to the freezing cold conditions. You will have to develop new tactics, adjust your weapon loadout, and learn how to build outposts here. Resource deposits are plentiful, but spread far apart. You’ll have to decide whether to expand your outpost or build independent extraction points. The Cryo Fields also feature natural sources of supercoolant. It might be a good idea to compress it and send it to your other outposts to maximize the benefits. The Cryo Fields biome is available from the start in the Open Campaign. In the regular Story Campaign, it unlocks right after researching palladium handling. You can also play it in Survival Mode - we believe it is the most intense Riftbreaker experience up to this point. Do you accept the challenge?

New Buildings

World Expansion IV also addresses some niches in the Riftbreaker technologies that you have been reporting to us. First, we have added new tech items to the research tree that will give you access to larger versions of Solid Materials Storage and Energy Storage. These buildings are much bigger than their regular counterparts and cost much more. However, their storage-to-space-taken ratio is far higher than that of the trusty old storages. These buildings are available in three advancement levels and will give you the extra capacity that is very much needed in the later stages of the campaign. We have also introduced three new defensive tower models, all utilizing elemental damage types that were somewhat underrepresented. The first is the Icicle Tower. It shoots ice projectiles on a straight path that shatter on impact and create a cloud of ice shards that slow down passing enemy units. It is a great tool for crowd control, and can deal a decent amount of damage if used against the right enemy. Next, the Inferno Tower. It is a mid-to-high range tower that lobs cluster fire grenades at hostile creatures. These grenades split mid-air and burst into flames on impact, covering large areas with sustained fire. It’s like a mini-HCM at a fraction of the cost. Last, but not least useful is the Shredder Tower. It is a rapid-firing tower that shoots acid-laced spikes. The spikes split when hitting enemies, and the splinters travel on further to damage more enemies. This allows the Shredder Tower to not only excel at dealing direct damage, but also counter large hordes to some extent. All of the towers are available in three levels.

And there’s more!

We have some really cool news for our Japanese audience. At the end of last year, we partnered with ACROVE Inc., a publishing company, to release a complete guide to The Riftbreaker in Japanese. We are happy to announce that The Riftbreaker Campaign Strategy Guide is available today in the e-book format, with printed copies arriving on store shelves in March. The guide features a detailed walkthrough of the Campaign, along with strategy tips, descriptions of weapons, upgrades, mods, as well as creature stats. It is also updated with the latest information from World Expansion IV. If you would like to get your copy of the guide, you can do so here: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0GP6XRMYM More information available on the official site: https://pcgame.acrove.co.jp/ We have also published a new Experimental version of the World Expansion IV for those of you who want to test it ahead of time. First, our usual disclaimers: This update is (most likely) incompatible with any current mods. Please remove all mods before playing. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe.

Create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)

Disable Steam Cloud save backup for The Riftbreaker

go to your Steam Library

right-click on The Riftbreaker

select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game, and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback. We encourage you to join and share your feedback.

Changes:

• Open Campaign objectives don't have the "Always Visible" flag any more. Only the final Prime Rift Station opening sequence has the "Always Visible" status. This change will only affect newly started campaigns
• All research items are now visible in Open Campaign Mode. Their research requirements are unchanged.
• Added new Ambient Creature Spawner feature
  • creature nests can now be placed in missions during map setup
  • ambient nests are initially inactive
  • ambient nests are activated on player proximity
  • spawn numbers based on biome, map size and threat level
• Added ambient creature nests across the story campaign
• Added new flora species and decoration prefabs to the Cryo Fields biome
• Updated Mr Riggs' lines with with final VO recordings and Ashley with temp silence
• Added dedicated Bioanomaly meshes for the Cryo Fields biome
• Added translations for WE IV for all languages
• Added ice material to ice spawners
• Added idle effect with sound to all spawners - to easily identify direction and distance
• Added missing advanced resource cost to some mech superior upgrades
• Added ice flora missing icons
• Added specimens for new creatures and flora species
• Added Colgan nest objective to debug menu for testing
• Added Cryo Fields creatures to the discoverable system
• Added missing new species icons
• Added loot to new big loot containers in ice biome
• Added new creature and loot spawners to precache
• Added new player skins to debug menu
• Open Campaign Prime Rift Station final attack waves support metallic, caverns and swamp waves if there are outposts built in these biomes
• Improved fighting music blend between DOM based attack waves
• Tweaked emissive time and factor in all new towers
• Removed duplicated BurstWeaponComponent from icicle towers
• MainMenu: new_headers, and new label for Open Campaign and Survival screens
• Objective markers - changed material on sparks, less particles
• More loot drops from Shegrets
• Changed destruction particles in all frospore props
• Changed ammo fire rate and ammo cost limits to fix the ammo powerwell
• SettingsMenuScreen: added a hint on how to change monitor setup
• Inventory: fixed crafting parameters display
• Improved palladium, titanium and uranim handling research description for Open Campaign mode
• WeaponItemUtils: fixed ammo cost modification (min scale is set by config variable weapon_max_ammo_cost_modification_factor )
• Fixed specimen names for new species
• Fixed Cryo Fields creature names in blueprints
• Fixed metallic biome spawners appearing in ice biome survival mode on easy
• Fixed partially missing loot from all elite spawners
• Fixed loot missing from elite alien towers
• Fixed "no wind" weather event in ice biome
• Fixed the scale of units that walk out of crevices
• Fixed Minimap solar power display value
• Fixed elapsed playtime gameplay statistic
• Fixed quicksand damage announcement
• Fixed alpha mask in new vegetatiuon props
• Fixed debris limit calculation - improved performance in high density scenarios
• Optimized destructible parts limit for the Steamdeck
• Open Campaign: fixed hardcore mode
• Open Campaign: fixed open campaign warning popup saving
• GameServerOptions: fixed SetServerPassword

Grab your gear, team up with your buddies, get some warm tea, and get ready for the next weekend - you will be spending it in the Cryo Fields. Or not, if you play the Open Campaign. Then, you are free to choose where you want to go! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

In this week’s article, we are going to take a look at the (literal) meat and (figurative) potatoes of the Cryo Fields biome - the creatures that inhabit the area. The local fauna has adapted to the cold in various ways, often increasing its overall resistance to external threats in general. This, of course, means that Ashley and Mr. Riggs are going to have their hands full trying to defend their Cryo Fields outposts from hordes of attackers. Let’s take a look at the creatures that you will face in battle in the free World Expansion IV update. You can use the buttons on the sides of images to cycle between the regular, Alpha, and Ultra strains of these creatures. This will allow you to familiaraize yourself with your new best friends.

Colgan

A small. but deadly short-range attacker. Colgans always travel in packs, using the numbers advantage to hunt much larger creatures. They swarm their prey like piranhas, accepting the fact that many Colgans will not survive the attack. If just a couple of individuals survive the ambush, then the task has been accomplished. Colgan's reproduction rate is very high, and you will discover numerous nests housing endless seas of eggs ready to hatch. Fighting them head-on is not a good idea - keep your distance and pray that you have enough firepower to stop them before they reach you.

Frigmon

Frigmons are the primordial ancestors of the Kermon species encountered in warmer parts of Galatea 37. Unlike Kermons, these creatures cannot blend into their environment. However, Frigmons make up for that by cooperating with each other. When hunting other creatures, Frigmons will attack in large packs and will come knocking at your doorstep during attack waves, quickly shredding your defenses with their razor-sharp blades on their arms.

Frostiroth

We weren’t sure whether to include this species in the fauna section, but since Frostiroth will actively try to kill you on sight, we think it is the right place. We typically do not associate icy deserts with abundant plant life, but this species has found a way to withstand those conditions. This extremely resilient plant species can burrow even into the permafrost layer, thanks to the exothermal enzymes produced by its flower structure. The root structure usually spreads very far, giving it the chance to sprout several flowers. If you see one Frostiroth, you can almost be sure there are more burrowed nearby.

Glaciogan

Don’t let the first impression fool you - Galatean creatures haven’t suddenly invented metallurgy. Glaciogan’s body is covered with keratinized plates of skin tissue, forming a natural suit of armor and protecting the creature from physical threats. Glaciogans also store thick layers of fatty tissue beneath these “armor plates”. Their function is twofold. First, fat protects against cold and stores energy during periods of famine. Second, the fat acts as a suspension medium for their keratinized shells, providing greater resilience against physical attacks. Glaciogans are slow, but attack from afar, which might be a death sentence for an unsuspecting Riftbreaker.

Hibernus

If the Glaciogan species did everything in their power to protect themselves against the harsh climate of the Cryo Fields, the Hibernus species did the exact opposite. They simply allowed nature to run its course. A thick layer of ice formed over their bodies - but it did not cause any adverse effects. On the contrary, ice forms a natural layer of insulation against external conditions, both in terms of air temperature and attacks from other creatures. However, when you melt that ice away, Hibernus falls like a house of cards. Use that to your advantage.

Iceros

The Iceros is, on average, one of the largest creatures encountered on Galatea. Long tusks adorn its head, giving the creature an additional tool for survival in its cold natural habitat. Very often, these creatures will form the bulk of the attack waves in the Cryo Fields biome. They are very tough and quick, and their attacks can damage multiple structures at once. However, they are not without their weaknesses. Find out what they are, and be prepared to stop them.

Spikodon

Spikodons will require you to solve a unique defensive challenge. They are quite heavily armored, but still nimble enough to make their way right up to your walls before your towers can take care of them. When they do, they will use their long-range piercing spike attack to attack both the walls and the structures behind them. That includes your precious energy connectors. Spikodon attacks tend to render your defenses inoperable - make sure to plan ahead. Oh, and these creatures often come out from underground caverns to ambush you during exploration. Have fun!

Temperoth

Temperoth looks like an ice sculpture come to life. However, despite its appearance, it is not made of ice. Its body is covered with quartz crystals of various colours, which the creature can liquefy via an unknown mechanism. This allows the Temperoth to change shape and travel short distances quickly, as if it were swimming through thin air. Coming too close will cause them to escape. World Expansion IV is just around the corner. We are putting the finishing touches on it and polishing the gameplay experience based on feedback from the Experimental Branch playtesters. If you would like to join the playtest, join the experimental branch by following the instructions in this article. Also, remember to sign up for our newsletter and Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios to receive the news about the release date as soon as we make it public - it’s not long from now! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

Welcome to the Cryo Fields! We have bloodthirsty proto-Kermons, lakes of supercoolant that will destroy any untreated materials, and trouble with power generation. You're gonna love it here! World Expansion IV is getting closer, and with it comes a brand new biome to explore. Cryo Fields are part of a free update for all The Riftbreaker players and are designed as a new mid-game challenge with a strong focus on survival, expansion, and tough trade-offs. This is not a beginner-friendly location. Cryo Fields are meant to test how well you can adapt your base-building and logistics to extreme conditions. If you do survive the harsh conditions, you will find great views, plenty of resources and lots of hidden treasures!

What Are the Cryo Fields

Cryo Fields are located in the northern regions of Galatea 37 and are defined by extremely low temperatures, dropping as low as 170 Kelvin. Despite the harsh climate, the biome is rich in palladium, making it an important destination once you reach the mid-game. The extreme cold does not mean the area is lifeless. Local fauna is well adapted to these conditions and will actively defend the territory. Entering the Cryo Fields means dealing with constant pressure from both the environment and its inhabitants. Look at all these different species coexisting in peace! Something tells us the peace and quiet won't last for long.

Open Terrain and Sparse Resources

Once you find sources of basic materials, just stick with them. They might be the only ones in a pretty big radius. One of the defining gameplay features of the Cryo Fields is the terrain itself. The biome consists largely of wide, open areas with very few natural choke points. In most regions, you will not be able to rely on terrain to help you defend your base. This makes positioning, wall placement, and turret coverage far more important than usual. Resource deposits in the Cryo Fields are dense but rare. You may find a very rich deposit of Carbonium or Palladium, but it could be the only one in a large radius. The new Large Storage buildings may help you keep your base small and easy to defend. Each of them can hold up to 20k resources at level 3. This forces difficult decisions:

• expand aggressively to secure large areas,
• build isolated, self-sufficient mining outposts,
• or accept that some installations may be temporary and rebuilt after enemy waves.

Power Generation Under Extreme Conditions

Cryo Fields is home to some big threats. You will need a lot of power to deal with them. Energy management plays a much bigger role in the Cryo Fields. Baseline conditions are unfavorable for renewable energy. Sunlight is weak and wind levels are generally low, reducing the effectiveness of solar panels and wind turbines. Geothermal vents are more common and often become a key part of your power strategy, but reaching them usually requires further expansion into dangerous territory. In this biome, the sky can quite literally fall onto your head. Weather events add another layer of uncertainty. Blizzards and ice tornadoes, also known as snow devils, can temporarily increase wind levels, creating short windows of increased power generation if you are prepared with enough energy storage. Not all weather events are helpful. In some cases, clouds can solidify and fall as massive chunks of ice, damaging everything in their path. When that happens, the safest option is often to retreat and wait it out.

Supercoolant as Part of the Cryo Fields Ecosystem

Vast supercoolant reserves can allow you to feed coolant to multiple high-end power plants with just a couple of pumps. This will grant you independence from solar and wind power, which are unreliable here. Cryo Fields are the only biome where natural supercoolant reserves can be found. Previously, supercoolant could only be produced using dedicated refinery buildings that consume large amounts of resources. In the Cryo Fields, it can be extracted directly from naturally occurring lakes and transported to other locations using compressors and decompressors. This provides an alternative way to support advanced power setups, including fusion-based energy infrastructure, and adds another strategic incentive to operate in this biome. Stay alert! Defending your setup will not be easy in the Cryo Fields biome.

Where and When You Can Play

Cryo Fields are available across multiple game modes:

• Open Campaign - you can start in the Cryo Fields, but it is not recommended unless you are looking for an extra challenge. You can jump to Cryo fields as soon as you feel you’re ready - just like any other biome!
• Story Campaign - the biome becomes available after completing the Palladium Handling technology research.
• Survival Mode - Cryo Fields can be selected as a standard survival location.

The biome is already available for testing on the experimental branch. It is still a work in progress, and balance adjustments are ongoing. Feedback from experimental players will help shape the final version. In our experience, fire works pretty well against most things here. It might be a good place to start your experiments. Cryo Fields are one of the major additions in World Expansion IV, alongside the Open Campaign mode. The update will be released for free and is getting closer to launch. If you want to try the Cryo Fields early, the experimental branch is available now. As always, we are looking forward to your feedback. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released a tiny hotfix for the experimental branch. It fixes a bug that caused the users without access to DLC content to crash whenever they generated a map in a DLC biome in the Open Campaign mode. There are no gameplay changes or any other fixes in this build. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

In game development, almost everything starts as a placeholder. When we look back at the early days of The Riftbreaker, many systems, mechanics, and assets barely resemble what you are playing today. Ideas were tested, broken, reworked, or scrapped entirely. That is normal. Game development is a dynamic process. Almost nothing is good enough on the first attempt, which is why openness to feedback and iteration are key to achieving good results. However, some things surprised us. Some ideas worked almost immediately. They survived prototypes, demos, public playtests, and years of post-launch development. They stood the test of time so well that we barely had to touch them. Today, we want to share a few examples of design decisions and systems that remained largely unchanged from the earliest versions of The Riftbreaker - and why. There is something hilarious about seeing footage from the prototype, especially when it's proudly proclaiming it's "Riftbreaker Gameplay". It all has to start somewhere!

When Initial Numbers Become the Foundation

Let’s start with something deceptively simple: the early economy. When we began prototyping The Riftbreaker, we worked toward a milestone we called First Playable. It was never meant to be a full game - just a rough proof of concept. The goal was to test basic controls, combat, building, and resource gathering. At that stage, we needed only a handful of buildings:

• Headquarters
• Basic power generation (wind turbines and solar panels)
• A simple defensive tower
• Carbonium and Ironium factories

When creating the first gameplay prototypes, we usually mix old and new assets. It creates hilarious combinations, like Zombie Driver zombie dogs attacking the Riftbreaker Headquarters. Also: lol at 'Headquarters destroyed. You've lost :(". By the way - almost all of the buildings listed above are already present in this clip! We had no long-term economy model - we knew that it would all change anyway as we added more elements to the game. So we did what many developers do at this stage: we picked numbers that felt right based on the following:

• We wanted the player to constantly see a stream of resource lumps while drilling. Spawning 5 pieces per second seemed to work just fine.
• On the basis of drilling 5 resources per second, we decided that the Carbonium Factory should cost 10 seconds of “manual labor”: 50 Carbonium.
• Ironium Factory cost was also set at 50 Carbonium.
• Headquarters cost: deliberately set slightly above what the mech starts with, so that you learn about digging resources with your mech. On a side note: it is also a clever way of giving you something to do while dialogues happen!

Sometimes, we don't even have placeholder assets that would fit, so we use colorful cubes to represent enemies. Here's the first-ever full-scale Tropical Zone attack, complete with zombie dogs standing in for Canoptrix, blue cubes as Arachnoids, and Orange cubes as Hammeroceroses. Less than perfect working conditions. This is exactly why we want to have some kind of placeholder assets, even if they are going to be decommissioned somewhere down the road. As development continued - from First Playable, to internal builds, to the public demo shown at trade shows in 2019, these numbers remained the same. They became an anchor point for the game's entire economic structure. Other buildings changed in cost and function, as new systems were layered on top. But the core values for those first couple of buildings remained untouched. Even though it was largely a shot in the dark, deliberate design by numbers turned out to be good enough in the long run.

Assets That Outlived the Project They Were Made For

Early in development, we assume that most assets will eventually be replaced. This applies to visuals and audio alike. Every new project is an opportunity to expand and improve our engine. Early assets are created before we fully understand the potential of new rendering features, lighting systems, or audio pipelines. With experience, we can often achieve better results with less effort. Because of this, we are careful not to get too attached to early assets. The effect for the nuke explosion is one of the assets that aged fairly well, even though it has come a long way. It was first created with the X-Morph: Defense Germany level boss fight in mind, but ended up never being used. It found its permanent home years later in The Riftbreaker.. Sound design is a great example. Sound is critical for player feedback. Playing without audio feels like losing a sense - because you do. But recording original sounds is expensive, time-consuming, and technically demanding. Equipment, space, experience, planning - it all adds up quickly. As an indie studio, we took a practical approach. We already had a large library of sounds from previous projects: D.I.P.R.I.P., Zombie Driver, and X-Morph: Defense. So we started by mixing and matching what we already had. ...and here's an example of an asset that wasn't made for The Riftbreaker, was used as a placeholder, and turned out to work just fine with minimum tweaking: the railgun shot effect. It traces back all the way to Zombie Driver! Later, when we contracted composer Marcin Pukaluk to create the soundtrack for The Riftbreaker, we also asked him if he would like to also help us out with some sound design. He agreed to work with us, and together, we began looking for new samples to replace the ones we had scraped together earlier. However, even during this process, not all samples ended up being replaced. Among others, the sounds for explosions, artillery fire, and a couple of weapons remained unchanged. However, the oldest survivor is the repair sound. Every time Mr. Riggs repairs himself or a building, you hear a distinct mechanical buzzing. That sound comes from D.I.P.R.I.P., and it is nearly 20 years old. We never planned for it to last this long, but it simply fit better than anything else. No reason to change it if it works!

Dynamic Objective Manager: Controlled Chaos

You already know we don’t get attached to assets early on. The same is true for entire game systems. Designing them in a vacuum can be very hit-or-miss. A system that works well on paper might be impossible to implement, or simply not fun. Still - some of them are hits! One of the most important systems in The Riftbreaker is the Dynamic Objective Manager, or DOM. This system runs constantly in the background, dynamically generating side missions and events. Its purpose is simple: make each playthrough feel different. Even though there is still a lot of old stuff in this scene, there are plenty of elements that remained intact over the years! We're glad the 2x2 walls with a raised floor did not make the cut. We did not want to plan every minute of gameplay. Random attack waves, creature nests appearing on the map, environmental disasters like hailstorms - all of these are triggered by the DOM. It continuously evaluates a mission’s state:

• Are there any major events triggered at the moment?
• Are there any side objectives active at the moment?
• Which difficulty state is the current mission running at?
• How much time has passed since the last event?

Based on this information, the system adjusts its behavior. If you are idle at your base with no active objectives, the DOM may push a side objective - investigating an unusual creature or an anomaly. If enough time has passed since the last attack, it may warn you about an incoming enemy horde. The key is uncertainty. You cannot fully predict what will happen next. The world feels reactive, alive, and slightly hostile - exactly what we wanted. The surprising part is that the core logic behind the DOM has remained largely unchanged since its initial implementation. When an idea is solid, polishing it is often enough. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/546ae65b2534ec936e97a35f0b8a3dc3537c73e0.png Click to zoom in. The schematic we used as a blueprint for creating the flow of the entire Story Campaign. It remains largely unchanged until today - if you don't count all the expansions, of course! The overall structure of The Riftbreaker’s story campaign is another example. Once we understood which biomes, resources, and buildings would be available to players, we created a schematic of all major objectives required to finish the game. This included mission dependencies and progression milestones leading to the finale. While some individual missions changed, and a few ideas didn’t work out as planned, the foundation remained stable. That same foundation allowed us to expand the game through DLCs and endgame updates. With better tools and a deeper understanding of our own systems, we later designed more complex campaign structures.

When Good Ideas Don’t Need Reinvention

Looking back, these examples all point to the same conclusion. Not every part of game development needs endless iteration. Sometimes, a good idea just needs room to grow. Economy values chosen on instinct, sounds borrowed from decades-old projects, systems designed early and refined instead of replaced - They all became permanent parts of The Riftbreaker. A lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same. Which elements do you recognize? Thank you for joining us for this short retrospective. Next time, we will begin previewing World Expansion IV, which is getting closer every day. Keep an eye out for upcoming updates, patch notes, and announcements.If you want to stay up to date with everything related to The Riftbreaker, consider joining our Discord server or subscribing to our newsletter. We hope to see you next time. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released a massive update for the experimental branch of The Riftbreaker! It features the highly anticipated World Expansion IV, including the brand-new Cryo Fields biome, as well as an entirely new way to play the game - the Open Campaign mode. This update brings many changes and improvements to the game, all of which will be released for free to all of you in just a couple of weeks. It is now the time for testing and finishing touches, and we would really appreciate your help with this. This article will tell you how to access the experimental branch, what feedback we are looking for, and, of course, a brief overview of the most important features of World Expansion IV. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/23441554b4c07cc85f19b49589aa996bd8fcaee3.png One of the several art pieces we have prepared for you for the experimental release! This Experimental Release is available to everyone on an opt-in basis. Please be aware that things might not work as intended, and you may encounter problems. If you don’t want to take any risks, please wait for the public release of this update. If you would like to help us test the new update ahead of the official release, follow these instructions. This update is (most likely) incompatible with any current mods. Please remove all mods before playing. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe.

Create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)

Disable Steam Cloud save backup for The Riftbreaker

go to your Steam Library

right-click on The Riftbreaker

select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game, and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback. We encourage you to join and share your feedback. All the features of the World Expansion IV Update are available both in solo and co-op play. If you want to test the co-op mode, please make sure that all players are on the same version of the game. You can check the build number at the bottom of any menu screen in the game. This is also important if you want to play using the dedicated server. You must update the server separately from your main copy of the game and switch to the experimental branch for the dedicated server as well. With these technicalities out of the way, let’s take a look at the contents of World Expansion IV.

Open Campaign Mode

The Open Campaign Mode is an entirely new game mode intended for experienced Riftbreakers and those who prefer jumping into the game blind and figuring things out on their own. There are several key differences between the regular Campaign Mode and the Open Campaign: In Open Campaign, you can choose your starting biome. The regular Story Campaign is a guided experience, with narrative elements easing you into the world of Galatea 37. It always begins in the most welcoming biome - the Tropical Zone. The Open Campaign throws all safety nets out of the window. You are free to choose the starting biome from among all the Galatean zones available in the game. Each will come with its unique set of benefits and challenges. Will you trade the safety of the Tropical Zone for an abundance of Sludge and Flammable Gas in the Acidic Plains? Are you ready to handle the Volcanic Area without any heat resistance technology? Your early game experience will vary wildly, depending on the biome you pick, leading to entirely new possibilities in each playthrough. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/2366b4c59197b2494e630b5421660a422faa3d9f.jpg If you are into building crazy large structures for artistic purposes, the Open Campaign will be the perfect playground for you. You can build an economy that will sustain your most wacky projects. Still - beware! Galatean creatures are as dangerous here as in the regular campaign!

Open Campaign features no Story-based objectives.

Just as you are free to choose where you start, you are also free to decide where to go next. The order in which you visit biomes will be determined by your economic and technological needs (and/or abilities). Ashley and Mr. Riggs will not comment on your progress or give any hints about what to do next. It is entirely up to you to figure out where to take them next. You can visit all biomes and establish massive outposts all around the planet, securing the economy you need to sustain your colony. Alternatively, you can stick to your Headquarters, scraping just the bare minimum of resources from other places, and leave the planet as soon as possible. The choice is yours. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/8f7a7700e274929e4524afdd0f31f9e04f1434af.jpg Will you rush to complete all the Megastructures in record-time, or will you take the scenic route and explore the entire planet before coming back to Earth?

There are no Story-based research locks, and there is only one objective: build the Prime Rift Station.

All the technologies in the research tree are available for you to research. There will be no special mission requirements known from the Story Campaign. If you need a specific tech blueprint to move forward, there will be only two things that can stop you - research cost, or (in select cases) familiarity of certain flora and fauna species. This means that you can plan your optimal path to the end goal of the Open Campaign mode - construct a functional Prime Rift Station and sustain its operations for long enough to establish a two-way connection back to Earth. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/1c9d464b4776aacc75a37e2e2273a01126a16fc8.jpg In Open Campaign, you can establish outposts in all biomes, regardless of whether you've got access to the DLC content. This potentially means infinite gas, which means infinite HCMs, which is infinite explosions. We like explosions.

No DLCs required

Since there are no story missions in the Open Campaign, you are free to visit all biomes, including the Metallic Valley, the Crystal Caverns, and the Fungal Swamp - even if you do not own their corresponding DLCs. Establishing outposts in those biomes will give your economy a big boost and provide you with access to the unique resources offered by those biomes, including Morphium and Fungal Resin. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/eda2f8088d838ebdcd57e31af9f4c8ac7a9fa0a0.jpg To try out the Open Campaign mode, you will need to create a new Campaign save. Why not create it in Co-Op mode as well? Then, your friends can join you at any time!

Available both for solo and co-op play

Just like any other game mode in The Riftbreaker, you can either try beating the Open Campaign solo or with a group of up to four players. You might need an extra pair of hands - Open Campaign is not any easier than the regular Story Campaign. Enemy hordes will attack you often, making sure that your conquest of Galatea is never a walk in the park.

Cryo Fields Biome

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/4d7868f95487fba9399d963cf08da6257575230e.jpg Another piece of brand-new artwork for the update - this one will show up after you've established your outpost in the new biome. With the new update, you will also gain access to an all-new biome: Cryo Fields. This biome is located in a low-temperature area and is permanently covered with ice and frost. The layout of the biome is quite open, with not many terrain obstacles - quite similar to the Radioactive Desert in that regard. Resource deposits in this biome are larger in size and volume than in other biomes, but they are further away from each other. It’s a good idea to set up small, separate extraction outposts rather than a large, centralized base.

New liquid resource (sort of): Supercoolant

We already know Supercoolant as a product of the Supercoolant Refineries. With access to the Cryo Fields biome, Ashley and Mr. Riggs have discovered vast natural reserves of this liquid. This opens a ton of possibilities - including turning your base into a massive extraction facility, with hundreds of compressors shipping the product to the most remote parts of the planet. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/9716e2744a0cb7099d943afaede88c7b3f61557d.jpg

New species to discover

The Cryo Fields biome is full of life despite its harsh conditions. Galatean creatures have adapted to the cold climate in surprising ways, presenting you with a new set of challenges as you try to figure out how to fight against them effectively. You will also be able to catalog new plant species for potential cultivation purposes. Despite the sub-optimal conditions, the Cryo Fields biome is not completely barren, and cultivating local plants might yield good results.

Available in both the regular Story Campaign and the Open Campaign modes

If you want to continue playing your old save file after the World Expansion IV update, you are free to do so. You will receive access to the Cryo Fields biome via the Mission Generator in the Orbital Scanner interface screen right after you complete the “Palladium Handling” research. In the Open Campaign mode, you can even start your journey in this biome - we don’t know whether it’s a good idea, but good stories often begin with bad ideas!

Available also in Survival Mode

If you prefer more action-packed, bite-sized game sessions, try out the Cryo Fields biome in Survival Mode. This well-known formula packs the entire Cryo Fields experience into intense, 90-minute matches where your goal is to withstand attacks from enemy hordes that come around every couple of minutes.

New Buildings

Apart from these two major additions, the World Expansion IV Update will also feature new buildings and defensive towers to expand the existing Riftbreaker arsenal.

Expanded Energy Storage and Solid Material Storage

These versions of the storage buildings are much larger and cost significantly more to build, but their holding capacity is far greater than that of their regular counterparts. This will allow you to stock more resources in a much more compact space. Just don’t let the Energy Storage explode. It is pretty volatile. This building can hold up to 20k of each solid resource. The new Energy Storage can hold up to 400k Energy at Level 3.

Icicle Tower

A 2x2 cryo damage tower. It works similarly to a Rocket Tower: it launches a projectile that travels at moderate speed and explodes on impact. The difference here is that it deals not area, but cryo damage. Also, the projectile shatters into a cloud of miniature ice spikes that slow down enemies in its area of effect. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/73f1aed4457a38382eebf566476e26ab.avif?t=1756478584

Inferno Tower

Another 2x2 tower of a higher range - something in between a mortar and regular artillery - that shoots cluster fire grenades. Think of this as a miniature version of the HCM. The projectiles shot from this tower split mid-air into several smaller bombs that release a fiery inferno on impact. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0bd8dd3d1aa446c2017c7b8dc9a09f83.avif?t=1756478584

Shredder Tower

A 1x1 tower that is a crossover between the handheld Shard Gun and the Minigun Tower. This structure will fire many small projectiles at a high rate of fire, with a wide horizontal spread to cover a larger area. It will not excel at dealing a lot of direct damage, but it will be great as a damage-over-time support tower. On top of that, it will deal acid damage - one of the types that is the most underrepresented in The Riftbreaker. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/17b0c3756d94cfbffe5b67e61e85c892.avif?t=1756478584

Other Changes, Known Issues and Unfinished Content

• The Cryo Fields biome is not in its final form yet. We're still missing some props and map tiles. It will change significantly over the course of the next few weeks.
• The models for Bioanomalies aren't there yet - they are also work in progress.
• There are new voicelines, but they haven't been recorded by our actors yet. We're making do with placeholders recorded by yours truly. If you can't stand my voice there are two options: mod the files or turn down dialogue volume. No hard feelings!
• Let us know what you think about the balance. This biome is not a walk in the park.

A note on the Dedicated Server status: we have done some upgrades when it comes to running the server in headless mode, entirely disabling the UI. This can be done by adding this parameter to the starting options: cli=1 Additionally, you can specify the campaign type, starting mission, and difficulty levels via commands. For example: set campaign open/open set mission campaigns/open/headquarters_magma set difficulty brutal This line will start a new game in the Open Campaign mode, starting in the Volcanic Zone biome on Brutal difficulty. Changing the parameters will allow you to tune this to your preferences. The update also includes many smaller improvements and optimizations introduced thanks to your feedback. We are eager to hear what you think about the World Expansion IV. Please let us know if you encounter any issues or errors that we can fix. The best place to leave your feedback is either our Discord at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios or the Steam discussions board. We will be monitoring your feedback closely and releasing fixes as soon as possible over the Experimental testing period. We hope you will have a lot of fun with the new update! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

February 2026 will mark eight years since we began work on The Riftbreaker. It has been a massive chunk of our lives, and an exciting journey - one that we’re glad so many of you decided to join. When we started the project, we never expected that we would have the privilege of still developing it so many years later. A lot has changed since the beginning. Many of our ideas didn’t withstand the test of time, while others evolved into the solutions you know from the game today. In this article, we’d like to share a bit about the original vision for The Riftbreaker and how it compares to the game as it is today. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/793f7f26448100e16e063f642868b54a50a66534.png Today's article will feature some never-seen-before pieces of concept art, mock-ups, and trivia. This is the first look at our idea of what the starting biome would look like in The Riftbreaker. First, a little backstory. After the release of our previous game, X-Morph: Defense, we held an internal “competition” for a new game concept. Each EXOR team member could submit as many game concepts as they wanted. Then we would vote for the one we liked best. Among the 40 entries submitted, only one of them managed to get the approval of the entire team - a “Unique twin stick isometric shooter with survival base building” called Project Pandora. We didn’t have an actual title for it, just a codename. However, another submitted game project did have a cool title - The Riftbreaker. We decided to merge the two - historically, we are REALLY bad at naming things, and decided not to let a half-decent title go to waste. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/570f986583828212b5df0c9d098f44c8e51fa69c.png Here's an "action shot" from that era - we re-used the mech model from X-Morph: Defense, and had it open fire at Canoptrix's ancestors. IF you take a closer look, it turns out that these creatures can swim! Project Pandora’s core concepts have stayed mainly intact throughout the development process. The players would travel to an alien, hostile world somewhere in deep space. Their main task was to conquer the planet by building and maintaining a colony. However, we didn’t want the game to be a classic colony sim with a “hand of god” control scheme. Instead, we decided to immerse the player in the game world a little bit more. You would take control of a mech in classic twin-stick fashion, with aiming and movement completely independent. The mech would be the centerpiece of the action, carrying out all construction and maintenance and supporting the colony in combat against hostile aliens. We bet it all sounds really familiar up to this point, but we assure you - there are plenty of differences. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/cf1a5a6bb8919e595ded3c5bebabe786961e24a7.png A concept sketch of Felix Nebulosa - one of the creature ideas we had early on. It never made it into the game, because we chose to have Canoptrix as our cannon fodder in the Tropical Zone, and it didn't fit any of our other biomes. Rest easy, chicken lizard. If you take a look at our artworks, Mr. Riggs is usually depicted with a power blade or another weapon attached to one arm and a drill on the other. That was one of our ideas at the beginning - the mech would only be able to wield weapons in one arm, while the other would handle all sorts of tools: a drill, an energy shield, and various scanners and extractors. This was supposed to emphasize that, in addition to being a weapon of mass destruction, Mr. Riggs is also a multi-purpose colonization machine. We wanted to give you a free choice of tools to equip for a mission. However, when we started playtesting, we realized that manually switching between tools didn’t work out well. There are simply too many things to do during a mission, and context-based switching worked best. Additionally, we didn’t want you to miss out on anything because of not equipping the correct set of tools for the job, so we gave you access to all tools at all times. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/c8921c50eedf67533a586c1bda67cb833fdec14b.png In our earliest concepts, Mr. Riggs looked a little bit different than he does today. Look at his little giant robot hands! Combat was also a lot different back then. With only one firearm equipped, we wanted to put an extra emphasis on using the energy shield. It was an item that deployed an arched forcefield in front of the mech, blocking all incoming enemy projectiles. That is a pretty powerful effect, so we deemed it would need a significant downside. In the concept phase, we decided that Mr. Riggs wouldn’t be able to shoot with the shield active, following the logic that if enemy projectiles are blocked, it’s only fair to block your own bullets. However, we didn’t want to leave you completely defenseless, so you could carry out melee attacks. In fact, we were so into playing a certain top-down cel-shaded roguelite that we wanted to have a complex melee system, together with combos and power-ups. We quickly figured out that such an approach wouldn’t work versus the hordes we wanted to pit you against. We compromised and allowed you to shoot through the active shield. Still, playtesting showed that nobody wanted to use the shield, as dodging and kiting enemies worked much better. This is one of the earliest attempts at creating a catchy gameplay GIF. We really wanted to push that shield gameplay. Additionally, we received feedback that players wanted to wield guns in both arms. As fans of “Souls” of various flavors, both Demon and Dark, this idea had lingered in our heads for a while as well. First, allowed equipping weapons in both hands with independent controls. It was relatively simple for those ones that shoot projectiles, but melee weapons required a little bit of special attention. We prepared unique combo attacks for simultaneous wielding of two melee weapons of the same type. However, problems began when we started mixing and matching various melee types. The number of combinations we would have to support was already high, and given that we had also planned to introduce two-handed wielding, we decided to stop right there. This is how we arrived at the combat system we know today, with dual melee attacks being the only remnant of our plans. You wouldn't believe it, but this extremely dynamic and exciting combat video is sped up 20%. Imagine what it looked like before! When it comes to base-building and economy, we wanted to implement mechanics that scale enemy creatures’ aggression based on how eco-friendly your setup is. There were supposed to be two available paths - one that was quicker and cheaper, but would lead to the pollution of the environment, and another one that was more difficult, but also eco-friendly. The premise was that if you went the eco-friendly way, gameplay would be much more peaceful and less combat-focused. Alternatively, if you want to wage war against the entire planet, you might as well use the scorched earth approach and strip-mine everything. Sounds great on paper, but in reality, it would significantly increase the game's complexity. We would essentially have two games in one, and the player could mix gameplay styles in any proportion they wanted. Given that The Riftbreaker was already complex enough, we decided to drop this feature. You can still see the remnants of this in the game - you can either build resource synthesizers for your late-game resource needs, or set up cultivators to grow and harvest plants for you. Here's a more civilized version of the same scene. We are very happy that you told us shields weren't that great so early in development. This small mistake could have had giant consequences! Not all of our initial ideas were dropped in the prototyping and pre-alpha phases of development. Since the very first concept, we wanted you to travel around the planet in search of resources and to establish outposts. However, early on, we intended to let the enemies attack the outposts while you were away. We would develop an algorithm to calculate the relative defensive strength of your outpost and then compare that value with the enemy horde's offensive ability. We would give you a time window to return and defend the base if you wanted to. Otherwise, the battle would be resolved automatically. If you won, you’d receive rewards. If you lost, some buildings would be destroyed, and you would have to rebuild them. This is a very complex and controversial feature - we had a lot of internal discussion about how it could end up annoying players having to babysit every outpost. We delayed it several times - so much so that it never made it to release. We wanted to put it back on the table with the 2.0 version, but the feedback we got after announcing it was… strongly apprehensive. Thus, we decided to let it go. The inventory has also changed a little bit since the start, although the equipment slots remained more-or-less intact. It's also worth noting, that even in this animation from 2018, miniguns look okay. It's very important for miniguns to look at least okay at all times. These are just a couple of examples of the things that changed in the Riftbreaker from the concept stage to the final, release-worthy shape. We hope it shows that a video game development process is very dynamic and full of unexpected turns. However, not everything changes all the time. In one of the upcoming articles, we will tell you what remained essentially unchanged throughout development. If you don’t want to miss it, sign up for our newsletter here and join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You can always find the latest news there. Be on the lookout for the previews of the free World Expansion IV, including the new Cryo Fields biome - coming really, really soon! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

Welcome to 2026! We are still pumped after all the chaos and excitement that the events of last year brought us. As you already know, we are planning to open the year strong - World Expansion IV with Open Campaign mode and an all-new ice biome, which we have decided to call Cryo Fields. We have already completed a significant amount of work, as you can see in our Survival streams on Twitch. With such a head start, you should have the new content in your hands within a very reasonable timeframe. Still, we have learned not to make promises, so no ETA just yet. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/9716e2744a0cb7099d943afaede88c7b3f61557d.jpg One of the new loading screens for the Cryo Fields biome. Just a little sneak peek of what's coming! In fact, we want to kick things off with an article on what we learned over the past year and how we will apply the lessons from 2025 to our development practices in 2026 and beyond. This article is a supplement to our 2025 in Review article. We hope you enjoy this reflection before we fully dive into what’s coming to The Riftbreaker this year. If you prefer a TL;DR, here's a short video!

Lesson One:

Each decision comes at a cost, but that cost might be hidden.

We never thought we would live the gangster film cliché of “I’ll do you a favor, but I’ll come back for payment later,” but it happened multiple times during co-op development. During the beta period, we focused on Survival Mode because it allowed us to test and iterate on the core gameplay mechanics in a relatively simple environment. When we started testing the co-op campaign, however, we noticed a pattern. All the basic game mechanics worked flawlessly, but whenever we encountered any custom elements that were only present in the Campaign, things would start to break. This is not surprising on its own - we didn’t test these solutions in beta, so, logically, bugs would follow. Still, we were surprised by the sheer number of one-time solutions that were good enough for single-player purposes, but came back to bite us now. We wanted this cutie to be the centerpiece of the combat scene, so we decided to do a little bit of camera manipulation. Two years later, this decision generated some problems. Let’s take the boss fight in the Into the Dark expansion as an example. When the player enters the boss arena, we detach the camera from Mr. Riggs and move it to a central point overseeing the battlefield. This is the only place in the game where this happens. We achieved this effect using a very simple and dirty trick. The camera movement was baked into the mission's logic flow. This logic block instructed the game to take control of the player’s camera and move it to a custom point we placed over the arena. This worked fine for single-player, because there was only one camera to take over. With multiple players present, things went very wrong. Errors included, but were not limited to:

• The camera only detaching from player one, but not player two
• The camera detaching for both players, but not coming back after the fight
• The camera breaking for player two forever
• …not to mention crashes and other bugs

This example is just the tip of the iceberg. These ‘mistakes’ often stem from the fact that we didn’t want to take away programmers’ attention from their other tasks. If we can ‘hack’ a solution for a problem, this will save time for everyone. Only after adding co-op did it become clear that we had merely delayed our payment. It also often came with additional interest, since some of our custom solutions were ‘baked into’ save files and would cause incompatibility, increasing the complexity of the problem by a factor of 10. Fixing all the individual custom solutions in the Campaign took a very long time. It couldn’t have been avoided, since the game was SP only for the longest time. However, we now know what to do going forward. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/af9c464f6df588f3641072131fa2d08d.avif?t=1756478584 Since you're a kid you're being told to be independent and solve problems on your own. However, asking for insight from others may reveal problems that you wouldn't have thought of and save you trouble later. APES TOGETHER STRONG! Conclusion: Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Think about your tasks in both single- and multiplayer contexts.

Lesson Two:

Players are happy to adapt to new rules if they know why you changed them.

Rushing headfirst into overwhelming enemy forces and using your mech’s death explosion was one of the first tactics that players discovered, way back in the days of The Riftbreaker’s pre-alpha test. We weren’t particularly happy with that, as it’s not how we envisioned combat to play out, but if you were okay with it, we were too. It was a single-player experience, after all, and you should be able to play however you wanted. Things took a bit of a turn when players started doing it in co-op. One exploding mech is quite a lot of firepower, but it comes at a cost - you are out of action for a moment, and it is often enough for the enemies to deal at least some damage. Four mechs repeatedly exploding had the potential to neutralize the entire enemy's firepower without breaking a sweat. We decided to step in. We didn't want to take away your ability to run head-first into the enemy horde. We simply wanted to limit its effectiveness a little. First, we tried the carrot - we offered a powerful boost as a reward for reviving players who fell in battle. We reasoned that players would prefer to win a fight with standard firepower, so we offered an additional incentive to do so. It worked pretty well, but some people still preferred the brutal efficiency of charging forward and exploding in Canoptrix’s faces. If the carrot wasn’t enough, stick it is then. We designed a new system, called the Death Skulls. We thoroughly explained it in an article (you can read it here), discussed the implications with our community members, and began testing it on the game's Beta version. It was crucial to us to communicate that we did not want to punish you for playing the game. We tried to discourage an unwanted behavior pattern and to make clear that this system is entirely avoidable. The new system requires a more tactical approach to combat and brings back the importance of base defenses, without decreasing the mech's power outright. We were hesitant to publish these changes, as we feared you wouldn’t be happy with such fundamental changes to game mechanics. However, thanks to our clear explanations, our willingness to listen to feedback, and our ensuring the system did not interfere with regular gameplay (and the fact that this system can be turned off in gameplay settings), you welcomed the change and adapted quickly. Conclusion: Be clear, transparent, and open to discussion. You’re designing the game for the people - let them know you are not against them.

Lesson Three:

Transparency is not a sign of weakness. It’s the first step toward respect.

The beta version of The Riftbreaker Co-Op encountered significant growing pains. We released updates regularly, carefully explaining our rationale and leaving room for discussion. The goal was always clear to us: to act in the best interests of players and demonstrate that we are open to change if any problems arise. Unfortunately, some people viewed our updates and transparent communication style as a sign of weakness. They thought we only did these write-ups to cover our backs in case we inevitably fail to deliver the promised co-op mode. We heard their concerns. They were not unfounded and likely the result of frustration after waiting a long time for co-op. However, we knew that when the update arrived, they would change their minds. We wanted to include special, more powerful creature versions in the game since the very beginning. The 2.0 update seemed like a good time to do so, and you helped us bring them to life! One of the best examples of what transparent communications can achieve is the development of the Omega creatures. To recap: we have developed a new class of enemies with significantly higher base stats and a set of additional randomized abilities to increase their threat. We provided a detailed write-up on how they worked, a gallery with all the extra skills explained, and asked for your help in identifying the most effective combinations of these skills. We preemptively banned some combinations of the Omega skills from appearing, but we knew that these wouldn’t be the only problematic combos. Some viewed this as a weakness and claimed we couldn’t even handle bosses on our own, failing to recognize the real reason why we asked for help. Your help during the beta test allowed us to identify what worked, what didn't, and what was a bit too much to deal with. Thank you! Open dialogue with the community got us tons of valuable, actionable feedback. We could immediately start improving our initial iteration of Omegas. Thanks to your help, we avoided several overpowered or downright unkillable Omega creatures that would otherwise ruin the experience in the full release of the game. You helped us tweak the values that were not quite right and played a major role in deciding what should be buffed and nerfed. You were happy to play mission after mission, even though we didn’t guarantee that the next wave wouldn’t end your run. Eventually, the Omega creatures reached their current form - one that is in line with our initial idea, and also one that is an exciting addition, not an unpleasant chore. We knew that you knew what you wanted. You knew we could deliver it. This mutual understanding and respect were crucial for this. Conclusion: Clear communication helps bridge the gap between the developer and the community.

Lesson Four

You can’t predict every possibility, but it doesn’t mean you should stop trying.

There is no denying that players are the best at finding ways to break the game. Each and every one of us has a different playstyle and ideas. If you multiply the number of players in a session, you also multiply the number of opportunities for something to break. Sometimes players' actions have little to no consequence and don’t prevent them from completing the game as intended. However, in other cases, the game hurts itself in its confusion, leaving players stranded at a point of no return. You can’t always predict when that will happen, but you can do your best to prevent it. Even if you don’t plug all the holes, getting 95% of them might be just enough. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/33e6ddcf455524fb1fdf055ecfd3c11a6297db57.jpg Click to zoom in! This is the mission logic flow diagram for the Swamp Harvest mission. It is as non-linear as it gets - all the events can happen in any order, and it was our designers' job to figure out how to handle all the possibilities. We know it's not the best image, but it's enough to recognize the structure is complex and multi-layered. An excellent example of a mission where a lot of things can go wrong is the first Poogret encounter in Heart of the Swamp. The mission requires you to find the Garlimonium fruit, find a Poogret, feed the fruit to a Poogret, and then extract the sample from the Poogret's “product.” Sounds simple, but… the map and its creatures live, even if you’re not looking. The behavior of creatures, the map generation algorithm, and the player’s path are all impossible to predict. As a result, any event in our mission sequence can occur in any order. To ensure this mission worked properly, we had to cover more than 10 scenarios, each with its own dialogue. Seriously - try this mission several times, making sure to do things in a slightly different order each time - the results will vary. We are big fans of small details like these, and we know many players appreciate these moments. Solving such a puzzle is incredibly rewarding when everything goes right. Who would have thought that this beauty was responsible for one of the most complex missions in the entire game? This might seem like a direct contradiction to lesson number one and another case of “a million custom-made scenarios”. That would be true if we tried to hack it all together by any means necessary. However, it was carefully planned and executed using a systematic approach, which ensures all cases are handled properly, regardless of circumstances. When handling multiple cases is your goal, and not an afterthought, it is much easier to plan and execute on your vision. Conclusion: Time spent brainstorming is not wasted. Design robust systems that can handle exceptions.

Lesson five:

The loudest opinions aren’t always the most valuable.

Every once in a while, a community member posts a hot take and an emotionally charged post, voicing their opinion about the game and suggesting what we should do. Such posts generate significant buzz in the community and spark lengthy discussions. We know that the sentiment behind them is nothing but positive - players spend time discussing the game because they care about it. Knowing that and seeing the discussions is a surefire way to grab our attention. However, more often than not, these issues do not represent the views of the majority of the community. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/7b9bf97ed1e40dfb0e115f6ec5e3a91a.avif?t=1756478584 POV: you just announced you will be changing something in the game and open your inbox. Many players were afraid that the radical changes we introduced with The Riftbreaker 2.0 would destroy the game. Discussions about this always became very emotionally charged, despite our best efforts to explain that there was nothing to fear. However, the topic kept coming up across various channels. Ultimately, we offered to keep the pre-2.0 version live on a legacy branch so it can be accessed regardless of the changes introduced with the 2.0 Update, and we observed the results. As a reminder, our peak concurrent player count for the 2.0 Update was over 18.000. Place your bets on the numbers for the legacy branch. The answer is 7. No, that’s not how many percent played the legacy branch. That’s the number of individual players. Also, that’s maximum DAILY players, not concurrent. We think it’s safe to say that, despite provoking many heated arguments, leaving things as they were before the 2.0 update was not the most important issue for the community as a whole. This does not mean we regret doing it. It required minimal effort, and if we made at least one person happy, it was worth it. Conclusion: Emotions are important, but they do not always lead you to the best conclusions. If an issue is critical to the community, sentiment will be almost unanimous. We want to use this opportunity to promote this video from BoffinBrain. It will allow you to take a look at the world of The Riftbreaker from a fresh perspective - literally! BoffinBrain used the debug "free look" camera to film these scenes, which is not easy at all. After that, they added the sky simulation in post-processing. Very nicely done and worth a watch. We hope this article has been both valuable and enjoyable. We are back on schedule, so that you can expect more news and previews each week. Unfortunately, we can’t offer you streams for the next couple of weeks due to personal circumstances, but we will be back very, very soon to show off the new Cryo Fields biome in all its glory. If you want to have a chance to beta-test the World Expansion IV update ahead of its official release, sign up for our newsletter here, or join our Discord at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We always post our latest announcements there first. See you next time! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

It’s almost the end of 2025, and all we can say is: “Wow, what a year it has been”! The main highlight was, of course, the August release of The Riftbreaker 2.0 Update, featuring Online Co-Op mode. It was the finishing touch on our multi-year journey, reworking the single-player game into a fully featured, stable, and most of all, fun multiplayer experience. We can’t possibly express our gratitude to you for the fantastic reception of The Riftbreaker 2.0 Update. All we can say is that you showed us it was worth it, and it will fuel us for years to come. Today, we’re taking a look back at 2025, sharing the most significant highlights, most interesting stats, and what we’re going to do moving forward. Let’s kick things off this year with a portion of stats and facts about the development process itself: Like we mentioned in our previous yearly roundups (here’s the one from 2024 if you’re interested), the majority of our work is stored in two repositories: The Riftbreaker game repository, which holds the game’s assets and data, and the Schmetterling Engine repository, holding all the code that is later compiled into the actual program you can run on your system. The stats for these two repositories look like this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/df9cab155fb932e9c5743cdec9427d8fefc20756.png

The Riftbreaker:

• We started the year on revision number 50473. The last change in 2024 shortened the duration of the acid explosion effects.
• At the time of writing, we are on revision 56722. This revision contains nothing of interest; it’s purely technical.
• This means there have been 6244 commits to the repository, averaging 716 per month.
• Commits themselves do not tell the whole story, as they often contain multiple file changes and additions. This year, we made a total of 55501 file changes.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/0e937b88b47522c3dc0ba0a4d0a48c37270f7563.png

Schmetterling Engine:

• We began 2025 on revision number 31536. That revision fixed duplicate event handlers in the engine’s event queue.
• We are finishing the year on revision 32826, reverting a try fix for a bug in GuiItem. We’ll nail it next year.
• A total of 1291 commits were made to the engine repository over the course of the year, averaging 171 per month.
• The total number of file changes in 2025 is 17578.

As is often the case, interesting insights emerge when we present this data as graphs. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/1b553022ff5b6d0f46c9ea12c76c09743c4d71f4.png There are clear four peaks on The Riftbreaker graph - that usually happens when our work intensifies and we are doing a lot of bugfixing. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/538b3361e4b62863b07c25f92ed91607b978852d.png The peaks for the engine are more or less aligned with the graph for the main game. These graphs show the number of commits over time. The higher the peak, the more changes made. Naturally, the number of changes increases as a milestone approaches, due to increased focus on testing and bug fixing. There are four of these peaks on The Riftbreaker repository graph, which align with our four story arcs of the year: Co-Op Closed Beta development process, the Co-Op Open Beta launch, the launch of the complete 2.0 Update, and the work we’re doing now on the Dedicated Server and the World Expansion IV. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0c1d9f4ea6842e31ea7e216bc266e3b4.avif?t=1756478584 A 'beautiful' scene from one of our earliest multiplayer builds. Shadows pop in and out of existence, many effects are missing, players move as if they were submerged in syrup, all marinaded in hundreds of millisceonds of delightful lag (on LAN). Good times! May they never come back. At the beginning of the year, we began distributing more invitations to the Closed Beta version of the game to volunteers who signed up via our form. We increased the scale of the operation by an order of magnitude. Instead of manually serving keys to anywhere between 50 to 100 people every couple of weeks, we started sending out thousands of keys each week. Thanks to Discord's anti-spam mechanisms, this process would take a long time. This is why we started using emails instead (and started a mailing list! This allows us to share information unrelated to The Riftbreaker and not necessarily tied to a single platform, so if you’re interested, consider signing up! You’ll get a bonus Mr. Riggs skin as a welcome gift). By the end of April 2025, we have distributed keys to everyone who signed up to test the Beta, for a total of 12075 unique users. We sent each user a pair of keys so that they could immediately gift one to a friend and start playing. If someone wanted more, we gave it to them. Overall, we distributed more than 25000 beta keys during our closed testing period. Massive thanks to each and every one of you - your help and feedback shaped the final release. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/35bd50ef2ba9020eb0d8477207085f6c.avif?t=1756478584 Once we started the Closed Beta, each build brought back another portion of features known from the single-player version. In this example, the game runs like a geriatric tortoise with a broken leg, but at least it looks half-decent! In mid-June, we released the experimental build of the 2.0 Update, marking the start of the Open Beta test for the game. This was the final proving ground before the official release, and one that we were pretty anxious about. The thing is, even if the game worked perfectly fine for us, there are virtually infinite network and PC configurations you would try it on. We expected lots of errors, crash bugs, and connection issues. However, things looked suspiciously okay, and not for the lack of trying on your part - over the course of the next couple of days after release, the number of concurrent players consistently increased, peaking at more than 2800. Yet, the game just worked. Thanks to the thorough testing during the closed beta phase, we managed to fix most of the errors. We estimate that about 200,000 players participated in all of the closed and open Beta phases that we held for The Riftbreaker 2.0 update. All that was left was the final polish in preparation for the big day. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/868e84d77d6fd4fdf2ed4c62706ad557.avif?t=1756478584 Let's not forget the unsung hero of the entire Co-Op project: our PvP connectivity test. You have no idea how much useful data we got from your participation. We know this didn't happen in 2025, but it laid the foundation for what would eventually happen. Press F for the accidental PvP mode. In the blink of an eye, we were there. August 25th, 2025. We knew we had a solid game on our hands. We knew that the work we’ve done was good. The question was - would the players care after almost four years of waiting? Was ‘coop when’ just a meme, or were you truly excited for it? We hoped that the new content and the free update would attract both new and returning players. Our optimistic predictions assumed a slight uptick during the Open Beta and enabled us to reach 4000 concurrent players on Steam.

We didn’t. We peaked at 18775 - only 3000 fewer than at launch.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/2a0186c704696c6ec17d45f7144bce3b.avif?t=1756478584 EXOR team realizing that people cared, even after all this time. 2025, colorized. The Riftbreaker received a second life. Thousands of players, new and old, began their conquest of Galata 37 - together. You broke milestone after milestone. One million copies sold on Steam - smashed. Two million players across all platforms and subscription services - done and dusted. To say that we were ecstatic is an understatement. We kept our promise of expanding our single-player game with a co-op mode, and you showed up for us when we did. Thank you! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0a29713e221edb10917549354f42803e.avif?t=1756478584 Thank you for years of support. We know it took longer than expected and you had to go on 'trust me bro' all this time. We hope that you are satisfied with the result. We know we are! Initially, we planned the 2.0 version to be the last update for the game. We expected that many of you would appreciate the effort, but it wouldn’t be enough to make further work on The Riftbreaker feasible. We were ready to move on to something new. Oh, how wrong we were! Your continued support and love for the game convinced us to extend The Riftbreaker’s story with a couple more World Expansions. The World Expansion IV is just around the corner - it will feature a new game mode, which we call Open Campaign (you can learn about it here), a new biome, and it’s entirely free! It will arrive in early 2026. World Expansion V will focus on an endless form of Survival Mode, with creatures scaling way past what we are used to. The expansion will also be free, and the release date is to be determined. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/87e5cc48498dd1990f66dc75ffb7eca7.avif?t=1756478584 This is one of our favourite scenes we captured for the Co-Op trailers. Lasers Swords flying left and right, tons of Mushbits being eradicated, countless pieces of debris - pure chaos. This is how we arrived at our latest story arc: by working on the Dedicated Server app, World Expansion IV, and improving the game based on your feedback. We initially planned to release the Dedicated Server alongside version 2.0, but encountered more issues than anticipated; you can read all about them in our progress report. By the time you read this, we will likely have published the first version of the app to the experimental branch for you to try. We’re looking forward to your feedback! We have also started previews of the content you can expect to see in World Expansion IV. You can expect them to continue after we are back from our holiday break. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/cb8a74c8cba3ac4f215b2b05558810a9.avif?t=1756478584 We are taking a couple of weeks off. We expect most of the team to be back on January 7th. It's quite close to our planned release date for World Expansion IV, so we're gonna have to go into the year like these mechs - no hesitation, no fear, push forward! 2025 was a huge year for us - one that sets our course for the foreseeable future. 2026 is going to be our eighth year of work on The Riftbreaker, that’s a big, happy chunk of life :) If you want to know what we are planning next, please join our newsletter here and hop into the Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We’ll keep you up to date - you can be sure about that! We wish you a great holiday period and a fantastic start to the new year! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released a tiny hotfix for a bug regarding seasonal events on the Dedicated Server. This fix prevents a crash that would happen if you wanted to use a Dedicated Server while the event is active. There are no gameplay changes or any other fixes in this build. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released a small update for The Riftbreaker, aimed at improving the online connectivity, especially when using the Dedicated Server on various PC configurations, including connecting to a server with a Steam Deck. There are no gameplay changes in this build. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released a new update for the experimental branch of The Riftbreaker. It's not a patch that will drastically change your gameplay experience. Instead, this one is focused on backend changes. It features improvements and fixes for many errors and problems you have reported while using the Dedicated Server on various hardware configurations, including the Steam Deck. This Experimental Release is available to everyone on an opt-in basis. Please be aware that things might not work as intended, and you may encounter problems. If you don’t want to take any risks, please wait for the public release of this update. If you decide to test this build with the Dedicated Server, please make sure to update the server app to the latest version. If the version numbers don't match, you will not be able to connect. The build number is #799. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe.

With all these warnings out of the way, here’s how to access the experimental branch:

create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)

disable Steam Cloud save backup for The Riftbreaker

go to your Steam Library

right-click on The Riftbreaker

select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game, and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback. If everything goes right, we expect this update to hit the main build of the game later this week. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

Every World Expansion we released for The Riftbreaker up to this point has brought in a multitude of changes, additions, and new features to the game. The WE IV update, coming early 2026, is no different. This expansion will bring in an entirely new game mode in the form of the Open Campaign, the eighth biome to explore and colonize, and new Riftbreaker technology to make your life on Galatea easier. Today, we would like to share details about the new buildings that will strengthen your infrastructure and arsenal in this free update. Here's the article in a video form: https://youtube.com/shorts/TNmD32YPO_s https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/adbe6773e7aaab06b9fe1191d5bb10e3.avif?t=1756478584 This is a sight that should be familiar to veterans of The Riftbreaker Endgame: endless fields of Storage buildings. Let’s kick things off with some basic structures - new storage units. The World Expansion IV will give you access to expanded Solid Material Storages and Energy Storages. After the release of our Endgame update last August, the average economy size for a regular Riftbreaker campaign has grown significantly. The increased availability of resources, thanks to the new loot system, and resource-rich maps accessible through the Randomized Mission Generator has resulted in increased demand for storage space. After all, every second your factories stand idle due to a lack of storage is a second wasted. An increasing number of players have begun dedicating entire maps to building only storage space. It is not an elegant solution, but it works. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/72c546abc995b871d07d2e7c9ccfb0c4.avif?t=1756478584 Energy storages have a tendency to blow up in bulk. Once we give you even bigger storages, you can expect even more explosions! Think about their placement, spread out your energy reserves, and protect them at all costs. The situation is a bit different when it comes to storing energy. Energy is a local resource. You cannot transfer it between outposts in other parts of the planet. If your base requires a large amount of power to operate, you need to have a significant portion of it stored in case of an emergency. With the addition of Megastructures and other new tech chains, these needs have grown massively, requiring players to place hundreds of Energy Storage buildings in their outposts just to keep up with the power demand. On one hand, this is good - it is a challenge that tests your planning, building, and logistics skills. On the other hand, the space occupied by storage could have been used for something much more interesting. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/abd8807fd48b0e879bca5c9ef569dd3f8cdd27af.gif This is a work-in-progress demonstration of what the new, bigger Solid Material Storage will look like. There is still a bit of work to be done when it comes to adding details, textures, and effects, but you get the general idea. We decided to give you some additional options when it comes to storing your hard-earned resources. World Expansion IV will introduce more advanced versions of Solid Material Storage and Energy Storage buildings. They will be much larger, cost much more resources to construct, and require additional research. However, they will offer unparalleled storage capacity per grid compared to their regular counterparts. Also, losing one such building will result in a drastic reduction in your overall storage capacity, potentially leading to the destruction of thousands of stored materials. Oh, and the energy storages release a powerful explosion once destroyed, capable of wiping out a good chunk of your base. Protect them well, and you will be fine! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/e15dc387da35b8606b1730a53d682b15303d5c8e.png This screenshot allows you to compare the scale of the new building to your mech. We don't have a preview for the Energy Storage yet, but it should be similar in scale. We will also use the World Expansion IV as an opportunity to expand our defensive tower arsenal. These new towers will fill gaps in the damage types in the current lineup. We don’t have the names for these towers just yet - perhaps you can help us with naming them? We do know, however, what they plan to do, so here’s a brief description of each. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/73f1aed4457a38382eebf566476e26ab.avif?t=1756478584 Please note that this is still work in progress. This is not the final model, particle effects, or firepower. This is just to demonstrate what these new towers are going to do. A 2x2 cryo damage tower. It works similarly to a Rocket Tower: it launches a projectile that travels at moderate speed and explodes on impact. The difference here is that it deals not area, but cryo damage. Also, the projectile shatters into a cloud of miniature ice spikes that slow down enemies in its area of effect. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0bd8dd3d1aa446c2017c7b8dc9a09f83.avif?t=1756478584 This is hands-down my favourite tower in the game. Mini-HCM on demand? Sign me up! Another 2x2 tower of a higher range - something in between a mortar and regular artillery - that shoots cluster fire grenades. Think of this as a miniature version of the HCM. The projectiles shot from this tower split mid-air into several smaller bombs that release a fiery inferno on impact. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/17b0c3756d94cfbffe5b67e61e85c892.avif?t=1756478584 The biggest advantage of this tower is that it affects entire groups of small attackers due to high spread, but will also do well against single large targets. A 1x1 tower that is a crossover between the handheld Shard Gun and the Minigun Tower. This structure will fire many small projectiles at a high rate of fire, with a wide horizontal spread to cover a larger area. It will not excel at dealing a lot of direct damage, but it will be great as a damage-over-time support tower. On top of that, it will deal acid damage - one of the types that is the most underrepresented in The Riftbreaker. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/6e43ec321a5d65760ed358f24bd56c30ea07aefe.png Here's the 'blockout' concept of the "Icicle Thrower" tower (temp name, pls no h8) World Expansion IV will be released early next year. If you want to get a chance to test these new structures ahead of time, sign up for our newsletter here and join our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios. As always, there will be an experimental update release before we push these new toys to the public. We are very open to hearing your feedback and suggestions on how to make these buildings worth your while. Not to mention, you will also get the chance to play the new Open Campaign mode and try exploring the new biome we are working on. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/143fc262fb3f6143e95b361a7062dd7ba884ee8e.png And here's your first look at the "Inferno Tower" (temp name, but I wouldn't be mad if it stuck tbh) One more thing: you can get The Riftbreaker on Steam at the deepest discount ever: the main game is 60% off, and all the story DLCs are available at 40% off. You can also take advantage of the 'Complete your Collection" bundle deal that will get you an additional discount for any remaining pieces of content that you do not own! It's the best time ever to become a Riftbreaker or gift a copy to your friends for Co-Op play. https://store.steampowered.com/app/780310/The_Riftbreaker/ We have plenty of cool things coming to you next year - don’t miss any! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have a new experimental update ready for you. This time, the main course is the addition of a standalone Dedicated Server app, which lets you host Co-Op sessions for The Riftbreaker on a separate PC. While the Dedicated Server was the main focus of our development team for the past couple of months ( it required MUCH more effort than we expected ), it is not the only thing we have managed to accomplish, so we’re using this opportunity to push some additional fixes and gameplay improvements for the main game. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/af9c464f6df588f3641072131fa2d08d.avif?t=1756478584 The main advantage of hosting the game via the dedicated server app on a separate PC is increased performance*. When playing Co-Op, one of the players has to take on the role of the server. This means their PC will perform all necessary calculations and simulate the game world for all players. This places additional strain on the host’s hardware and may cause slowdowns and performance issues. Using a dedicated server allows all players to connect to the game as clients and receive all pre-computed simulation data from the server. * Your mileage may vary. The server’s hardware configuration will affect how well the dedicated server app will perform, and consequently, how well the game will run for players connected to the server. If you try to host the game on a 10-year old laptop you have lying around, it might result in worse performance than if you hosted the game on your main rig. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/ca980e08f10183ef1fa6afb360364e62.avif?t=1756478584 The Dedicated Server for The Riftbreaker is a standalone app that you can download from Steam entirely for free - even if you do not own the game. (you do not even need a Steam account. You can download it entirely anonymously using SteamCMD). All you need to do is go to your Steam Library, check the ‘Tools’ display checkbox in the drop-down menu at the top of your games list, and download the app. It is very lightweight, thanks to some clever engineering we have described in our progress article, which you can read here. Instead of 11GB+, the download size is only about 600MB. Additionally, the server runs in headless mode, without graphics rendering. Thanks to this, you can run the server on a system without a powerful GPU - the only things you need to care about are the CPU and RAM. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/83d9d53463cfdf1c8e7d6182d6ac5226.avif?t=1756478584 We have put a lot of effort into testing permutations of running the game under different conditions. We tested it with and without DLCs, loading and saving at the most inopportune moments, and trying to break everything as much as we could. However, it is still possible that some cases have slipped through the cracks. Some things might not work as expected, and you might experience bugs. This is why we would be extremely grateful if you could try the dedicated server and let us know about any issues you encounter. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/7b9bf97ed1e40dfb0e115f6ec5e3a91a.avif?t=1756478584 Critical piece of info: if you want to play on the dedicated server, the server app version and the main game MUST MATCH. Currently, the server app is running version 768, the same as the experimental build. It is crucial that you try the server only if you have switched the game branch to experimental. Otherwise, you will not be able to connect. This Experimental Release is available to everyone on an opt-in basis. Please be aware that things might not work as intended, and you may encounter problems. If you don’t want to take any risks, please wait for the public release of this update. A Note to Linux Users: It is highly likely that the dedicated server app will run under Linux, however, we have not tested that. It would be great to hear your feedback if you do or do not manage to get it running. We don’t officially support Linux, but we’ll try our best to get it running if it doesn’t. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/a524510a5ab4c5d8bd6a149a4593adab52f0fdf0.png We know that there are quite a few people playing The Riftbreaker on Linux, even though we don’t have “official” support for the platform. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/3a09c2256c419ca2ac36185b113dbd70.avif?t=1756478584

With all these warnings out of the way, here’s how to access the experimental branch:

create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)

disable Steam Cloud save backup for The Riftbreaker

go to your Steam Library

right-click on The Riftbreaker

select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game, and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback.

The Riftbreaker Experimental Update - Dedicated Server Beta - December 11th, 2025. Data 792 Exe 1149 Changelog:

• Added stand-alone The Riftbreaker Dedicated Server application. It is entirely independent of the main game build and doesn't require a Steam account to run.
• Removed Dedicated Server option from the main game application.
• The Save/Load Game option is now hidden from non-server owners - only the server can save the game
• PauseMenuScreen: clients can use `Resume Game` when the server doesn't have a connected owner (Dedicated Server mode only)
• Dedicated Server - added Remote Console Password support
• Added separate support for the Dedicated Server precache system
• Multiplayer Lobby: Campaign name change will now trigger a lobby refresh
• Loading into a map will now trigger an autosave in multiplayer
• Trigger server vote when the client requests server pause/resume, and there is no server owner connected
• Gamepad: the user interface remembers the last pause menu screen and displays it when the Start button is pressed
• Build menu: gamepad build menu shortcuts only work when the build menu is open
• Added a tooltip for the warning icon that appears for potentially incompatible save files ( e.g., the ones that were created with outdated mods )
• Updated AMD FSR2 from 2.1.2 to 2.2.1
• Updated Intel XeSS from 1.1 to XeSS 2.0.2
• Optimized tornado and gravity hole destructible part limits for PS5/Xbox/Steam Deck - improved performance and a crash bug fix for extreme circumstances ( we couldn't believe what people could do with these skills ).
• Sandbox Control Panel: fixed tab headers' hitboxes
• Research screen: Improved filter behavior
• Skills and items that spawned drones will now spawn them at the appropriate skill level
• VegetationLifeCycleSystem: disable visibility check for re-growth mode
• BurningComponent: added support for `damage_type.`
• FireUniformAffectorSystem: use black burning color when custom damage type is used
• Improved teleport marker effect on consoles
• Rebalanced the Shotgun and High Caliber Rifle on higher levels (increased firepower)
• Gui: Fixed tooltip displaying regardless of whether PointerEventBlocker covers the source element
• Fixed rare occurrences of a duplicated player spawn bug
• Fixed player losing weapons on death in rare circumstances
• Fixed trap activation number recalculation after repair
• Fixed Megastructure MinimapItemDesc
• Fixed X-Morph tower idle position to animation glitch
• Fixed multiplied Mech emote problems
• Fixed mech teleport icons on the big map screen
• Fixed repellent drone (Heart of the Swamp) flight paths
• Fixed ear position calculation for specific multiplayer scenarios
• Fixed virtual cursor position on the equipment screen when attaching and detaching different types of controllers ( keyboard to gamepad )
• Fixed mission time format on the Load Game screen (h:mm)
• Fixed GlobalAwardUnlocks in multiplayer, e.g, finishing a Survival Mode Jungle biome run will unlock the next biome for all of the involved players in single player mode
• Fixed liquid pools not appearing on the minimap on the PlayStation 5
• Fixed icon name in teleport skill
• Fixed missing effects in the teleport skill
• Fixed Power Jump movement skill infinite loop
• Fixed minor trophy system calculation problems on the PS5
• Fixed multiple rare rendering-related crashes
• Fixed a rare crash in the TurretSystem that was caused by invalid bone data
• Fixed multiple rare gameplay data-related crashes
• Fixed a rare build menu-related crash when selecting a building with invalid data
• Fixed a rare crash that occurred when a player selected a mod with invalid data
• Fixed a game crash in the equipment screen if the game received invalid/missing item blueprint data

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c0d0b25065ab77d7fe79a50647e97dbf.avif?t=1756478584 It's hard to portray the Open Campaign mode in a visual form, so we're going to use this opportunity to show off some WIP shots of the yet unnamed ice biome (name suggestions welcome). You can click the images to see them in a higher resolution. These visuals do not represent the final quality of the update. Since we dropped the news about the Open Campaign mode that is coming to you with the free World Expansion IV for The Riftbreaker, we have received numerous questions about this new game mode. We’re not surprised - it’s hard to describe what the entirety of the Open Campaign will be like in the short tidbits we have been posting. Today, we’d like to share some information about this new way to play The Riftbreaker Campaign. Much of it is still work in progress. As we playtest our ideas, new problems and challenges emerge. However, this is the fun part of game development: solving problems to create something unique and enjoyable. Here are six things we know for sure about the new Open Campaign Mode in The Riftbreaker. Minor Story Campaign spoilers ahead - you’ve been warned! Video form here: https://youtube.com/shorts/XQqsWqK5s0c?feature=share

The Open Campaign mode will allow you to start in any biome you choose - for better or worse!

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0f79a6dcbff42579c445132b39286bbf.avif?t=1756478584 The enemies you encounter in the new biome are adapted versions of creatures you know already. However, their strenghts and weaknesses are different now, so you will have to figure out new tactics to deal with them. The Riftbreaker’s Story Campaign begins in the Tropical Zone of Galatea 37 - the most tame and Earth-like biome of them all. It is not a coincidence. Quantum scans of the planet indicated that it should be the most welcoming zone. We wanted to ease you into the game and give you the chance to learn the basic mechanics and features in the safest environment possible. The Open Campaign is intended for experienced Riftbreakers and throws this safety net out the window. You can choose your starting biome freely based on its unique advantages and disadvantages. For example, starting your Campaign in the Radioactive Desert will pretty much guarantee UNLIMITED POWER thanks to the increased performance of Solar Panels. On the other hand, you might have a hard time building up your base due to the omnipresent quicksand and intense radiation. No matter which biome you choose, you start with only the basic technologies. You will have to research everything else on your own. Thanks to this, each biome will present unique challenges and require you to develop new build orders based on your current needs.

There are no story-based locks on any research items.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/aef924e78b95a13bb51b01fa4961d696.avif?t=1756478584 When exploring the new biome, you will often encounter these icy Kermons. They look like a more primordial version of the original creature, and lack the cloaking ability, but they are no less deadly. You won’t have to complete any missions in order to unlock tech items in the research tree. Let’s continue with our Radioactive Desert example and the quicksand problem. You will need the Extra Stable Floor to utilize all the real estate on the map. Normally, you would have to progress through the story a little bit in order to unlock that technology for research. In Open Campaign, all you have to do is reach familiarity level 2 of the Stregaros species, which is already present in your starting location. This is the case for all research items in the technology tree. All requirements are clearly stated in the research screen, and you can plan your path forward ahead of time.

There will be no story-based objectives except one: Build the Prime Rift Station.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/e213026e0e49c01f91858b4f65283178.avif?t=1756478584 The Randomized Mission Generator will be one of the most important tools in the Open Campaign. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/4fb935d39c7ba8bd0f6d1057d2c6f2f5.avif?t=1756478584 Do not underestimate the dangers of this biome - even in these conditions, the local wildlife will try their best to destroy you. In the Open Campaign mode, we will not hold your hand through the process of pre-colonizing Galatea 37. You will have just one goal - establish a stable rift portal connection back home. We will not be interfering with your process. You will get the ability to generate missions using the planetary scanner interface for all biomes right from the get-go (as soon as you construct the Orbital Scanner building). If you want to explore the entirety of the planet and establish Outposts all around the globe - that’s great. On the other hand, we won’t stop you if your goal is to completely speedrun the Prime Rift Station building process. As long as you find a way to get the necessary resources, you are free to do as you like. We want you to set your own goals and pace - even if it means completing the entire campaign in one sitting (send us a video if you manage to do it).

It will not be any easier than the original Story Campaign.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/ceb1876c01c23ea3e1a9eed817cf4ab4.avif?t=1756478584 Even the predatory plants of the Fungal Swamp have adapted to these conditions. Beware of Carnicynths, especially when assaulting creature nests! The fact that we will not dictate the pace of the game with objectives doesn’t mean that this is going to be a 100% sandbox experience (unless you choose the sandbox difficulty level - duh). You will still get attacked by hordes of Galatean wildlife, and they are just as angry as ever. The Open Campaign mode will allow you to choose a difficulty level, just like in the case of the Story Campaign. It will dictate the strength of alien waves that come knocking on your doorstep. Main events, such as opening the portal, will still cause thousands of enemies to swarm you from all sides. It’s a good idea to be prepared and fortify your positions.

The Open Campaign allows you to visit ALL biomes - even if you don’t have the DLCs.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0b1dd8517395d7b1f6650452eae84caf.avif?t=1756478584 If you want to, you can start in the Volcanic Zone. We don't guarantee that you won't curse this place afterwards, but you can do it! You can even place megastructures there. Our previous World Expansions always arrived in two parts - a free content update for all our users, and a story-based campaign episode in the form of a paid DLC. Since the Open Campaign does not put an emphasis on the story, it doesn’t make sense to impose an artificial limit on you. When playing the Open Campaign, you will be able to visit all the Galatean biomes as part of the base game experience. You will have the chance to set up your resource outposts in the Metallic Valley, Crystal Caverns, and the Fungal Swamp. It will be the first time our base game users will be able to utilize the resources from these biomes in their Campaigns and enjoy them outside of the Survival Mode.

It is the ultimate modding playground.

https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f189bee802193d4bcb49a76bc5d86c21.avif?t=1756478584 If you pick the right tool for the job, defending your base gets a lot easier! The Open Campaign logic is extremely simplified compared to the regular Story Campaign. Everything has been stripped to the bare minimum necessary for the game to function correctly. This makes it much easier to inject custom-made missions and entire storylines into the campaign if you want to. With such a simplified logic structure, you can make sure that all the events you design for your mods run exactly as you want and without getting stuck on some random story tidbit that got in the way. You can come up with an entire alternative storyline for Ashley and Mr. Riggs - the only limit is your imagination. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f03c90ffc5fee30453a41d13254cd3bf.avif?t=1756478584 As you would expect, fire works pretty well against most creatures here, but it's not catch-all! The Open Campaign mode in the Riftbreaker will offer a fresh perspective on the conquest of Galatea 37. While it is intended for those players who are already familiar with the game, we will not lock access to it behind completing the main story. There is a large community of players who enjoy being thrown into the deep end and having to piece everything together on their own. If you are one of these people, this will be the perfect way to play for you. You will be free to tackle the challenges offered by the game in any way you like, with no explanations in the form of dialogues, in-game tips, or required objectives. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/27748b510ad0883adb560cae6d124fce.avif?t=1756478584 The creatures of the ice biome will get their own preview articles, where you will be able to see the Alpha and Ultra variants as well. Here's a glimpse of a couple of them. Even though the basic rules of this game mode might sound simple, implementing it is not trivial. Adapting each biome to support the Headquarters was no small feat. We had to ensure that all biomes in the game have all the necessary resources and building blocks to allow you to build up your main base wherever you want. Additionally, the original Story Campaign features many requirements and locks. They were placed there to ensure you always know what to do next and have all the required tools to progress through the story. We are currently in the process of unraveling this entire structure, as we need to make sure that you can complete the Open Campaign no matter where you want to start and which path to follow. The options are infinite, and we won’t be able to test it all by ourselves. Would you like to help? If you would, sign up for our newsletter here and join the Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios to learn about testing opportunities and get informed about the experimental releases. See you there! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

The Steam Awards 2025 nominations are open. It would mean the world to us if you decided to vote for The Riftbreaker in the ‘Labor of Love’ category. We’d like to try to convince you why we’re the right fit for this category. In this article, we’ll go through a brief history of the most important milestones we’ve reached so far. We will also tell you what’s next for The Riftbreaker - we are not ready to call it a day just yet! It is no secret that developing The Riftbreaker has been a life-changing experience for us. We have reached more players than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of you have set out for your Galatea 37 colonization mission, showing your trust and faith in our work. In fact, the total number of players across all platforms and including subscription services has surpassed two million unique Riftbreakers. Each and every one of you has our eternal gratitude. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/39ff98b1b8f5f9316e92a9a7bffc25497091237a.png We have always planned to support The Riftbreaker for a long time, but it is your unwavering interest and support that made it possible. Ever since the launch of the game, we have managed to give you the following:

• Three massive world expansions, each with an entirely new biome to explore, dozens of new technologies, buildings, and weapons, unique fauna and flora, and a new portion of the Story Campaign in the form of paid DLCs.
• Over 90 game updates, improving on the game’s quality of life features, gameplay changes, and thousands of fixes, with a vast majority influenced by your invaluable feedback.
• An entire suite of Editor Tools, which we have used ourselves to create the game. Now, they are in the hands of modders, who are already putting them to good use.

Still, the game was missing something. For years, you have been asking for Co-Op Multiplayer to finally be able to enjoy The Riftbreaker with your friends. We knew that it would take years. We knew that it would require us to rewrite the entirety of the game’s code. We knew it was going to be tough. We agreed anyway. The development of the Co-Op Mode ran in parallel to all the updates and improvements we mentioned above. It took much more work than we initially anticipated, but we pushed on, detailing our journey in our series of ‘Co-Op Status Update’ articles. You can give them all a read here.

Finally, on August 25th, The Riftbreaker 2.0 Update was released as a free update. It included:

FOUR-PLAYER CO-OP - Gather your team and conquer Galatea 37 together. You can play the entirety of the Campaign and Survival Modes, as well as the Prologue mission. EXPANDED ENDGAME CAMPAIGN - A brand-new story arc involving Megastructures - specialized buildings with massive resource and upkeep requirements that will test your planning skills and grant powerful passive boosts in return. NEW OMEGA-STRAIN CREATURES - These are new, more powerful, and tougher versions of the existing species. They are the new backbone of the enemy hordes, bringing destruction wherever they go. RANDOMIZED MISSION GENERATOR - After completing all of the main missions in any given biome, you will now have the option to look for new planetary locations. You can either look for hidden treasures and Bioanomalies in exploration-style maps, or you can set up new resource outposts in resource-rich areas. LOOT SYSTEM REWORK - Crafting is not the only way of getting new gear anymore. You can now find weapons, mech upgrades, and other useful items as loot from enemy creatures, Biocaches, and Bioanomalies. GAME BALANCE ADJUSTMENTS - We have rebalanced the entirety of The Riftbreaker campaign, taking all your feedback into account. The difficulty modes in version 2.0 have been redesigned to better suit the majority of players. WEAPON SYSTEM REWORK - We have rebalanced the entire weapons system to improve firepower scaling across the entire campaign. QUALITY-OF-LIFE IMPROVEMENTS - We’ve added many features, such as mass item disassembly, research search bar, quick multiplayer teleports, and many other options to make your gameplay experience as smooth as possible. MASSIVE PERFORMANCE GAINS - Since this update required us to rework the entirety of the engine, you will now be able to enjoy The Riftbreaker with much smoother performance, able to handle truly massive bases and enemy numbers. We were proud of this update, knowing that this was, by far, the best version of the game to date. Seeing that tens of thousands of you downloaded the update and brought your friends along for the ride was the best thing we could ask for. Although it took years to develop, we successfully fulfilled our promise and delivered an update worthy of the 2.0 moniker. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/151a2fc9344b152b5ed8a6eacc5b3cef34a7dc8b.png

WHAT'S COMING NEXT

A sane person would probably call it quits at this point, but who said we’re sane? The Riftbreaker is our Labor of Love after all, and we’re not ready to say goodbye to it just yet. We still have more updates coming to you in the very near future. In chronological order, these are: DEDICATED SERVER RELEASE - We will release a self-contained, small (about 500MB), free app that will allow you to host your Riftbreaker sessions on any (decently quick) PC connected to the internet. This way, none of the players will have to take the performance hit that comes with hosting the session (provided that you have a spare PC to host it on). WORLD EXPANSION IV - OPEN CAMPAIGN - A free content update, featuring an all-new, previously unexplored biome on Galatea 37. The biome will include new map tiles, special encounters, map generator missions, a survival mode mission, and, of course, its own fauna and flora. The update will also feature a brand-new game mode - Open Campaign. Designed for experienced Riftbreakers, this mode will allow you to start a new Campaign in any part of the planet and choose your own path to victory. You will not be bound by any story elements or objective-based research locks - you’re free to do whatever you want. WORLD EXPANSION V - SURVIVAL MODE UPDATE - We will add an optional endless mode to the well-known Survival Mode. If you choose this option, the enemy waves will scale beyond what was previously possible. Each attack will become slightly stronger, leading to your eventual destruction. This mode will reward skill, strategy, and planning. How long will you last? We hope that we’re worthy of your vote for the Labor of Love Steam Award in 2025. If we convinced you - cool! If we didn’t - also cool! We’re going to continue working on The Riftbreaker anyway! It’s been a blast so far, and we can’t wait to see what happens next. EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

The Riftbreaker is a power-hungry game. It requires significant processing power to run game logic and calculate gameplay state due to the size of the world, the number of entities on the map, and the interactions between them. This cost increases significantly in Co-Op play. Since we chose a client-server architecture for the game, only the host has to take that performance hit. But what if no one had to make that sacrifice? That’s where a dedicated server comes in. Today, we would like to give you a short progress report on the promised Dedicated Server app for The Riftbreaker. You can also watch this short video to get the gist of the article: https://youtube.com/shorts/BSyV2rQ-aI0?feature=share https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/81ddb00c7ad2a48a0315cd993ba4c195.avif?t=1756478584 It's a bit difficult to show the dedicated server on a screenshot/gif, since when it works well, you don't see a difference between hosting the game on your own PC and playing dedicated. In the face of this "problem", we just added a bunch of cool gifs from co-op mode. Enjoy! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/f15635d2b952f0c209eacec07591ceba3b3abe2b.jpg Here's some human-generated slop that pictures in great detail how this technology works! A dedicated server is a special build of a game that you run on a separate PC. Its only purpose is to handle all gameplay calculations for players, ensuring a smooth experience for everyone. It eliminates the need for one player to act as the server for others, improving performance and increasing comfort during play. However, it comes at a cost - you need a separate machine to run the dedicated server app. Not many people have the luxury of owning several gaming machines, so dedicated servers are often stripped of unnecessary features. Sounds simple in principle, but it is more complicated than just turning off some parts of the game. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/d318f87ebaaa12e16fc70c7c7fc72a76.avif?t=1756478584 We decided that the dedicated server for The Riftbreaker will run in ‘headless mode’ - without rendering any graphics. This way, we reduce the app’s hardware requirements and free up system resources for running the game world simulation. It wasn’t as simple as “turning graphics off”. In reality, it was a complicated task that required us to restructure the program to a significant degree. However, the Schmetterling Engine was already able to run the rendering and game simulation pipelines independently, which helped us immensely. Still, we managed to succeed. Thanks to the efforts of our programmers, the Riftbreaker dedicated server app can run without rendering, entirely in the background. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/647427d725de7623405e5898723e4e35.avif?t=1756478584 If the server does not display anything while running, keeping audiovisual assets in the app package seems like a waste of space. However, we couldn’t simply delete those files. They are important not only for the sake of rendering the game’s graphics, but also for the logic part of things. For example, the information about 3D objects’ bounding boxes is necessary for the game to calculate collisions and other crucial physics interactions. Each type of asset has some metadata that is required by the engine to function correctly. If we could extract that metadata for each asset type, we could build a cache that the server could use for simulation purposes and save a lot of space. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/c9d901665a81ac827e3531e79263047e.avif?t=1756478584 In order to do that, we had to build special tools that allow us to extract information about mesh bounding boxes, texture sizes, sound sample length, and much more. All that information is stored in a cache that the server app can access instead of real asset files. Thanks to the use of asset metadata cache in place of real asset files, the size of the server app has shrunk from 11 gigabytes to just 600 megabytes - more than 90%! A positive side effect of using the asset metadata cache is a significant reduction in server load time. Instead of having to access all the assets and load them from the hard drive to RAM, the game engine has all the metadata ready to use right out of the gate. This significantly reduces the server's load time and the entire application's memory footprint. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/afc307c348424d7e4abeae8dc6641e39.avif?t=1756478584 However, using a static cache instead of parsing asset information in real time during the loading process also has negative side effects. The Riftbreaker changes all the time - new assets get added, old ones get deleted, and we make improvements to existing ones when necessary. This is not a problem for the regular build of the game. It parses all the asset data during the loading process. This data is always accurate as it is generated on the spot when it is needed. If we built our asset metadata cache manually, it would become outdated very quickly, which would result in errors and crashes. To avoid this situation, we altered our game compilation process. Every time we build a new version of the game package, we also build the new version of the server app and regenerate the cache. It slightly increases iteration time, but saves us much trouble in the long run. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/7d12a309e7088ad28c49b7a3de6a4fc464877f55.png The simple UI you will use to set up the base game parameters. It mirrors the functionality of the Lobby screen. You can see the game running in the background. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/2046d51f37027d77e34a0e45eb85b73c37aa1e60.png During gameplay, the server will allow you to control the session in progress by managing players and executing console commands. Since the UI interface that you know from the game is gone (no rendering), you can control the app in two ways. If you have direct access to the server PC, we will give you a simple window that mirrors the lobby screen (external UI). It will allow you to select the game mode, difficulty level, map, and player management options. Alternatively, if you want to run the server fully remote (for example, by renting a server from a farm), you can control the dedicated server app by executing console commands straight from your PC. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/d21cebd41f2caac7dab74b2bdcaef9f5.avif?t=1756478584 The biggest problem we faced during app development was, in fact, directly related to the server controls. In regular, player-hosted Co-Op sessions, the server owner is in complete control of the campaign flow. They control which game mode to start, when to load the game, and the options on the victory and defeat screens. However, when running the game in the dedicated server mode, there is no owner. We decided to solve this with the power of democracy. Whenever the game reaches one of the critical moments we mentioned earlier, we start a vote. The game proceeds when all players agree on what to do next. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/aa68d6df5b08526a9a72967dc6d515ba.avif?t=1756478584 The dedicated server app will be available as a free download on Steam. Thanks to this, you will not need a second copy of the game to set up a dedicated server for yourself and your friends. It will also support anonymous downloads through the Steamcmd.exe app, so you don't even need a Steam account to run it. If you use this option, the app will launch in non-DRM mode, allowing others to connect to you directly via IP and bypassing Steam. This kind of setup is much more complicated than the regular Host/Join experience, but we know that a lot of our players have the necessary skills to take advantage of these additional capabilities. Setting up a dedicated server requires some work, but it can really help with improving game performance and reducing lag. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/6ad70307eb5e7202713290c52c4d4297.avif?t=1756478584 As you can see, the development of the dedicated server app for The Riftbreaker was not a straightforward job. We are still in the process of testing the app. Once it passes our internal testing routine, we are going to release it on the experimental branch of the game on Steam, so you have a chance to report any bugs you find. If everything goes smoothly, we should be able to release the app before the end of this year, along with a bunch of fixes for the main game that we have developed in the meantime. We hope you enjoyed this short update on our progress and encourage you to sign up for our newsletter and join our Discord server for more news like this. We still have a lot of surprises waiting for you! EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We are hard at work, developing the World Expansion IV Update for The Riftbreaker. While we don’t have much to show for it just yet, there have been some carefully controlled leaks on our Discord, which should tell you where we’re going with it (wink, wink, sign up to our Discord). You’ll undoubtedly learn more about the new expansion in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we would like to share with you a little story on our never-ending quest for improvement. This time, we’re taking a look at the latest updates for the Shotgun and High Caliber Rifle. You can also watch the video about this by clicking here: https://youtube.com/shorts/m8AA_RMfRwg https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/80b314cd0ecc5648c26db98074013a0e.avif?t=1756478584 With our old piercing damage system, hits that fell in-between frames wouldn't always register. It was barely noticeable at high framerates, but over the course of the campaign it added up to significant amount of damage missed. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/e01fc7800a069e919d49b11dab6ce241.avif?t=1756478584 The number of registered hits is significantly higher with our new system in place. The High Caliber Rifle is still not the best weapon for the job of thinning swarms, but this is just an example. The Shotgun was present in the game since the pre-alpha days. Our implementation of this weapon was quite simple. Shotguns fired several projectiles in a cone. The exact path of each projectile was randomized with every pull of the trigger to simulate the spread that you would expect from firing a buckshot round. Each of those rounds had a 100% chance to pierce through enemies, even those who were resistant to physical damage. The weapon worked very well up close, when you were guaranteed to hit with all the projectiles. However, it was difficult to hit more distant targets, as those had to fall precisely in line with the randomized trajectory of the projectile. Sometimes, you would shoot at a group of enemies clearly in your range and get zero hits. The High Caliber Rifle (known in the early days as the Sniper Rifle) had fewer problems, but they were similar in nature. Bullets fired from this gun would always pierce enemies. However, the damage after the first hit wouldn’t always register. We wanted to improve that, and piercing damage mechanics were the key to this. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/dba03bee69a73e52b41713ca06ae78fd.avif?t=1756478584 The lower your frame rate, the worse the problem. This is an extreme example - a shot that would easily take down 10+ units only hits two! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/b7c693ed8f324a346de7803e0bbd107a.avif?t=1756478584 With the new sub-frame polling system, bullet hits register much more reliably, even at very low frame rates.

Subframe damage calculation

Previously, if you fired at several enemies standing in a single line, the projectile should be able to hit all of them at once. Sounds great on paper, but in reality, you would often see that the bullet “skipped” several viable targets along the way. It happened because the bullet traveled at a very high speed, and some hits would fall in the space between the game engine’s logic updates, which occur every 33 milliseconds. By the time the next logic update rolled around, the projectile was much further and couldn’t register the hits “from the past”. Our solution was to rework the piercing algorithm so that it worked independently of the logic update timing - or in ‘sub-frame polling’. Suppose any targets are hit in the time between logic updates. In that case, that information is now stored and used during the next update. This ensures that the hits registered in-between frames are taken into account and the damage is distributed without random ‘skips’, increasing the overall reliability of piercing in the game. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/0f4181baa1d63a58e61495a9629afd2a.avif?t=1756478584 It wasn't only the High Caliber Rifle that suffered because of this. In this example the Canoptrix are clearly in range of our Shotgun, yet we fail to kill them repeatedly! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/b1a717d40ec5a94d97bf542b2cdab098.avif?t=1756478584 The Shotgun's reliability is much higher now - the damage numbers alone tell a whole story about how many enemies get eliminated with each shot. Swarm control just got an upgrade.

Piercing damage vs Power dissipation

This upgrade made piercing weapons considerably stronger, as you were almost guaranteed to hit all enemies in a group with a single shot, which was not our intention either. Let’s assume that we have a weapon that deals 12 damage each shot. We’re aiming for 3 Canoptrix standing one behind the other. Each of them has 5 HP. They are all in range of our weapon. In the old model, all Canoptrix would take 12 damage and die, and the bullet would continue traveling even further. This is where the second piece of the puzzle comes in - damage dissipation. This damage model works differently. Each bullet starts with a number of damage points it can distribute. For the sake of this example, let’s keep it at 12. We’re aiming at 3 Canoptrix again. The first one receives the maximum value, which is 5. The bullet has seven damage left. It hits the second target, again, for a maximum of 5. The bullet still has 2 points of damage left, so it pierces again and hits the last Canoptrix. Essentially, the bullet loses a portion of its damage with each “pierce”, making the weapon much more sensible with the new, precise piercing algorithm. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/f9e2f0b7a0114fdb3c727b7759724113.avif?t=1756478584 Shooting a creature that doesn't really react to a blast from a shotgun did not add to immersion or the feeling of power. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/a7970c15e390974c92b24ad0e966d0ff.avif?t=1756478584 Single projectiles from the Shotgun now sum up to deal a higher amount of damage in one go. Thanks to this, you can stagger larger creatures.

Shotgun and Staggers

Another subtle change to the Shotgun is the ability to stagger large enemies. Singular projectiles, even on the highest level, were simply too weak to cross the damage threshold necessary to stagger an enemy. After our small rework, if you shoot a large enemy point-blank and hit with several bullets, the game will sum up all the individual damage ‘events’. If the number is high enough, you will be able to stagger the enemy and create a gap between you and your foe. This is highly useful when trying to kite creatures - if you run out of ammo in your primary weapon, you can give yourself a safety buffer using the shotgun, while you wait for the ammo to replenish. Conclusion Overall, these changes slightly alter the characteristics of the Shotgun and its intended use case in the game. The weapon will now be much more effective against groups of smaller enemies. The sub-frame sampling rate will ensure that more enemies actually get hit, allowing you to clear entire packs of creatures with fewer shots than before. There is a tradeoff, though - firing a shotgun into a horde of tanky creatures won’t do as much damage as before. That’s due to the change in piercing and the addition of damage dissipation. This makes the Shotgun less of a ‘catch-all’ weapon. The changes we introduced also affect the operations of the High Caliber Rifle. Similar to the Shotgun, the shots fired from the Rifle would pierce enemies with full force, but tended to skip over the targets that didn’t align with the projectile’s polling rate. With the new systems in place, bullets will only pierce enemies if they have any damage left to distribute, but they have a much easier time registering hits for targets further back. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/4d0615e7b250103762b43e30716ab667.avif?t=1756478584 Thanks to our recent improvements both the Shotgun and the High Caliber Rifle are more reliable, easier to use, and simply better in most gameplay scenarios. If there is one thing to learn from this article, it’s this: you never stop learning new things, and there is always room for improvement. Your ideas and perspectives shift over time and might offer solutions to problems you left buried a long time ago. We have been learning new things throughout the entire development process for The Riftbreaker. Who knows where it will lead us in the future? We don’t, but as soon as we do, we’ll be sure to tell you via our newsletter (you can sign up here), as well as on our Discord server at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. See you there!