Hello everyone!

We hope that you are doing well! The work on The Riftbreaker is progressing at a steady pace. With most of the technological hurdles behind us, we are implementing new features and reworking the old ones that did not quite meet our standards. Every day brings us closer to completing the final feature set and to release. We can't wait.



Our closed Alpha is receiving an update today, introducing support for various languages, new decoration options, a couple of new weapons, and other quality of life fixes. The full changelog can be found below. As always, we are really grateful for all the feedback and suggestions that you keep sending us here and on Discord. As a token of appreciation, we are going to send out a new wave of Alpha keys today!



Being active in the community and during our streams is the best way to ensure your Alpha access and stay up to date with the development of the game. You can always catch us and other fans excited for the game on our Discord server!

• Added new damage highlights.
  
• Solar and wind power efficiency is now represented on the HUD.
  
• New Weapon: Grenade Launcher. You can now skillfully lob explosives over rocks on the heads of unsuspecting Canoptrix!
  
• New Comsumable: Grenade. Point, click, boom.
  
• New interactive events: Earthquake and Resource Earthquake.
  
• The Prologue content, as well as a big chunk of the Survival Mode is now localized to various languages.
  
• Double swords are now a thing! You can use two melee weapons at the same time and not make Mr. Riggs breakdance!
  
• New lamps added - blue, red, green, cyan, yellow, orange, violet
  
• New Decorations - potted plants, statues, floors!
  
• Max distance energy connector building - a quality of life upgrade requested by many is finally here! Praise Starbugs!

• Healthbars have been increased in size to improve visibility.
  
• Minimap zoom in/out buttons improved.
  
• Corpses now dissolve more quickly near buildings to decrease clutter and reduce the risk of spreading deadly microbes (not really).
  
• Drilling animation is a lot faster and responsive now.
  
• Melee attacks are a bit quicker
  
• The Resource Comet event has been updated with new visuals and effects. It's a real comet now!
  
• The Prologue mission has been tweaked a little bit to better explaing game mechanics and avoid confusion.
  
• Homing and autoaim mods have been tweaked, the projectiles behave a little bit more naturally.
  
• Ammo cost tweaked in all weapons - more ammo for swarm, much less ammo for burst rifle
  
• Critical chance tweaked in all weapons
  
• Effects for magma powerplant added
  
• Unsupported CPUs no longer trigger a crash - we now display a civilized info box.
  
• Same with older versions of VCredist - we suggest an upgrade instead of crashing.

• We have migrated to a new XAudio library. You won't notice a difference, but it solves a lot of issues, like crashes after disconnecting a bluetooth headset during gameplay.

• All resources have been updated with new graphics. That includes in-game models, icons, as well as minimap colors.
  
• During the Ion Storm event the map interference is now displayed as static. It no longer goes bzzzzzzzzzz.
  
• Added new fonts to support languages that do not use Latin alphabet.

• Tower lights no longer misbehave. They were very naughty.
  
• Weapon statistics rounding fixed
  
• Due to an elusive bug that causes the Mech to fall through the floor, all objects below the ground level are killed off. This is not the final fix, but it should allow you to continue playing if you fall through the ground.
  
• Superior minigun added to research
  
• Fixed wrong stat type in fire per burst and per shot mods
  
• Double light deleted from sniper rifle bullet - should no longer cause the particle buffer to overflow.
  
• A lot of smaller bugfixes for the issues hunted down by our brave Alpha testers :*

Hello!

It’s been almost a month since we let our intrepid Alpha testers play around with weapon mods. Thanks to them, we discovered a lot of bugs, a plethora of balance issues and some unexpected interactions that we wouldn’t have possibly been able to fix so quickly otherwise. This is, naturally, not the end, as balancing The Riftbreaker will most likely continue until the release day, but we are on the right track. If you would like to join the Alpha tests, visit our Discord!



Today, however, we would like to talk about a different use for all the mods that you will gather during your missions on Galatea 37. Instead of letting unused mods rot in your inventory, you can install them in your defensive towers. That’s right - all of them. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a basic Sentinel Tower or a highly advanced and costly Railgun Tower, you can install mods in every one of them. This gives you an opportunity to mitigate the drawbacks of certain tower types or make their strengths even more pronounced.


You can easily guess which one of the two Sentinel Towers has been upgraded. Nothing beats dual miniguns, though!

Let’s take the Flamethrower Tower as an example. By default, it is an amazing weapon against large groups of small attackers who come right up to your walls, but it can’t do anything about ranged attackers and does very little damage to large foes. By choosing the right mods, you can make up for these disadvantages - adding range and damage over time will solve these issues for you. On the other hand, if you do not need your flamethrowers to be ‘catch-all’ weapons, you can simply increase their basic damage. No Canoptrix will ever be able to handle that!


Who said that flamethrowers can't handle bigger enemies?

The number of mods you can install in each of your towers depends on the level of your structure. At level 1, you have only a single slot to modify the properties of the tower. With each level upgrade, you will gain an additional slot, up to a total of 3. This additionally incentivizes you to upgrade your towers instead of building new ones by giving you an option to utilize the mods you scavenged to the fullest.


We may have died making this GIF, but we died for science! One-shot triple railgun boss kill? GG EZ.

Not all mods are going to work with all tower varieties. We are going to make sure that you can only install modifications that will actually have an effect on your tower. For example, increasing the rate of fire of a Flamethrower Tower will not have any effect, because of the continuous nature of its attack. We will hide such mods from your view so that you can make use of them elsewhere.

As we mentioned before, this is still an early implementation of the feature. There are plenty of bugs and balance problems that we are going to solve in the coming months. If you would like to help us with them, join our amazing community at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You are also welcome to join our streams. They take place every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 PM CEST at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios. See you there!

Hello everyone!

June was quite a hot month for us. We participated in various game showcases that took place in the absence of E3. We released a large update for The Riftbreaker Alpha, introducing the revamped inventory screen, as well as the first version of the weapon modding system. Last, but not least, we took part in the Steam Games Festival: Summer Edition and gave you access to the first public demo of The Riftbreaker. (It will come back to Steam in August, with translations to many languages, btw!)

All of those events required us to abandon our usual development update schedule for a while. However, starting today, we are back with our regular updates on the new features we’re working on behind the scenes. During rare breaks between fixing bugs and adding bugs, we managed to create a blueprint for a completely new type of weapon that you requested quite a lot. Here’s your first look at the Grenade Launcher!


You can play fetch with aliens using the Grenade Launcher!

The Grenade Launcher is a versatile, area-of-effect weapon that allows Mr. Riggs to fire projectiles over terrain obstacles and gain a massive tactical advantage over the enemies. With a little practice, you will be able to launch grenades over the most difficult terrain and hit groups of unsuspecting enemies. With no immediate way to fight back, they will be forced to find a way to get to you, giving you plenty of time to prepare more nasty surprises for them.


A well-placed grenade will easily snipe off a group of Arachnoids.

Similar to other weapons in The Riftbreaker, you can modify the parameters of the Grenade Launcher using various mods. Such a weapon simply begs for adding fire or acid damage modifiers and we are going to support it. We’re also going to allow you to change the rate of fire, the number of grenades fired per burst, the splash damage radius… there will be plenty of possibilities to customize the weapon according to your liking and your needs.


You can also provide 'artillery' support while defending your base, without the need of leaving the confines of your walls!

As of right now, we plan to introduce two major types of Grenade Launchers. The first one will fire one (or more if you’re lucky) projectile that deals major damage and has a significant blast radius. The second one will fire a barrage of smaller grenades. They will be a lot weaker from their bigger counterpart but will allow you to eradicate smaller creatures in a large area.



Naturally, the current version of the weapon is an early prototype. Its behavior, properties and usability will be improved once we have a bit more time to play around with it. We also expect quite a lot of feedback to come in thanks to our Alpha Testers once they get their hands on it, so nothing is final and you should definitely expect changes. If you would like to get the chance to take part in the Alpha test, join our community at www.discord.gg/exorstudios - we add more people periodically :) You can also join our streams every Tuesday and Thursday at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios.

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RGB lighting has become a mainstay of gaming accessories in the past couple of years. Apart from giving our peripherals and PC components a sleek, modern look, it can also serve an informative purpose. Different colors can give us a quick update on the state of our machine or the running software. It gives the developers the ability to convey information at just a glance, increasing accessibility and ease of use - some of the most important aspects of good software.

There are various companies that produce RGB-enabled gear for gaming enthusiasts all over the world. Most of those companies, such as Razer, Asus or Logitech, use their own APIs to control these features. They might offer slightly different approaches to handling the communication between hardware and software, so extensive, hands-on testing is key. We decided to implement RGB highlights in The Riftbreaker and X-Morph: Defense and would like to share our experience with you.


The main menu ambient highlight for our previous game, X-Morph: Defense.

We have already had some experience with the dynamic RGB highlights while working on X-Morph: Defense. We were one of the first companies to add the mouse and keyboard support for the Xbox One. Working with the Razer Turret set gave us an option to dip our toes into the world of RGB illumination. In X-Morph, we used the keyboard highlights to show the players which keys could be pressed in order to perform a game action. The row of function keys represented the health of the player’s ship and core. The keys that were not relevant to the gameplay received a blue, ambient highlight. While not overly spectacular or flashy, we thought it would serve the game best.


The action keys receive their own highlights in distinct colors, while the rest of the keyboard informs the player about the status of the ship and the core.

Once we take the controls away from the player, we can go a little more crazy with the RGB effects.

The desire to keep the highlights functional limits our options, but we did go a little crazy at times when we took the controls away from the player. During the cutscenes, we gave our camera shake system a degree of control over the RGB highlights. This way, we managed to synchronize the camera shake with the behavior of the LEDs. The whole keyboard could flash white, yellow, and red according to what was currently going on in the game. It was a great feature for increasing the immersion and expanding the experience of playing the game beyond the screen.

Our next project, The Riftbreaker, follows that exact philosophy. The Riftbreaker is a mix of various genres - it is a base-building game with elements of exploration, survival and hack and slash. The player takes the role of the titular Riftbreaker, an elite scientist/commando, whose task is to prepare a distant alien planet for human colonization. The game runs on our proprietary game engine, the Schmetterling 2.0. It means that we handle the integration with peripherals by ourselves. In order to get the most out of RGB illumination, we thoroughly analyzed the API of our keyboard, looking for ways of implementation that would work well together with our design goals for the game. The fact that the API allows us to either control the illumination of individual LEDs or virtualized keys gives us everything we need in order to design a system that will be both functional and stylish.

Bearing that in mind, when designing the RGB highlights for The Riftbreaker we decided to divide the scheme into two parts. The first part is the full, solid-color ambient illumination of the device. This way we can communicate the application state to the user, as well as emphasize special events in the game. By choosing a single color for a situation and applying it to all the LEDs on the keyboard we achieve a solid foundation that is compatible with all RGB devices.


Exploration mode highlights for The Riftbreaker. We stick mainly to the main colors of the key art - green, blue and orange, creating a consistent visual style.


The key art for The Riftbreaker.

With The Riftbreaker we are embracing this exact philosophy. Instead of solely bombarding the player with a barrage of colorful, flashing lights, we are going to use the RGB lighting in a much more sophisticated way. In The Riftbreaker we can operate in two modes - exploration and building. Each of those modes have their own set of highlights, indicating which keys are responsible for game actions. They are easily distinguishable by their ambient lighting. In the exploration mode most of the keyboard is orange, whereas in the building mode, the ambient light will turn blue.


Both the colors and the highlighted action keys change when going into the building mode.

We are very careful when choosing the color palette and their intensity. It is quite easy to predict the user experience when we use solid colors. The situation would be entirely different if we utilized sudden flashes and extreme hue changes. While these could be acceptable on the keyboard in some scenarios, not all players might enjoy their RGB-enabled TV or chair (yes, RGB chairs do exist!) flashing violently during the gameplay. That is why we need a lot of consideration when it comes to what we want to communicate and in what manner to do it. Once the first part of the design of the highlights is finished we move on to the second layer - custom actions for specific keys.


The F1-F4 and F9-F12 blocks inform the player about the health of the Mecha and the Headquarters, respectively.

All the other keys are color-coded so that you can easily tell which button you should press in order to do something in the game. It can be useful if you forget the full control scheme, or if you are just learning the ropes. Just a glance at the keyboard will immediately tell you ‘something will happen when you press this button’. While this does not get rid of the need to teach the players basic controls, it greatly reduces the risk of forgetting them. Color-coded keys can also improve the tutorial experience. Illuminated keys can help the player get accustomed to the controls and make the learning process faster and easier.

There are a couple of brief moments in The Riftbreaker where you do not directly control Mr. Riggs. We plan to use those to add some cool, full-keyboard effects to amplify the gaming experience. It will happen, for example, during the teleportation between Rifts or after the mech is destroyed. The on-screen effects and the RGB highlights will complement each other, making the game events much more tangible. These are just the ideas we have for now, and we expect to come up with much more over the course of The Riftbreaker’s development.


One of the effects we plan to add in the future - explosion highlights.

Another cool feature that we plan to implement along with the RGB highlights is the stream integration. Streaming allows the content creators and fans to interact in real-time and create a bond that is impossible to achieve in any other way. Even though the broadcaster and the viewer might be thousands of miles apart, the wonders of the internet allow us to feel like we are all next to each other. We want to amplify that feeling. Imagine how cool it would be if the ambient lighting of your RGB keyboard could provide you with the info about the streamer’s game. It would be a powerful tool to convey the in-game atmosphere and increase the viewer's immersion. Small things like these can help us make The Riftbreaker a much more interesting experience.


Teleporting takes the controls away, so we can play with the keyboard a little. Another feature we plan to add later on.

That’s all we have for you today. We hope you will enjoy these features and that they will extend the gaming experience beyond the screen of your device. If you’re interested in more insights into the development of The Riftbreaker, we highly encourage you to join our amazing Discord community, where we discuss the game with our fans. It’s also a place where you can leave feedback and suggestions that we read and respond to on a daily basis. www.discord.gg/exorstudios

Thank you for reading and see you next time!

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Hello!

Yesterday we released the first public Riftbreaker demo version as a part of the Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition. This demo version is a result of months of refactoring and polishing many elements of the game, thanks to all the feedback we have been getting from our Alpha testers and our Discord community. They tested the game with us and helped us find and fix numerous issues and bugs with the game. We would like to sincerely thank everyone involved - your support was invaluable.




As we were working on the demo we updated many features and fixed many issues with the main game. Today, we can finally release the long-awaited Update 3 to our closed Alpha testers. It’s a massive patch that includes a complete overhaul of the inventory system and adds randomized stats to weapons, as well as weapon modding possibilities! The full changelog can be found at the end of this message.

We have also released a patch for the public demo version. There is no changelog for that one (sorry, no time, we need to go and fix even more things). It contains a lot of fixes for crashes that the demo players have reported overnight. Yay automation!

To celebrate the launch of the demo and Update 3, we will be sending out a wave of Alpha invites to the most active members of our Discord and streaming community. If you don’t receive your key today do not worry - if you participate in our community you increase your chances by a lot.

• New weapon crafting system with randomized stat rolls:
  - All weapons now have four different rarity levels - standard, advanced, superior and extreme. Higher levels have additional randomized properties and extra modding slots.
  - Mods now drop from enemies. This feature deserves an article of its own but in short - you can modify and customize weapons to your liking and according to your current needs.
  - Weapons of all rarity levels are now researchable. They differ in costs, number of available mod slots and properties the player can roll into.
  
• Hardcore mode - Permadeath for the craziest riftbreakers out there.
  
• New ambient creature - Jurvine - aka Boingy-Bongo. They never attack you, are generally scared of outsiders and may become really useful in the future!
  
• New ambient creature - Quelver - the garbage removal service of Galatea 37.
  
• New natural events added to the pool:
  - Thunderstorm - Thick clouds reduce the amount of sunlight, but increased wind speed means more power from windy boyz.
  - Blue hail - Yo, I heard you like acid rain.
  - Fog - It's fog, what more can we say? :P
  - No Wind - self explanatory
  - Strong Wind - 200% power production from windy boyz!
  - Weak Wind - 50% of the usual wind strength.
  - Ion Storm - it makes a lot of your equipment non-functional, but increases all power production by a lot!
  
• All weather events now have a warning, start and end dialogue lines
  
• We have working drones now! Repair Facility, Flora Collector, Crystal Collector and Flora cultivator all utilize drones to carry out their tasks. Multiple things have been tweaked and improved since the previous version.
  
• Fusion power and plasma technology added to research tree
  
• Ionizer building added as a means of supercharged plasma production.
  
• All walls and gates are now upgradeable to level 2 and 3
  
• Teleporting to a Rift Portal now leaves a temporary, green portal behind. You can quickly come back to your base to build some new structures or defend the base from an attack, and then pick up exploration where you left it.
  
• Support for Custom Difficulty levels - you can tweak game parameters before a Survival run to create your dream version of a Survival run.
  
• New Prologue Mission as a replacement for the old demo that was shown during events like PAX and Gamescom
  
• New resources added to the game - cobalt, ferdonite, rhodonite, titanium and palladium. Currently used for crafting.
  
• GUI: Added double click support - for ease of equipping items and mods
  
• Added "New Objective" as an interactive stream event - you can now trigger side missions (destroy the nest, kill the boss) as a stream event.

• The Inventory screen has been reworked - It now features a 3D model of Mr. Riggs and reflects his current equipment and health state. Item lists and equipping have been reworked to work well together with mods. Animations have been added.
  
• Changed lighting parameters during rain
  
• Solar panels now turn off during a tornado
  
• Wind power adjustments
  
• Lower mech speed on basic floor - it was really difficult to navigate around the base with the speed boost granted by the floor. If you still have the need for speed you can craft some upgrades yourself.
  
• We changed the collisions shaped for buildings to spheres - it is now possible to move between all buildings in the base, no matter how tightly packed they are.
  
• Research and building names have been shortened to match the UI width
  
• Sandbox Control Panel - players are now informed in the Sandbox Mode description that they can control the game using the Sandbox Control Panel under the F11 key
  
• The rift portal icon on the minimap has been changed from an unidentified swirl to a Riftbreaker triangle.
  
• New unit system - the backend for all units has been simplified and optimized
  
• New types of wind with biome affectors
  
• Improved damage numbers display - added colors, damage type icons, critical hits. Damage numbers can also add up to each other in order to reduce clutter on the screen
  
• Watch out for acid bulbs - the yellow explodey things - they are really dangerous now.
  
• Repairs are now cheaper.
  
• Camera shake has been reduced for some small building explosions.
  
• All the buildings that use drones to carry out their operations now need AI cores to work.
  
• Proximity Mines no longer require explosive emmo to be crafted
  
• Tornado got buffed - it now destroys all vegetation on its path!
  
• The structure of audio announcements has been cleaned up - they should no longer get in the way of regular dialogues.
  
• Irydonium resource removed from the game
  
• Tower and mech ammo have been separated, naming convention changed.
  
• Global effects can now be mixed - it's possible to have a couple of weather events at the same time. It won't occur naturally, but the F11 menu awaits your commands.
  
• The most important parameters for defensive towers are now displayed on the HUD.
  
• Storage buildings now conduct electricity. They do not require any power to operate, but will no longer break your power grid.
  
• Added blur to the menu background.
  
• Energy lines are now supported by their very own system, so that Starbugs can play around with them all day long.
  
• All weapons with a charged attack now have the description of its effects in the menu.
  
• The effects of wind are now visible - particles fly around, foliage starts swaying more heavily, sounds play in the background.
  
• Gates now dissolve the enemy corpses - no more bouncing Canoptrix!
  
• The light from the Base Lamp building does not cast shadows anymore - performance optimalization.
  
• Soft radius changed for some small units - it allows them to attack in more tightly packed groups.
  
• Changed max logic updates per frame to 1 by default (the game slows down, instead of stuttering)
  
• Skins for arachnoids changed (again) - we want every basic version of the enemy to be red, so that they are easily visible when you first meet them.
  
• Disabled console in the demo mode. No cheating for you.
  
• Check if SSE 4.1 instruction set is supported. If your CPU does not support this instruction set, the game will fail to initialize, but cite this as the reason.
  
• Version info is now at the center of the screen for all menus to avoid overlapping with other GUI elements.
  
• The event manager should not roll the same event twice in a row in a single-player, non-streamed game.

• New and improved particle effects for weapons, world events, environment... Lots of them.
  
• Resources, damage types and weapons have new icons.
  
• Animated main menu!
  
• Added pbr/vegetation_deform shader - alien life forms will now deform in strange and mysterious ways...

• New SFX for many weapons - includes fire, enemy hit and world hit effects.
  
• All weapons with a charged attack now use a unified charging sound - makes it easier to pinpoint the exact moment when the charging is finished and you can take the shot.
  
• All voiceover samples have been normalized to -17 LUFS, that should give us a nice, even dialogue flow.

• Optimized performance - we should probably add even more monsters, just don't tell our programmers ;)
  
• Optimized save game time (about 600%) and game perforamnce while the game is saving
  
• Loading times have been massively optimized - in some cases loading is now 300% faster than it used to be in Alpha 2!
  
• Fixed dash attack! <3 The elusive, Riggsbreaking bug has finally been squashed thanks to your help!
  
• Missing resource icon does not show up on the minimap anymore while building a structure.
  
• Fixed an issue when entities would load into incorrect positions from a save file.
  
• Drones no longer get stuck in the flying state.
  
• All building cubes now disappear after the building process has been completed.
  
• Fixed units not animating if spawned on the screen (from spawner eggs, for example).
  
• Multiple fixes for navigation issues. Creatures still get stuck sometimes, but the issues have been reduced by a lot.
  
• Fixed boss getting stuck on objects it should destroy. Shooting pattern restored to normal.
  
• Profiler: fix random crash caused by the removal of subsystem name memory
  
• Fixed build menu problem with clicking on first or last item move selection instead of selecting
  
• Fixed controls rebinding problems.
  
• Increased size of ResourceValue from 32 bits to 64 bits - this fixes the issue with some resource counters bugging out when the values are too high.
  
• Fixed soft shadow jitter.
  
• Deleted water projection grid from shadow rendering.
  
• Fixed vegetation emissive blinking .
  
• Fixed mech aiming mining glitch between fighter/build mode switching.
  
• Fixed weather time of day fadein/out blend - thanks to that, all the weather events now transition in and out instead of going 0/1.
  
• Fixed multiple prop dissolving - you could start dissolving the same prop multiple times by building several small buildings in its vicinity.
  
• Volume magma/mud/sludge/water doesn't cast shadows - performance boost.
  
• InventorySystem: fix for not pickable loot after save load
  
• Collisions in decals deleted in two scenes - no more invisible boxes blocking our movement!
  
• Fixed shadow culling for soft shadows (less draw calls = more performance)
  
• Added auto scaled flamer particle range - the flamer effect now reacts properly to changes in range
  
• Cleanup any effects after vegetation destruction - especially any leftover lights.
  
• Multiple smaller bug and crash fixes that we wouldn't have been able to catch so quickly without your help.

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Hi!

We are incredibly excited to finally let you try out The Riftbreaker hands-on!



The Riftbreaker is a base-building, survival game with Action-RPG elements. You are an elite scientist/commando inside an advanced Mecha-Suit capable of dimensional rift travel. Hack & slash countless enemies. Build up your base, collect samples and research new inventions to survive.




The demo version of The Riftbreaker is a guided, single-player experience, meant to show and explain all the main features of the game. Step into the role of Ashley Nowak during her last mission before venturing into the unknown world of Galatea 37. Using your Mecha-Suit you will have to establish your base, secure your position and brave the wilderness of this alien world.




You can also take the scenic route and take a tour around Galatea 37. The handcrafted map built especially for the purposes of this demo hides many secrets and allows you to get a little taste of what you can expect in the full game. We left plenty of tech options unlocked for you to try out, too!




We also encourage you to join our Discord community to share your thoughts, feedback and bug reports (hopefully there won't be many!). The most active members of the community get access to The Riftbreaker Alpha version which includes the random generated Survival mode in which you fend off hordes of enemy creatures.

Hello!

You are all invited to an AMA session on our Discord server!





We are going to answer all the questions, no matter how silly, that come to your mind on a special, dedicated AMA channel. It’s your chance to find out more about the EXOR team, indie dev life, The Riftbreaker, and its release date*!




For the entire day, our developers will pay special attention to the AMA channel and try to answer all the questions you ask. The channel will stay open after that, but you’re only guaranteed answers on that day. Oh, and as a bonus, the authors of our favorite questions will receive The Riftbreaker Alpha Invites!

Head over to our Discord server and let’s get this party started! This is also the last call to try out the demo version of The Riftbreaker! After today, it’s going away!

*not yet. Gotcha!

Useful links:

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Hi everyone!

We are super excited to be a part of the Steam Summer Festival. It’s a great opportunity for all of us to discover awesome games and get a little closer to each other as a community.

To celebrate this event, we prepared a demo version of The Riftbreaker for you to try. It will show you a lot of the features that you can expect from the final version of the game - giant robots, lots of weapons, swarms of angry aliens, building massive bases and, of course, thousands of explosions!



We would like to invite you all to a live stream from The Riftbreaker development build. We are going to play the Survival Mode, a long, randomized mission that will show you a lot of the features that are not available to the public just yet. You will also be able to influence what happens during the stream by voting on interactive options in the chat.

The stream will be featured both on The Riftbreaker Steam Store Page and our Twitch channel - www.twitch.tv/exorstudios. To take part in the interactive events, you must use the Twitch chat.

Join our Discord - most active users get access to the Closed Alpha build!



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www.twitch.tv/exorstudios

www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Hello everyone!

As you know, the global pandemic has taken a big toll on everyone. We were able to keep working on The Riftbreaker thanks to an early decision to switch our workflow to home office. It slowed us down a little bit, though, as communication over the internet is not as simple as going over to your colleague next room and talking to them directly. It means that some things get delayed, especially when there is a lot of urgent things that need fixing. One of such moments is now.



We won’t be publishing an article today, but we will tell you that there is a big one coming either later this week or early next week. It’s about the process of procedural map generation in The Riftbreaker. It’s an interesting topic, because we haven’t had that option built into the Schmetterling Engine and we had to come up with a lot of solutions ourselves. It’s a lengthy read, but it will give you an insight into the inner workings of the game.



The reason for the delay is our intense workload that has been caused by a couple of things. First of all, we promised an Alpha update in June and we intend to keep that promise. We are implementing and testing a lot of changes that require our full attention. This way we can deliver a stable build to all our alpha testers.

Secondly, we have been preparing lots of materials for various online activities that will happen instead of all the canceled gaming events around the world. It’s a chance for us to make up for the lost opportunities to show the game off to a broader audience. We have already told you that we are going to take part in The Escapist Indie Showcase - and there are more to come!

The last reason has to remain a secret for now, but it’s going to be something exciting and it will be revealed really soon. Stay tuned!



In other words - we’re working very hard and the article got stuck in the pipeline, but it will get to you in the next couple of days! If you want some fresh Riftbreaker content in the meantime, join our stream tomorrow on Twitch - the last one from Void’s bedroom - we’re back in the office on Monday!



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Hi there!

In the last piece of news we shared with you we described the newest addition to the range of biomes to be featured in The Riftbreaker. Just like every other region in the game, this place will change the rules of the game a little bit, forcing you to try out new strategies and find solutions to problems that you never had to face before.


Well, we've certainly visited more welcoming places on this planet...

Producing a sufficient amount of energy to power up your base is going to be one of these challenges. Naturally, you could bet on the basic solar and wind power plants, but their decreased efficiency means that a significant amount of resources would have to be invested in such an endeavor. Solutions like the Geothermal Power Plant cost more up-front but yield much better results. However, it is also possible to utilize the potential of magma itself. World - meet the Magma Power Plant.



This building will be a key piece of any outpost set up in the Magma Biome. It uses specialized containers to keep the magma in constant motion and, in consequence, to prevent it from solidifying. Extremely high temperature propels thousands of specialized micro-turbines within to generate electricity. Even though the individual turbine’s energy output is quite small, thanks to advanced circuitry, the entire power plant can power up a large portion of a Riftbreaker’s base.


With limited output from renewable energy sources the Magma Power Plant will save you a lot of building resources and also a huge amount of space!

In order to make use of this technology, Ashley will have to find a way of preventing the magma from burning all her precious equipment. Some portions of the Magma Power Plant are designed to handle the extreme heat, but not all of them. In addition, to provide the Power Plant with a steady flow of magma it will be necessary to lay down pipelines and pumps that need protection as well. Make sure you’ve done your research on heat-resistant materials before you venture here.


The Magma Power Plant will not work without a steady supply of magma that you can deliver by pipes.

The Magma Power Plant is a significant investment, time, and resource-wise and it can be used only in this specific environment, but the end result will solve a lot of base-building problems. It’s only the first of the biome-specific buildings that we present to you. They are not going to be absolutely necessary to survive, as we want to preserve the open-ended gameplay structure, but you will certainly find using them beneficial.


Getting enough power is not the only problem that you will have to face here!

As always, if you have any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions visit our Discord. You can chat us up and ask all the questions about the game that come to your head. Join the streams as well - the more, the merrier!



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