Do you like weird alien planets? Do you like building bases? Do you like defending those bases from weird aliens? Well it sounds like The Riftbreaker has all of those things, and you'll be able to try it for yourself on Xbox Game Pass when it launches this autumn.

As announced on Xbox Wire, The Riftbreaker will be available on Game Pass from day one. It's described as a "mix of base-builder, survival, and action-RPG". Players take on the role of Captain Ashley Nowak, a member of the "elite Riftbreaker formation". She travels to a distant planet called Galatea 37, where she must prepare the world for human settlement. At least she has a mecha-suit to help with that.

When it launches this autumn, The Riftbreaker will release on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, but the latter already has a demo available if you can't wait to try it out. The free PC demo is called The Riftbreaker: Prologue and takes place before the events of the main game's campaign (you can find it on Steam, GOG and the Windows Store). "Explore an entirely new world, gather resources, build up a base, and defend yourself from thousands of alien creatures," said Exor Studios producer and designer Paweł Lekki. "Or just take the scenic route and do whatever you want - the choice is yours!

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Riftbreaker is a base-building survival game, but whereas in other games you build an army to defend you, here, you are the army. You're a pilot inside a mech capable of level-shaking destruction and you can torch entire hordes with flamethrowers, mow them down with thundering cannons, carve through them with giant swords and pound them with barrages of missiles. Here, the tech upgrades you normally spend on your army are spent on you. It feels awesome.

Riftbreaker is a cross between StarCraft, They Are Billions and Diablo. StarCraft because it looks like it - you're in a colourful and chunky alien world, clomping around in what looks like a Terran marine suit, They Are Billions because you need to survive against increasingly massive hordes of invading insect enemies, and Diablo because you grow and equip a fighter which gets more and more powerful as the game goes on. In summary, then, Riftbreaker is a real-time strategy game with a dollop of action-RPG on top.

It's really well put together. It surprised me, actually. I thought the key art looked tacky and dated because apparently I'm very shallow, but the game itself certainly is not. Riftbreaker is snappy and robust and accomplished in a way I'd expect from - to use an appropriate comparison - a Blizzard game. It's got heft and pace and punch. Trains of small enemy insects flow like water as they surge towards you, and cleaving through them with your sword leaves a great bloody mess all around you, and it's no less fun revving up a machine gun to cut them all down or blowing them to smithereens with any number of explosives. Riftbreaker makes you feel powerful.

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