The Riftbreaker News

We have just released an update for The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta. This update includes a new Survival Mode mission in the Crystal Caverns biome, as well as some other fixes and tweaks. The full changelog is available below:

[h2]The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta Update, April 4th 2025 Changelog:[/h2]
[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• New Survival Mode map: Crystal Caverns. Venture into the maze of limestone caverns beneath the Galatean Tropical Zone. Dig your way through rocks and fight for survival in the darkness of this inhospitable place.
  
• We have introduced some functional updates to the lobby screen. You can now open your server lobby before the start of the game. A lot of small issues with the new screen have also been fixed. Thank you for all the feedback!
  
• We've added the 'Rich Presence" status tags for The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Playtest. Your Steam friends will now see a status that tells them what you're playing in the friends list.
  
• Players can no longer block each other's projectiles with their own mech. This should make fighting hordes of aliens in a tight group much easier.
  
• We have changed the nickname and healthbar display for players on the screen to be more legible.
  
• Added per-player statistics filtering. With stats separated between the players, you will be able to see who's doing all the heavy lifting and who's just coming along for the ride!
  
• Unique loot drops will only appear after the Armory is built to prevent issues with players getting hold of too powerful weapons too quickly.
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed an issue that could cause objectives information display to be doubled on the screen.
  
• Fixed the size of some minimap icons to improve legibility.
  
• Fixed some issues with animation times.
  
• Included the raytracing stability fix, lowering the risk of crashes by a significant margin.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause buttons to get stuck, for example walking in one direction despite releasing the button.
  
• Included several dozen small fixes for GUI.
  
• Introduced many optimizations for performance, prediction algorithms, and the networking code.
  

[h3]Known issues:[/h3]

• Crawlogs might not get up after killing them for the first time.
  
• Crawlog corpses behave in strange ways sometimes.
  
• The destructible limestone rocks do not always display correctly, but they are fully functional.
  
• If all Communication Hubs are upgrading at the same time, research will stop until the upgrades are complete.
  

EXOR Studios

We send hundreds of invitations to our Co-Op Multiplayer Playtest for The Riftbreaker every week. Our playtester numbers are growing steadily, and we’re delighted to see many of you sharing your thoughts about the game with us. There is no doubt that we are close to the finish line. Everyone who signed up for the closed beta will get access before we switch to open beta. Before that happens, however, it’s good to look at the past couple of months of development and talk about the significant changes and updates we introduced. We’ll also discuss what’s currently in development and what improvements you can expect in upcoming builds.

Thanks to the weapons and loot rework, old toys became new favorites - laser is a mainstay in some biomes now!

A couple of months ago, we implemented a complete overhaul of the weapon and loot systems. Not all the changes we made hit the mark in the beginning, but we made huge improvements thanks to your extensive feedback after playtesting the game. After the rework, many previously obscure weapons have become not only viable - they got a new lease on life by becoming an excellent choice for certain enemies and biomes. This led to much more varied and experimental gameplay, which we love to see. Getting better tech from loot drops also gave players a much-needed boost in the face of relentless alien hordes with Omega creatures at the helm. We are pretty happy with the results, but this is by no means the system's final iteration- we will continue tweaking all possible values to make sure the game is challenging, fun, and rewarding.

Being able to disassemble weapons, mods, and upgrades all in one go was one of the most requested features. This will save you a lot of time, clicking, and micromanagement.

Tinkering with entire game systems is not the only thing we have been working on. If you have dropped by our streams lately (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 PM CEST at https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios), you might have caught a glimpse of our newest Quality of Life feature - the mass disassembly system. It is accessed through the inventory screen and allows you to select several items you want to get rid of all in one go. You can choose the items for salvaging manually or use one of the buttons that will automatically select all the items of the corresponding quality level. After picking the items to be dismantled, click and hold the ‘disassemble’ button to confirm your choice. This system lets you dismantle weapons, mods, and mech upgrade modules, making inventory management simple and convenient.

This is probably not the final version of the lobby screen, but we're getting there.

A significant increase in player numbers also came with requests for quality of life upgrades in other game areas, such as the lobby screen and lobby invite system. This was long coming, as our placeholder lobby screen was constructed using the GUI elements we already had available. It was always meant to be made from the ground up, and the influx of new playtesters increased the priority of this task. We created an entirely new screen, where you can set up the initial options for the multiplayer session, load a saved game from before, invite your buddies from the Steam friends list to join, and chat before the game starts. We are still working on some functionality upgrades.

Thanks to lag compensation gameplay feels smoother than ever!

We have also made significant improvements in the game's network code by implementing lag compensation in the form of prediction algorithms. We simulate as much gameplay as possible on the client PC, and verify the state of the game world with the server a couple of times a second. This way, you get immediate feedback on your actions, without the feeling of delay between your input and a gameplay effect. Almost all dynamic gameplay elements are included in the prediction algorithms - creature behavior, projectiles, player navigation, and much more. As a result of all this work, the game is comfortably playable even at high ping values, such as 200 milliseconds. That doesn’t mean we can rest easy - we will continue working on the connection's stability and the reduced data transfer. Optimizing data transfer and improving the game’s responsiveness is by far the most time-consuming thing that we are working on.

Emotes require testing, too! Here are our high-quality, very mature and fancy animations.

Apart from playtesting the Survival Mode in the Closed Beta build, we have conducted several Campaign Mode playthroughs internally. Some of those tests were regular gameplay sessions, exploring all possibilities available to our players. However, we have also conducted thorough destructive testing, trying to break the game in every imaginable way. We tried to connect to the game randomly, drop out of it in the middle of important sequences, reconnect during loading, and exploit all the possible avenues that could break the game. We found a lot of bugs that way and managed to fix the vast majority already. We still have hundreds of bugs in our backlog, but we’re getting through them one issue at a time. Re-working the entire campaign mode for multiplayer is a huge undertaking, and we know we can’t find all of the bugs by ourselves. As soon as we’ve fixed all of the critical issues that we know of, we’ll move to an open beta on the experimental branch.

Our dream is to see players working together on their bases, sharing responsibilities as they go.

As a side effect of our Campaign Mode testing, we have ensured that all biomes are playable, at least when it comes to the base biome mechanics. Thanks to this, we will be able to release new maps for the Survival Mode in the Closed Beta. In the upcoming weeks, we plan to release a series of updates that will add the missing Survival missions to the mission pool, introduce new biomes, and bring in new enemies and challenges. This will significantly increase the replayability of the Closed Beta for our playtesters and allow us to find and identify all the issues that might have eluded us during our own testing. You can expect us to send out more keys alongside these content updates!

Not to spoil anything, but we are really close to some huge news. If you don’t want to miss anything, join our newsletter to receive notifications about the latest news for The Riftbreaker and everything EXOR Studios. You can find the link below:

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Hang tight - good things are coming your way! We're incredibly grateful for your support and can't wait to share more exciting updates with you.

EXOR Studios

Every week, we publish an article designed to keep you informed about the development of The Riftbreaker. Some of these news pieces tell you about upcoming features, like the one about the Randomized Mission Generator a couple of weeks ago. Other times, we tell you development stories and explain our approach to certain challenges we encounter along the way. Our Co-Op progress reports are a great example of this kind of news. No matter the news topic, we want to keep you in the loop and well-informed about everything related to our studio and the game. Direct communication between the developer and the player community is one of the keys to a great game.

Each article we publish takes a lot of effort, planning, and preparation, but it is very well worth it. Your feedback, suggestions, and criticism allow us to improve on the features of The Riftbreaker before the official update releases. The articles we release receive a good amount of attention, and a huge number of you read them every week, for which we are beyond grateful. However, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for improvements. This is why we decided to start our own EXOR Studios newsletter.

Yes, an email newsletter might seem a little dated in the era of short-form videos, but the data doesn’t lie. Email is still one of the most efficient ways of notifying people about news, and we would like to try. As always in EXOR Studios fashion, there is something in it for you. By signing up for our newsletter, you will receive a code that will allow you to unlock a unique in-game skin for Mr. Riggs. That is not the only newsletter exclusive we are planning - we want you to get real value from interacting with our news.

This is our take on "steampunk, but futuristic".

We also know your time is limited, and we don’t want to overstay our welcome. We promise not to spam you with anything irrelevant. Here’s what you can expect from us after signing up:

• Our weekly developer blog. These articles show you what we're currently working on and explain our daily challenges and design choices.
  
• Major Update Changelogs. We release one or two major updates a year. They are free for all our players and significantly expand the value you get from our games. We will not update you about every minor update - only the most significant ones.
  
• Beta testing opportunities. Get involved with the development process and help us shape the future of our games. You will test the most significant updates and other exciting projects before release.
  
• Special offers and promotions. We will let you know about discounts in case of historically lowest prices.
  
• Exclusive offers for our newsletter members. We will give you access to cosmetic in-game gifts, like skins and decorations, available only to the members of our mailing list.
  

[h2]If you’re into receiving some news from us, sign up for our newsletter here.[/h2]

Please note that emails might reach you with some delay. We are in the process of warming up our IP address and the number of emails we can send per hour is throttled.

EXOR Studios

The player community is the backbone of The Riftbreaker - and always has been. Since the early days, you provided valuable feedback about the early builds, highlighting our successes and shortcomings. This allows us to improve the game and address the hiccups you encounter. However, giving us valuable insight is not the only thing you have provided us over the years. Another aspect you have excelled at is modding the game. You’ve been making them since the days of Alpha and haven’t stopped since. Every once in a while, we try to showcase the most interesting mods available. Some are featured more than once - and this is one such case. Let’s take a look at the latest update for WirawanMYT’s Expanded Arsenal!

You can expect a lot of explosions and destruction with this mod.

This update has taken quite a while to cook. WirawanMYT told us that besides having to sort out his IRL matters, he wanted to solve several issues in his mod backlog. He has been steadily fixing the Lua bugs in the mod since the earlier versions, but that has taken a toll on the overall pace of development. The release of World Expansion 3 has not made things any easier, introducing changes to existing Lua scripts and adding completely new ones, which Wirawan couldn’t have accounted for. Still, he braved on, learning and improving as he went. Here are some of the things Wirawan has changed in the latest update.

The reworked gravity blasters are great against hordes of smaller enemies.

Since the mod’s name is Expanded Arsenal, it’s natural that we will talk about weapons first. Wirawan’s mod introduced unique elemental heavy blasters with several firing modes - a regular one, a charged shot, and an alternative charged shot that triggered if you held the charge button longer. The latest update revises some of the second firing modes of these blasters to make them more useful—for example, the heavy magma blaster used to lay mines as an alternative charged shot. To improve its usability, it releases a magma wave instead, providing a temporary area denial against smaller mobs. Other heavy blasters changed similarly - we’ll let you discover precisely what they do.

The bouncing blade tower looks like a lot of fun, and a lot of carnage.

Magma artillery doesn't seem like it would do great in the MOIST conditions of the Fungal swamp, but it does!

This might look like white phosphorus, but it is not. It's cryo artillery!

The defensive tower suite has also received some updates. The volley tower has been replaced by an all-new type of tower that shoots bouncing blades. It is an excellent anti-swarm measure but not very effective against singular targets. The elemental artillery tower suite has also been reworked. Instead of being simple copies of the artillery tower with different damage types, various artillery towers now have different shells and impact effects. The acid artillery explodes into a gas grenade, affecting multiple enemies over a long period. The cryo artillery shoots a shell that splits into five smaller shells, dealing cryo damage in a wider area. The radioactive artillery uses a fragmentation shell and bursts into piercing radiation in a horizontal axis, dealing almost instantaneous damage. This expanded and reworked lineup of towers offers excellent strategic and tactical depth. Not to mention all the cool effects Wirawan made from scratch - you must see them for yourselves.

How about a flaming power rod, which turns into a tornado after it expires?

Wirawan’s mod had long-range missile towers long before the release of World Expansion III and the arrival of HCMs and Power Rods. The modded towers were more powerful, with their ranges spanning the entire playable area. With the addition of the “official” long-range towers (and the accompanying Lua improvements on our side), it made sense to restrict the range of the long-range towers. To make up for that sacrifice, Wirawan gives each missile tower a unique effect meant to deal with a specific type of threat. Now, you have plenty of towers to choose from, and they differ in the amount of damage and type, projectile travel time, or damage pattern. There are plenty of things to experiment with.

Each shot from towers like these will drain your liquid storage reserves, so make sure to have a lot stocked up in case of a lengthy defense.

Naturally, with great power comes great upkeep cost. To fully utilize the power of all the new defensive towers at your disposal, you must supply them with various fuel types, including several different liquids. Pipe crossings will become your best friends as you try to supply each tower type with its corresponding liquid and solve the pipe spaghetti. Moreover, Wirawan has brought back a mechanic from The Riftbreaker’s past. Towers have a certain upkeep cost when they are in idle mode. That cost rises dramatically when towers are firing at enemy creatures. This requires you to have a strategic reserve of liquids saved up for attacks, further increasing the strategic complexity of your base economy. Be sure to manage your resources wisely and plan ahead to ensure you always have enough reserves for when the enemy attacks.

Here, you can see enemies spawning from the magma eruptions. You have to stay vigilant, as the enemy might literally spawn behind your back!

Wirawan introduced innovations not only in the weapons department but also in the weapons department and wave spawn mechanics. By playing around with spawn rules, Wirawan managed to give some enemies the ability to spawn in unusual circumstances. For example, acid rain can bring in waves of creatures from the Acidic Plains biome as an “extra” attack outside the regularly scheduled ones. Earthquakes and other geological events might cause the Volcanic Zone enemies to appear. Falling meteors can take some bio-hybrids from the Metallic Valley along for the ride. You get the point - you are not safe and should invest in some new defenses and be on high alert. Hostile Galatean creatures may appear in unexpected places! And remember, Wirawan’s Omega creatures are much more potent than the ones you can expect from us!

Wirawan's Omega creatures can shoot down the incoming artillery projectiles.

It’s also worth mentioning that in the Expanded Arsenal mod, neither the players nor the creatures are defenseless against artillery attacks. Wirawan has spent considerable time implementing the “active defenses” mechanics, which allow all sides of the conflict to shoot down enemy projectiles mid-air. The player can do that using their defensive towers or mech upgrades - projectiles on the collision course will be automatically intercepted and shot down. Some aliens, especially the Omega strains, also possess this ability. However, such defenses aren’t impenetrable. Simply launch more shells and overpower the enemy’s defenses with the sheer volume of projectiles. You can also use weapons that do not use projectiles at all - like the flamethrower or laser.

Your towers gain the ability to shoot down artillery projectiles!

Unfortunately, so did other enemy creatures and structures.

The list of changes and improvements could continue, but trying the mod out on your own is best. Go to Steam Workshop or mod.io and download Expanded Arsenal. We recommend playing it in a new Campaign, though - there is so much new tech to learn that a Survival run simply will not do it justice. If you have any questions, the mod's author is very active both on Steam and on our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios, and we’re sure that he will answer all the questions you might have!

Get the mod here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2893151510

See you next time!
EXOR Studios

Disclaimer: Make sure to back up the files you save before you play any mods. Modded saves are incompatible with the vanilla version of the game.

We have just released a patch featuring our latest fix for the stability issues you have been encountering on Nvidia RTX GPUs.

A couple of weeks ago, we released a patch aiming to reduce the frequency of the crashes, but stated that it was not a permanent solution. We have conducted a thorough investigation and came up with a build that we believe will remedy this situation.

We found out that the problem lay with our acceleration structure. The raytracing implementation requires us to prepare Bottom Level Acceleration Structures (BLAS) and Top Level Acceleration Structure (TLAS). We have two types of BLAS - static and dynamic. The static BLAS contains information about static props and terrain. It is generated once, during loading, and stored for the entire gameplay duration. Dynamic BLAS contains information about all the other objects - buildings, destructible props, creatures, and the player. These structures need to be rebuilt every frame to maintain accuracy. TLAS uses the information stored in BLASes to provide us with accurate data during the raycasting pass.

If you want to know more about raytracing in our game, here's a detailed article about it:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/2890711124511610519

We noticed that the issue occurred when a "fast rebuild" of our acceleration structures was triggered. It is an optimization technique that reuses some parts of the old acceleration structure to build a new one. When using fast rebuild on the new driver version, it was possible for the data stored in the GPU memory to get corrupted and result in a critical failure. This only became apparent on new driver versions. Disabling this optimization reduces the risk of failure by quite some margin, but we are not 100% certain whether it is the final fix. We will continue investigating this issue and hope that the patch we are releasing today will solve this problem for as amny people as possible.

We are very sorry it took so long for us to find and fix this error. It was well hidden - it relied on a specific combination of GPU, drivers, and other variables. Only one PC in our studio was capable of reproducing the crash on a regular basis, which made the process extremely tedious and difficult.

Please let us know if you encounter any GPU-related issues with the latest build.
EXOR Studios