The Riftbreaker News

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.

[h2]What kind of random encounters would you like to see added to the game?[/h2]

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:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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