https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/

The Riftbreaker: Metal Terror is a very large expansion, introducing several new creature species, an entirely new resource type, dozens of research items, and weapons. Adding such an amount of new features and making sure they all interact with each other in an intended way is a complex and lengthy process. While testing the new campaign portion, we discovered several major issues. Among many others: saves would get corrupted, the game is not fully stable yet, and the game flow is not properly balanced, resulting in a bad experience on difficulties other than normal. Given the fact that we need to be absolutely sure that the Expansion is accessible from any point in the Main Campaign (as long as the conditions are met), and on any difficulty level, the amount of work required increases tenfold. While it seemed likely that we could fix most of those issues on time, we couldn’t guarantee that the game would be in the shape that it should be.


One of the new weapons that are joining the game with this update: Lightning Gun. Pictured in both Standard and Extreme versions. You figure out which is which.

We have put a lot of effort into making sure that The Riftbreaker is as enjoyable as possible. That requires a lot of testing and bug fixing, but the end result is well worth it. We do not want to rush and abandon this principle. We do not want to risk releasing an unfinished product purely on the feeling that ‘we might be able to make it’. That is not good enough. That is no way to treat the community, who have trusted and supported us since day one.


Lightning Gun's more stationary counterpart: Lightning Tower. Combine them with Energy Walls and you're good to go.

We are going to use this additional time to make sure that your adventure in the Metallic Valley is going to be as smooth as possible. The extra weeks are also going to allow us to fix some other, smaller issues that you’ve been reporting to us.

We are aware that it’s been quite a long time since the last major update for The Riftbreaker was released. We do not want to keep you waiting much longer, so on May 30th, the original release date that we have announced, we are going to publish the World Expansion Update to the experimental branch of the game. The update will contain most of the new features and will allow you to try out the Metallic Valley Survival map. More information, including a detailed changelog, will be made available on the 30th of May as well.

Please accept our most sincere apologies for the delay.

EXOR Studios

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/



The Riftbreaker: Metal Terror allows you to explore an entirely new area of Galatea 37 - the Metallic Valley. This previously unexplored biome holds many secrets. You will encounter creature species, unlike anything you’ve seen before. You will gather information about the strange ways that the local flora has adapted to the conditions of this biome. You will conduct research on anomalous objects that might open the door to unlocking powerful technological advancements. However, some of the things that you find there might send a shiver down your spine.



The World Expansion Update has two components; a huge free content update and a story driven paid DLC - The Riftbreaker: Metal Terror. Here is a short summary of what both of them include:

• An entirely new Biome to explore - the Metallic Valley.
  
• A new Survival Mode scenario, taking place in the new biome.
  
• Several new species of creatures, ranging from harmless herbivores to bloodthirsty predators, looking for territorial domination.
  
• New technologies: harness the power of Morphium, a mysterious resource that seems to break the laws of physics.
  
• New weapons: defend your base with new varieties of defensive towers. Take the fight to the aliens with Lightning Guns, Heavy Plasma Cannons, and even a Chainsaw.
  
• Introducing the winners of our Community Design Contests: the Orbital Strike Cannon and Bioscanner Turret!
  
• Rebalanced Survival Mode experience - unlock more technologies, explore different builds, and gain access to Alien Technology without even building a Lab!
  
• A lot of quality of life improvements: mass repair and upgrade tools, more intelligent floor building utility.
  
• …and many more! The full update details will be revealed in the Patch Notes, arriving on May 30th!

• Discover the strange history of the Metallic Valley in an entirely new branch of the Story Campaign, spanning over several hours of gameplay.
  
• Establish an Outpost in a brand-new area of the planet - if you dare.
  
• Scan, analyze, and catalog the unique fauna and flora of the new biome.
  
• Face several new enemy species, each posing a different kind of challenge.
  
• Research new additions to the technology tree, utilizing the curiosities you discover in the new biome: buildings, weapons, and equipment.
  
• Solve the mystery that remained hidden for millennia.
  
• The Story portion of this Expansion is integrated with the Main Campaign from the base edition of The Riftbreaker. The new branch and the contents of the expansion will unlock as you progress through the game. If you have previously completed The Riftbreaker Story Campaign, you can continue your adventure where you left off. The additional part of the Story will unlock immediately, giving you the option to explore the new part of the world.

We want to give everyone something new with this update. All players will gain access to the new content in Survival Mode and the Sandbox Mode. Everyone will also be able to utilize the new assets in the Riftbreaker Editor Suite to create custom maps and campaigns. Purchasing the Expansion will in turn allow you to play through the new portion of the Story Campaign and make use of the new technologies in the Campaign Mode.



The Riftbreaker: Metal Terror will release on Monday, May 30th, 2022 at $9.99. More news, including sneak peeks at some of the new features, coming in the next weeks!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!



A couple of weeks ago, while attending PAX East, we had the immense pleasure of meeting a lot of our fans and other developers. It was a wonderful experience - to be back at a convention after such a long time. We came back home having made a lot of new friends - some of whom we would like to tell you about today. We are talking about the developers from Kool2Play, creators of a top-down twin-stick shooter Uragun. We had a blast playing their game, and we think you will enjoy it as well. Let’s dive into the details!



Uragun puts you into the shoes (feet?) of a deadly, but friendly Mech. The Mech was inoperable for a very long time and booted back up only to find a world that is much different than the last image ingrained in its circuits. All humans seem to be long gone and your planet has been taken over by a corrupted and hostile AI. At this point it is clear what has to be done: find your missing pilot, figure out what happened and melt down everything that stands in your way.



While playing Uragun you will complete several handcrafted missions, each designed to pose a different challenge than the previous one. The dynamic combat system will encourage you to dispose of your enemies in a spectacular fashion. The enemies will attack you from various angles, requiring you to constantly move around and explore new strategies. This beautiful tour of destruction will take you in various places around the entire globe.



As you progress in the game, you will get the chance to try out a variety of weapons and upgrades. Equip two of them at a time and try to find the perfect combination to suit both your playstyle and the threats you are going to face. Miniguns, rocket launchers, plasma discs - you have an entire arsenal at your disposal. The Mech is also capable of carrying out specials called Heat attacks. These devastating skills will be the key to getting out in one piece out of the most sticky situations.



When we tried Uragun for the first time we thought “Wow, this looks like a mix of The Riftbreaker and X-Morph: Defense”! It turned out to be a lot of fun too. Uragun is an Early Access release, too - meaning that its contents are going to expand a lot and the game is only going to get better. We would like to encourage you to give this one a shot. For a limited time, we are offering two bundle deals: you can get Uragun and The Riftbreaker, or Uragun and X-Morph: Defense at a 20% discount. Check out the bundle here:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/26129/The_Riftbreaker_x_Uragun_Bundle/



We are also going to host a special stream, playing Uragun live on our Twitch channel. It’s going to take place on Friday, at 3 PM CEST, over at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

A couple of weeks ago we opened up a competition for new random encounter designs that you would like to see in The Riftbreaker. To say that you stepped up to the challenge would be an understatement - some of your designs could easily get their own storylines! After much deliberation and reading through all your ideas several times, our top five picks are here!

Please note that given the complex nature of your designs we might not be able to implement them exactly the way you designed them. We might have to change them quite a lot to fit our in-game systems, but we will do our best! Also, the screenshots do not represent the event in question - they're just here to reduce the 'wall of text' feeling.



CANDIDATE A - WILDFIRE - as suggested by Enderseye

One of Galatea’s many forests has caught fire and it’s spreading quickly! There is no point fighting it - you have no means of stopping this force of nature. Luckily for you - Mr. Riggs’ armor and all your structures are fire-resistant. Unluckily for everybody and everything else - the rest of Galatea 37 is not. The fire will consume everything in its path, making creatures flee in terror as they seek shelter - and you know what happens when creatures are afraid… On the bright side: nature rebuilds quickly and the affected area will come back to its former glory in no time.

Effects and rewards: Firestorm visuals - orange fog, clouds of ash covering the sky. Reduced output from renewable energy sources. Panicked creatures start attacking the base. Lots of loot left lying around after the destruction of the flora. Increased plant regrowth speed soon after the event is over.



CANDIDATE B - SPACE LOCUST - as suggested by: Pok1990

Your visit to Galatea 37 has coincided with the hatching season of a very peculiar species of insects. These small, locust-like creatures only live for a short amount of time. Their one goal is to find a good spot to lay eggs and make sure their species survives another cycle. Not all of them will make it to their destination, but they have numbers on their side: they are billions.

Effects and rewards: the massive swarm blocks out the sun completely as they fly across the sky. However, since some of the creatures die mid-flight, you are rewarded with a rain of animal biomass, boosting your biomass power plants like nothing else. Plus it’s super creepy.



CANDIDATE C - FLASH FREEZE - as suggested by: Thachicken

A sudden temperature drop surprises Ashley and Mr. Riggs at night. As a result, the structures inside your base have some difficulty operating. Target tracking by defensive towers is slowed down. Gates work slower than usual. Buildings require more power to keep operating, and your energy storage drains more quickly than usual. However, Mr. Riggs is unaffected, and the Galatean creatures don’t like the cold - they are slower and much weaker than usual.
Effects and rewards: Frost visuals - you can hear creaking and see little specks of ice reflect light everywhere. The ground is more brittle, allowing you to find underground treasures more easily.



CANDIDATE D - SWARM - as suggested by James Arlwind

This one is pretty straightforward: an enormous horde of small creatures is migrating through the area where your base is situated. They are smaller and weaker than most creatures you come across, but the sheer number makes this a huge threat to your mission. Prepare to fight.

Effects and rewards: Mr. Riggs gives the player a warning about the incoming horde. You only have a couple of minutes to prepare your defenses. After that, an incredibly large group of small creatures will commence the attack. There might be a lot of them, but they are smaller and weaker than usual, giving you a fighting chance. Plus, think about all the specimens, resources and other loot that you can get from them!



CANDIDATE E - IT’S RAINING EGG - as suggested by WirawanMYT

Galatea has seen an uptick when it comes to weather activity. Violent winds sweep across the surface, picking up small objects… Well, alien eggs count as small objects, too. ‘Eggs’ will rain from the sky in certain areas. If you let them survive long enough, creatures from other biomes will hatch - perhaps even in the middle of your base!

Effects and rewards: Highly increased wind power output. Violent winds and tornados. Eggs. Everywhere. You can call that an express biomass delivery.

Which one do you like the best? Cast your votes here: https://forms.gle/8jX5hZcoB5rgszxB6

Again, please bear in mind that these are just ideas - the final implementation of these random encounters might be a lot different from what we presented here.

There were plenty of other designs that we loved, but which we couldn’t possibly make a reality at the moment - but perhaps they may come to reality one day!

We will close the vote on the 11th of May, at 12 PM CEST.

Have a good weekend!
EXOR Studios

Before we began the work on our first world expansion we asked you what kind of new skills and weapons you would like to be added to The Riftbreaker arsenal. The winners of those two events - the Orbital Strike Cannon and the Bioscanner Turret (names subject to change) - will make their way into the game with the release of the Expansion update. Today we want to give you a chance to influence the shape of the world of Galatea 37 once more.



The winner of one of the previous fan voting competitions: Orbital Strike Cannon! Coming to you with the World Expansion update.

Before you answer that question, let us explain what we mean by ‘random encounters’. We use that simplified name for the entire group of events that pop up every now and again when you’re playing the game. They range from weather events, like rain, hailstorms, tornados, or fog, to actual cosmic cataclysms like meteor showers or ion storms. This group of events also contains other events, like large creatures or nests appearing somewhere on the map.


The Orbital Strike Cannon also gets an explosive variation, because why not?

These events take place in between the attack waves. Their aim is to slightly alter the way you play the game by changing the environmental conditions and nudging you to change your plans. While it is possible to ignore those events, most of them come with benefits and you only have a limited window to take advantage of them. For example, the rain stops your solar panels from producing electricity but boosts the wind turbines. The ion storm blocks your minimap but increases the power output of all power plants. The resource comet might hit your base, but it will bring in plenty of resources with it.


The Orbital Strikes are just an excuse for us to give you more tools for effective deforestation of Galatea 37.

Do not limit your creativity. Your random encounters can test the players’ skills for extra rewards, throw a wrench in their plans, or attempt to facilitate an unconventional approach to gameplay.

You can submit your ideas in the comment section of this article and the #rb-encounters channel of our Discord server (www.discord.gg/exorstudios). Use the following template:

Suggested name:
Effect:
Potential rewards:
Visuals:

Here’s an example to get you started:

Suggested name: Travelling magnetic anomaly
Effect: Magnetic singularity travels at a constant speed in a straight line through the map. As it goes through the map, it attracts the creatures it encounters - they start running after it. If the group reaches the player base, it will result a mini attack wave. The anomaly turns off all equipment in its radius. The player can only destroy it using energy-based weapons.
Potential rewards: The explosion results in a temporary boost to energy production. The singularity drops high-quality mods.
Visuals: A small bright object that refracts the light around itself.

We are waiting for your entries until Wednesday, the 27th of April 2022, 11 AM CEST. After that, we are going to shortlist our favorites and let you vote for the winner!

Can’t wait to hear your ideas!
EXOR Studios

Hello everyone!

We would like to share some different news with you today. Lumencraft, the latest game from our friends over at 2Dynamic Games and Star Drifters is releasing today! Lumencraft is a top-down action game with tower defense elements. After the surface of the Earth became uninhabitable, the remnants of humanity moved underground. As a brave scout, your job is to dig and drill deeper and deeper in search of Lumen - a powerful mineral that might just save your people from the brink of extinction. However, you’re not alone there…



Lumencraft allows you to freely explore the fully destructible environment below the Earth’s surface. That’s right - you can drill and shape the terrain around you any way you like. Naturally, the process will be quite slow at first, as your basic hand drill can only push through the dirt, stone, and other materials so quickly. You will have to get better tools to have a chance at survival. Luckily, there are plenty of buildings you can raise and lots of upgrades to get that will allow you to increase your efficiency.



As you dig deeper and deeper, you will find some natural inhabitants of these unknown depths. They are not thrilled with your presence and will only get angrier as you build up your underground industrial empire. To survive you will have to place barriers, gates, and automated defensive turrets that will help you defend your precious equipment and might just save your life. You can also develop better weapons and do the dirty work yourself. Oh, did we mention that you can get dynamite as well? Well, you can!



We are really excited about Lumencraft. It’s a lot of fun already and more features are going to make their way into the game throughout the year as it moves from Early Access to full release. We think you might enjoy it as well! Let’s check it out together live on stream - we’re on right now! head over to https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios and let’s explore it together before the official launch (it’s happening at 6 PM CEST).



If you enjoy what you see during the stream, head over to the store page and give the game a chance!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1713810/Lumencraft/

And if you like special deals, we have one for you as well - for a limited time, you can get BOTH The Riftbreaker and Lumencraft as a bundle, which you can find right below. Fight hordes of monsters above and below the ground!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/25666/The_Rifbreaker_x_Lumencraft_Bundle/

The Lumencraft devs are waiting for your feedback on their Discord, too! Join them over at https://discord.gg/p4pzffEfmA and help them create something truly special!

See you on the stream!
EXOR Studios

We have been a little quiet lately, so we decided to write up this situation report and let you know about the ongoing developments and our plans for the following weeks.

First of all, we are still waiting on a couple of features and fixes we want to include with the upcoming Quality of Life patch. Thanks to your brilliant comments and ideas, the mass repair/upgrade/deconstruction tools that we showed you before have received some additional functionality. We have added tooltips with resource information and changed the colors of the tools selection rectangles to reflect which tool is active at the moment. Apart from that, we have also added the option to enable or disable multiple buildings at once and build floors on a larger area than before. All those things, along with an improved .build max level’ system will arrive before the first World Expansion patch. As always, we will test these changes first on the Experimental branch first. We’ll let you know when it drops.


This is what selling multiple buildings will look like...


...and this is the repair tool. We changed the colors and added tooltips.

That brings us to our second topic - the expansion itself. As you know, it will allow you to visit an entirely new region of Galatea 37. Its unique fauna, flora, and natural resources will allow you to develop new and exciting technologies. However, by now you probably know that Galatea 37 doesn’t like giving up its treasures that easily. We won’t tell you what dangers you will face there - at least not yet. But we can let you have a little sneak peek at what the biome will look like, one cute friendly face included. Current ETA: end of May/beginning of June.


One word to describe this biome: sharp.

We also have some news for our fans in the USA. Although we originally did not plan on attending PAX East we have received an opportunity to join the Polish Games booth, thanks to the courtesy of the Indie Games Polska Foundation. That means we (at least two of us) are going to be in Boston, MA for the entire duration of PAX East, showing the game off and (hopefully) talking to a lot of our players! Hit us up if you’re planning to be there!


Gamescom 2019. Mr. Riggs won't be joining us this time, but you should still come and see us!

The last piece of news is about co-op. We don’t have anything to show just yet, but we want to reassure you that we’re working on it. We’re laying down a lot of technical groundwork to get the game running in network mode. That requires rewriting a lot of code to do the same thing, but this time with multiplayer in mind. That is why we don’t have anything to show you just yet. We’re planning a beta test, too, so join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios so as not to miss the news about it.

See you soon, this time with more content and more good news!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

Being close to our community has always been our focus while developing The Riftbreaker. We have run multiple Betas, surveys, competitions and read all the feedback you have been giving us since the announcement of the game back in 2019. We feel that we have developed a very special bond with you over these years. Our connection has made this game truly special. To celebrate our shared passion for The Riftbreaker we have prepared a special surprise for you.

To make you feel like you’re in the studio together with us, we made the decision to replace all voiceover lines recorded by the voice actors with the lines recorded by our community manager, voidreaver. Here’s a teaser of what that’s going to be like:



By doing so we hope to make you feel like you are a part of our team. Most of the time, game developers hide behind their studio name or appear only in the credits. We want to break that wall down. Our aim is to show you that The Riftbreaker is a game made by real people, not an abstract entity called EXOR; that it’s a game developed by you and us both.

We know it is a controversial decision. We have really enjoyed our time working with Francesca and Ryan, the actors voicing our main characters. We are very grateful for their time and effort, especially for working from home during the difficult period of 2020 and 2021. We believe it would be wrong to take work away from them, so they will still record new lines for Ashley and Mr. Riggs for future content expansions. However, instead of putting them in the main game release, we will just use them as guidelines for void to record his own takes.

Ever since we made this decision void has been really excited about this new opportunity and he is determined to do the best job he can. He even intends to record all the voice lines in the game in all of our supported languages. Void has already started a couple of intense language courses to convincingly portray our characters in languages other than Polish and English. The learning process might take some time and we will not be able to release all versions simultaneously. However, we expect to have all the voiceovers ready by the end of 2032.

This change is not optional. Void is a really sensitive person and it would hurt him a lot if any of you decided not to use his version of The Riftbreaker voiceover. We also kindly ask you to refrain from posting any critical comments regarding his acting skills. If you need to let us know about something, please do so privately. We will relay the news to void in a controlled environment to avoid any accidents.

Enjoy the update!
EXOR Studios

This minor update introduces an updated version of steam_api64.dll to prevent a startup crash for users running an outdated version of the Steam Client.

Today we would like to share a little bit of a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at some of our work. This article will tell you what it takes to release a patch for The Riftbreaker. We will give you a step-by-step explanation of all the processes, tests, and verification each of the new builds undergoes. We hope that it will provide you with some valuable insight into how we operate, what kinds of issues we pay special attention to and why patching the Riftbreaker does not happen on a daily basis. It’s a long journey from our hard drives to your gaming devices, so let’s dive into it!


You can't talk about patching without mentioning bugs, so this article is filled with gifs of some weird bugs that happened during development. Here's Mr. Riggs discovering his hidden flight ability, for example.

If you have been following our Discord server for some time, you might have noticed the daily developer changelogs that we publish there. They contain information about all our team's changes to the game over the past 24 hours. Currently, we have three major things we are working on: the World Expansion, the Co-Op mode, and maintenance of the live version of the game. With that many things happening at once, it is natural that we will not want all the changes to make their way to the public version of the game. When it is time to release a patch, we choose the changes we want to include and create an experimental version with those changes only.


Here a Gnerot just decided that they want to slowly dive head-first into lava.

The first step to releasing a new update for The Riftbreaker is always identifying what we want to include in the update. These can be new features, changes to existing systems, fixes, and optimizations. We spend a significant amount of time scouting the Steam Discussions, our feedback and tech support channels on Discord, and our social media to learn about any problems. Sometimes we ask for additional information or a copy of your save files. That helps us find what causes bugs and allows us to prevent them in the future. When our programmers fix those issues, the developer version of the game on our repository gets updated.


A classic 'one zero too many' while setting up effects.

It is now time for an extensive round of testing. We usually focus most on the areas that have seen the most changes. For example, if we have been messing with the liquids system, we will do our best to break it and identify potential issues. Apart from that, we also check if all the game elements are working correctly during a ‘sanity check.’ It is a round of testing covering all the game areas where we found issues before. We make sure that all options work the way they should, all game modes are playable, and we haven’t missed anything important.


We heard you like resources, so here's a resource vein inside a resource vein.

Another area of focus is the save system. To ensure that all the changes that we make will not break the compatibility of your saves, we run automated tests on the experimental version. We have 122 save samples made in the 1.0 version of The Riftbreaker - the very first one that was burned to console discs on the 8th of September 202,1 more than a month before the game was released to the public on October 14th, 2021. Moreover, we prepare a set of save samples from each major game version released later. That quickly adds up to hundreds of tests. Our script loads each saved game individually, then re-saves the same save in the new version of the game and tries to load the updated version of the save file. If there are no issues, the script moves on to the next sample. Rinse and repeat hundreds of times. This automated process takes about 5-6 hours to complete. In the meantime, we do our best to break the save system on our own. We create giant bases, name our save files in a weird way, delete campaigns while playing them, shut the game down while saving - you name it.

No amount of testing will ever beat giving the game to real users. Once we are reasonably confident that the update we are working on should not cause any issues, we post it to the experimental branch so that the community can prove us wrong. Since our players play the game on different machines than ours, and in various ways, they often find bugs that would have otherwise eluded us. We fix those bugs, update the experimental branch and check if there aren’t any new problems as a result of the fixes. After we stop receiving bug reports, we move on to the next step - creating a ‘stable’ version.


This GIF is NOT sped up. They just drank too much coffee.

The major difference between our stable and experimental builds is error logging. The experimental build saves quite a lot of data about potential errors. Our programmers use that additional information for debugging. Unfortunately, that costs a lot of performance. For the “stable” build, we create a separate version of the game’s executables that do not keep track of the debug data. Removing logs might seem like a relatively minor change, but it is more than enough to warrant one final round of testing. We run through our checklist again, and if everything seems okay, we publish the patch.


A classic flickering shadows bug.

When it comes to publishing updates on PC platforms, we can make them public anytime we want. We are in complete control of that process. The matter gets a bit more complicated when it comes to consoles (and PC Game Pass). All changes that we make to the game need to be revised by the console vendors’ internal certification teams. They check if the updated version of the game is still in compliance with all the legal and technical standards. This process takes a couple of extra days, which is why you often see a slight delay between a patch arriving on PC versus consoles.


These Zorants decided they were not interested in fighting anymore. They just left.

‘If you spend so much time testing our builds, why are there still bugs in the game?’ you might ask. Well, The Riftbreaker is a very expansive and open-ended game. You can play any way you like and create strategies we have not even thought about while developing the game. With thousands of players trying out new things every day, some of them will inevitably run into errors we had no idea about. This is why the data from our crash reporter is so valuable to us - it allows us to figure out where we made a mistake and fix it in the next patch.

We hope you learned something interesting about our update process, and it has become a bit clearer why game patches don’t usually happen overnight. Let us know about any other aspects of game development you would like to read about. Perhaps one of these articles will inspire you to try a career in game dev?

See you next time!
EXOR Studios