Rift Riff News

Could tower defence be the ultimate "it's Friday and I am here in body only" genre? I haven't really thought about it before, but Rift Riff's effusively laidback crowd control has me pondering those optimal moments in any tower defender when the incoming horde hits the flamer-MG triangle just right, and you can settle back comfortably into the role of clockwatcher.

Rift Riff encourages this behaviour by being nice to look at. Created by a trio of developers including Hidden Folks designer Adriaan de Jongh, it's a world of spacey, sun-carved mountains, forests and monoliths. The towers resemble the sacred architecture of Monument Valley, and the colour scheme and general ambience remind me of Cocoon. There's a demo, if you fancy it.

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In Rift Riff, your Basecamp is not just an object you have to defend. It can actually do things: It shoots, it generates resources, and it now has a shield!

Your Basecamp has a certain amount of health, which will regenerate in between waves. Its shield works just the same, and will protect the Basecamp as long as it's in tact. When it breaks, it explodes, which will deal damage to all monsters surrounding it. After that, the Basecamp revives its health to 50% and is ready for battle again!

One of the key differences between Rift Riff and other tower defense games is that Juice, the build and upgrade resource in Rift Riff, is generated during waves and not simply granted to you after you complete a wave. Story-wise, the juice-generating towers are actually the very reason the enemies are attacking you... but I won't be going into the game's lore here. Because juice is generated during waves, you'll find yourself going into the wave with one plan but restrategize into another: more and more monsters enter the battlefield, more juice flows in, and you have more and more build options.



How much juice is generated each wave depends on how many juice-generating towers you have. Those kinds of towers can only be built on these different-looking tower bases that have a bit of energy flowing out of them. We're currently calling that class of towers 'Defensive towers' but that name may change before the game comes out.



Your Basecamp generates juice, as well as the towers with the fitting name 'Juicers'. There's a few more towers that generate juice, but we're still designing and improving those. One of those is an armored well that doubles as a bunker with a lot of health, but doesn't generate as much juice as its alternatives as a result.



One feature in Rift Riff that feels really good is that destroying towers fully refunds the costs of both building and upgrading that tower. This means that after barely surviving a wave, you can refund a bunch of towers and restrategize your defense based on the incoming enemies.



That should explain the main build resource in Rift Riff! If you have any questions, drop 'm in the comments.

Hey! Thanks for playing the demo! We're collecting feedback, fixing bugs, and improving the demo continuously. Here's everything we've updated since the initial demo release:

[h2]New[/h2]

• Shops in the overworld show a swirly thingy when there're something you can buy there.
  
• Added a wave counter to in-game interface.
  
• Added a settings button to the pause menu.
  

[h2]Improved[/h2]

• Improved tower targeting. It's the same algorithm (the enemy closest to its target) but more reliable.
  
• Made both scenarios in Pondonia a tiny bit easier to beat.
  
• Improved edge colliders of Pondonia to reduce the chances of getting stuck with the player character.
  
• Made enemies less likely to get stuck behind towers.
  
• Differentiated tower base types (basecamp, defensive, and offensive) more from each other.
  
• Slower projectile graphics better match their range.
  
• Scenario description now also highlights when a scenario is still locked.
  
• Minor improvements to English translations. (Other languages will have to wait for now, sorry!)
  
• Various minor interface improvements.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed flashing cloud reflections in the ponds of Pondonia.
  
• Fixed the in-game interface disappearing on with multiple monitors setups on Windows.
  
• Removed unused tower bases in the Beach level.
  
• Fixed loading getting stuck in the overworld when trying to escape during the loading screen.
  
• Fixed option not being shown as selected when running into a build inspector with an input direction.
  
• Fixed various small bugs relating to pausing the game.
  

Please let us know on the forums here if you stumble upon anything we should improve or fix.

Happy Rifting,

Sim & Adriaan

We launched our demo! It contains 3 scenarios in 2 worlds, a few towers to play around with, and a lot of pesky monsters to destroy. Can you defeat all challenges and unlock all upgrades?

We would very much like your feedback on all aspects of the demo! Just leave us a comment here :)