The Riftbreaker News

Hello!

The Christmas season is drawing near. It is one of the very few moments in a year when we stop development and have a break from working on our games. It has been a wonderful year for us at EXOR Studios, so let’s recap what we managed to accomplish during the past 12 months.

• We released two titles on the Nintendo Switch - X-Morph: Defense and Zombie Driver: Immortal Edition. Working on a completely new platform was an interesting experience with its own set of challenges we had to overcome and we believe it has made us into better developers overall.
  
• We announced The Riftbreaker!
• We visited multiple trade shows over the world. In chronological order: GDC 19 in San Francisco, PAX East in Boston, E3 in Los Angeles, Gamescom 19 in Cologne, PAX West in Seattle and finally PGA 19 in Poznań.
  
• We won prizes for the Best Indie Game of PGA 2019 and the Best Indie Booth of PGA 2019.
  
• We celebrated 10 years of Zombie Driver, giving away over 850.000 copies of the game on Steam.
  
• We started distributing The Riftbreaker preview build to people outside the studio.
• We met a lot of amazing people, both IRL and online, including our lovely Discord community!
  

None of those things would have been possible without your help, so thank you for being there for us and supporting us every day. We are going to take a break now. Development updates and streams will continue in early January, but you can reach us almost all the time through Discord and social media. We will keep on checking those, just not as often as usual. Remember to sign up for the closed test through our Discord server - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

In the meantime, we wish you Merry Christmas and an amazing holiday season!

EXOR Studios

Hi everyone!

We have one final announcement to make this year and it’s a big one.

The Riftbreaker Closed Alpha/Beta Test Applications are now open! You can find the registration form on our Discord server:

www.discord.gg/exorstudios

As we promised, we are going to give you a chance to get your hands on the game early and help us with your feedback and ideas. You are going to get access to the stable build of the game through Steam. It will contain all the elements you’ve seen on our streams so far - the introductory mission and the survival mode. Your task? Play the game, have fun, break everything! We want you to help us find bugs and give feedback on the gameplay itself. The build you get is going to be periodically updated as we add new elements into the game.

Occasionally, we might send you emails or contact you on Discord with a couple of questions to answer about the game. Although providing answers to those questions won’t be obligatory, if you do not wish to be messaged by us in any form, we would advise you not to sign up.

There are a couple of things you need to know before we hand the game off to you. In order to participate in testing, you must be a member of our Discord server. Additionally, the most active Discord users will have priority when it comes to key distribution. The keys are going to be sent out in waves, but there are no numbers available on that yet. We will inform you when & how many keys went out to the public. We can’t guarantee that everyone will be chosen, but we will do our best to include as many of you as we can.

If you are interested in joining us on this adventure then head on over to our Discord to sign up:
www.discord.gg/exorstudios

See you soon!
EXOR Studios

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios www.twitter.com/exorstudios www.mixer.com/exor_studios www.twitch.tv/exorstudios www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Hi there!

Last time we explained what the interactive voting system in The Riftbreaker does. If you missed the article, you can check it out here. It has the potential to make streamers' life a bit easier, but it can also give them a headache. Today we’re going to tell you what kinds of events you can encounter and what are the plans that we have for the future of this feature.

Your viewers can help you build a beautiful base like this!

The simplest form of stream events is the add/take away events. The way they work is quite straightforward - when chosen, they will either add or take away some amount of resources from the player’s pool (carbonium, steel or ammunition), according to what the viewers voted for. These events are particularly useful (or harmful) in the early game when resources are limited.

Large attack waves can be turned into HUGE attack waves!

Another simple community event comes in the form of enemy wave manipulation. The viewers can make the next attack wave stronger or cancel it altogether. While sending a huge amount of creatures at the streamer’s base sounds sinister, it can actually help them progress through the game more quickly. The fallen creatures drop significant amounts of resources which can be used to expand the base and craft new items. There is a risk of being overwhelmed, of course, so it doesn’t come without a cost. After a tough battle, the viewers can always give the streamer a break by canceling the next attack.

Galatea 37's weather is unpredictable.

The next group of community events is connected to weather and natural disasters. These events pose a direct threat to the player and the base, making the gameplay a lot more challenging and more entertaining to watch. The pre-alpha version of The Riftbreaker features Acid Rain and Tornadoes. Both these phenomena are a threat to the base and the player, but they differ when it comes to damage distribution. While Acid Rain slowly deals damage to all the man-made structures on the map, the Tornado’s area of effect is much more centralized and will likely destroy all the buildings in its path.

Canoptrix swarm + acid rain = happy streamer

The last group of events requires additional audience participation after they are voted in. We call these ‘tap-tap events’. Once the event starts, a progress bar appears on the screen which can be filled by the audience using the Tap button in the MixPlay interface (these kinds of events are Mixer exclusive since they do not use the chat. Flooding Twitch Chat with multiple messages would result in automatic timeouts and bans). When the progress bar reaches 100%, the event goal takes place in-game. The preview build features two events of this kind - Help From Above and Ammunition Support. The first one sends a meteor strike at nearby enemies, while the second one grants additional ammo.

We plan to add more variety to these events. We are thinking about giving the viewers the ability to vote on the next thing to research, for example.

As you can see there is quite a bit of variety when it comes to interactive streaming events. Our Discord users have already suggested adding more weather effects and some new tap-tap events. We also have a collection of ideas we would like to try out. You can expect us to periodically add new variations into the mix. We are also planning to increase the frequency with which the community can interact with the streamer. In the current version of the game, votes are tied to the beginning of a new attack wave, which is not frequent enough, especially at lower difficulty levels. Separating the two will result in increased audience participation and even more fun for both the streamers and the viewers. All the parameters of this feature will be configurable. We understand that not everyone likes seeing their base crumble to dust too often. You will get to choose which events you want to be available and which ones are not for you.

Do you have any other suggestions for the future of this feature? Would you like us to change anything? Or would you like to try these events out yourselves? Join us on Discord and let us know.

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

For quite some time now you’ve had the chance to take part in the regular development streams from The Riftbreaker. Thanks to the integration with Twitch and Mixer you can directly influence what happens in the game. Interactive streaming events happen every couple of minutes. The viewers are given a list of options to choose from and some time to cast their votes. Once the voting time is up, the option with the highest number of votes wins. It’s a simple system, but it adds a lot of additional depth to the streaming session.

Acid rain, everyone's favourite.

When using Mixer the viewers use the MixPlay interface in order to vote. If an interactive event is active, buttons appear directly below the stream window. Voting for an option is as simple as clicking the corresponding button, you don’t even have to be logged in. On Twitch it is slightly different - a chatbot informs the users that they can vote and lists the commands the users have to type into the chat. The bot looks for the relevant commands and relays the info to the game itself.

You can connect to the streaming platform of your choice without leaving the game. We will also add more configuration options in the future.

No matter which platform you use, the feature is quite straightforward and creates interesting dynamics between the streamer and their audience. You can either ask for help when you need it most or ask for even more pressure if you feel the game is going too easy on you. However, you do not have complete control over the voting outcome, so this additional unpredictability makes each session a lot different from the previous one.

Stronger attacks are REALLY strong sometimes.

The interactive streaming options will be available to everyone playing The Riftbreaker, but they are designed to only be an additional functionality. They are not the core of the gameplay and you don’t have to worry that you will miss out on a part of the game if you don’t stream. While they definitely increase the interactivity, we think it is important for the game to hold its own without the need to broadcast it to the whole world. Moreover, we are planning to incorporate the random effects into single-player sessions as well, just without the voting component.

You can see the interactive streaming events in action every Tuesday and Thursday on our development streams (today happens to be Tuesday, by the way, so join us at 3 PM CET on Mixer!). Next time we will go over the pool of available options and our plans for the future of this feature.

See you next time!

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

All resources are randomized. You could find sludge, mud or water in the same spot on different playthroughs!

Hi!

Last time we told you how our algorithm that creates a random map from the pieces we created beforehand. However, the map is not the only element that undergoes randomization at the start of a run. Another thing that is important to make you feel like you are exploring the unknown are the resources you’re able to find in the wild. Today we’re going to tell you what goes into that and what problems we have to overcome in order to make the mechanic fun and challenging at the same time.

Looking for resource deposits will often mean fighting numerous alien creatures.

When we create the map pieces (as a reminder, we call them tiles) we have the possibility of adding resource spawn points to them. They are areas where the resources of any kind may spawn. Mind you, we do not tell the game that it should spawn any given type of resource there, or even if it should spawn any deposit at all. It is just an indicator of the place where the algorithm can place carbonium, iron, sludge, mud or any other type of resource that the player can use.

You can always find something useful in the wild. Both creatures and inanimate objects drop loot when destroyed.

The resource system is free to distribute the minerals and liquids between the spawn points, but we had to introduce some rules. All resource types are given minimum and maximum values. The algorithm has to distribute them in such an amount that it meets the lower limit but does not exceed the upper one. The limits are in place because we do not want the player to be given a map without any carbonium, for example. There are also rules on how big a single deposit can be so that the machine doesn’t put the whole map’s worth of iron all in one deposit.

There are only a few basic resources you have to keep track of, but there's plenty more for you to explore later in the game.

That brings us to the point of limiting randomness with arbitrary rules. Random distribution is fun, but only up to a certain point. If the player is not able to locate a proper spot to set up a base within a reasonable amount of time, the fun turns into frustration. We do not want that, so the player is guaranteed to find necessary resources within a certain radius of their spawn point. There is no guarantee that the player will go in the right direction to find it, but the solution works most of the time. We will probably continue tweaking it until the release (and after), to minimize the risk of having no resources to start building the base.

Build an impenetrable base and show those creatures who's boss.

We hope that the randomized elements in The Riftbreaker will lead to a fresh experience every time you launch a new survival run. If you join our Discord, you might get the chance to test these features with us - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

See you on Discord and on the streams! (Tue & Thu, 3 PM CET)

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios