Riftwalker News

TLDR; The game balance has been changed to make it easier since the last update, while keeping you on your toes.

Listening to community feedback, patch 0.4.4.5 has changed the timing in spawning enemies - namely the first wave. The update gives players up to five minutes of time in order to strategically plan how they want to set up their towers.

This update has also buffed the steam rifle turret damage. If you're still struggling, PLEASE hop onto the community discussion and give me your feedback so I can make the needed adjustments.

I'll be listening to feedback later today/tomorrow and deploying another update if needed if the game feels smooth - then I will continue to work on the skill tree and lore system in order to start spawning lore fragments throughout the game. Lore fragments will be your primary source of lore and story revolving around the Riftwalker universe, although they will not be your only source of information. I want the community to be able to look close enough in order to find missing pieces of the story - or juicy pieces of information that could help solidify a theory.

Let me know what you think, and as always - drop your suggestions and feedback in the community discussion.

• 0.4.4.5 is a hotfix for 0.4.4
  
• Resource generation, tower stats, and enemy health have been adjusted in order to accommodate for the increased enemy spawn rates.
  
• Portal stability regeneration has been set to 1hp/s up to a total of 15 points, this will make letting a few enemies pass less punishing.
  
• Spawn button will now remain until clicked, or until a window of five minutes has elapsed.
  
• New waves spawn as soon as the last creature of the previous wave is killed.
  

Update 0.4.3 brings the first iteration of the skill tree, as well as a host of community feature requests, bug fixes, and a significant balance overhaul. As development has been progressing, I've been moving a lot of the game's work over to the GPU - what this means is for a significantly smoother gameplay experience. However, it also means, that I've been able to significantly increase the enemy count without any noticeable performance dips.



So, as such - 0.4.3 aims to keep you on your toes while feeling rewarding for mowing down hordes and swarms of enemies. In order to do this, I've made some significant balance changes:

• Wave max enemy count is now 1000 at late/endgame.
  
• All towers have been rebalanced across all levels to help them compete against these new enemies, but also to prevent a specific tower from being a 'meta' tower.
  
• Portal stability regeneration has been set to 1Hp/s to help new players by reducing the punishment of letting a few enemies slip through.
  
• Enemy HP has been adjusted, so has enemy scaling rates.
  
• Enemy power ceiling has been raised 1000x (I can't believe some of you hit the previous one.)
  
• Tower attack rates have been adjusted to account for a targeting fix.
  

I will continue to monitor the forums and reply to your feedback - as usual, PLEASE join the discussions if you haven't already. The community is growing and has some really awesome people in it. Drop your feedback on the experience with the new balancing changes, and let me know what you're happy and unhappy with.



With the introduction of the enemy spawn rate changes, I have also included two new enemies for you to discover. One is a fleshy husk of a person, corrupted by whatever dark energy fills this world - fleshy enemies take the most damage from physical damage, but are more resilient against hybrid damage than their brittle skeletal counterparts.

There's also a new creature from the darkness, a watcher - a creature which scouts the world for any life. These adept creatures are fast and are protected by a magic shell - burst these creatures down.

The early form of the skill tree is also out now - with some basic perks to unlock. Skill tree will be reset once the lore system and collections room comes out.

Enemy line, as several of you have requested - I have decided to try and include the enemy line to see how well it works out. This may be moved over to being a perk, or removed - depending on the feedback I receive from you. So let me know!

The update also introduces the soulstone tower, a mid-high tier light tower that is designed to replace the braziers at later waves.



Definitely! The following issues have been fixed, please let me know if I missed anything:

• Fixed tower targeting - towers will now target enemies regardless of elevation, this also means that towers not fire at their intended cooldown and have been rebalanced to account for this.
  
• Fixed several platform locations - the platforms you previously couldn't click on, should now intractableactable.
  
• Sound improvements for portal stability changes.
  
• Fixed the pause menu being accessible from the main menu.
  
• Typo and other small fixes...

So this patch didn't break too much, I don't think, haha. The skill tree is not working 100% as intended, and there is an issue that may cause unlimited skill points.

If you cannot unlock anything - please let me know and I'll try assist you. It may be to do with your previous save files. This process will be automated in a future update.


YOUR feedback remains of incredible importance to me, please let me know what you think of the experience and where to improve. Tell me what you enjoy and what you don't - and if you don't have any feedback, still, come and say hi in the discussions!

I'm pleased to announce that the pricing has been approved for Australia, this means that if you're living in Australia, you'll now be able to buy and play Riftwalker! Special thanks to the community member, Mazzy, for pointing out the issue.

If you have any other pricing issues, please get in contact with me and I'll be happy to sort it out. Pricing for all regions should now be available.



Update 0.4.3 is coming out soon, I'm currently working on the skill tree and lore system. These will work hand-in-hand, as you collect lore fragments to discover the story around Riftwalker, you'll also unlock research points to upgrade your towers, unlock new ones - and eventually unlock minor customization once that's available.

The update will also introduce a host of bug fixes reported by the community, hopefully, without adding too many new bugs. There will also be several balancing tweaks to help out with the early game and make late-game more challenging (Some of you are sitting on over wave 200, WTF?)

Shortly after update 0.4.3 I'll be releasing an update with the collections room, more info will be released closer to the time!



It's been brought to my attention that Riftwalker is at the time of writing this, the 7th top game in the Early Access new and trending list - THANK YOU so much for all the support, it's been absolutely overwhelming. This is just the beginning of Riftwalker.

If you haven't joined the community discussion yet, I really want you to, come and say hi!

Good day to you fantastic people, one of the community members brought an issue to my attention. Currently, Riftwalker does not have a price available for Australia, meaning if you're in Australia, you're currently unable to buy the game.

I have submitted a price to Steam, pending review - this process usually takes a day or two, and since it's weekend the price may only be available on Monday or Tuesday. I'll continue to monitor the state of the request and see if I can escalate it.

Have a fantastic day, please come and say hi in the forums! You're all welcome.

The Riftwalker Early Acess is now available on the Steam Store!

I'd like to thank everyone who's helped and has been providing feedback - this community means the world to me, and I'd like to welcome anyone new to the community.

Riftwalker will continue to develop as the community and I work to mold it into the ultimate tower defense.

Riftwalker is a rogue-like tower defense in a world consumed by darkness, featuring rich backstory and endless, detailed procedural levels. You play the role of a riftwalker in a scouting party sent to investigate a nearby missing star, but find more than you were expecting - a civilization, or rather, what's left of it.

In its current state, there is a solid TD framework - there will be more content added as I continue to develop the game, so be sure to check out the playthrough's to see if the game is for you.

For all those that want to support the game, I appreciate all of you - be sure to come and say Hi in the forums! Share your ideas and experience with the rest of the community, and with me!