In Riftbreaker, you play the role of Captain Ashley S. Nowak, an elite scientist inside an advanced Mecha-suit. You enter a portal to the planet Galatea 37 with the goal of establishing a base that will allow travel back to Earth and further colonization. Your Mecha-suit, Mr. Riggs, has various equipment that will allow construction of different structures, gathering samples and fighting off the native creatures of the planet. Riftbreaker successfully combines different elements of RTS base building, Action RPG combat and survival. With built-in interactive mechanics for Twitch and Mixer streamers, The Riftbreaker offers a new perspective for the future of gaming. But can it succeed in this ambitious goal? We should wait and see.
The Riftbreaker will be available on Steam sometime in 2020.
Story
The Riftbreaker’s campaign wasn’t ready for this phase of Early Access, but the world and character designs show a lot of promise for an intriguing story. We know how the story starts. You travel through a rift to establish a new base at the planet Galatea 37. This is also the premise for the survival mode that is currently available. But for the progress of the story and how the campaign continues, we’ll have to wait.
Gameplay
The Riftbreaker offers a new gameplay style. You only control one unit, your Mecha-suit, Mr. Riggs. But you can build your base, search your environment, kill enemies, gather samples and resources, and conduct research. Enemies attack your base in separate waves every few minutes, so at first you might only explore and improve your base between these bases and only deal with enemies as they come. But as the game goes on and you try harder difficulties, you realize killing enemies and improving your base goes hand in hand. You need to be ready to build emergency defenses when the waves of enemies are attacking your walls and you should hunt down enemy bases when you have a moment of safety at your base. Riftbreaker combines different styles of gameplay and they never feel separated. The game manages to find a good balance between these different styles and create a new experience.
The survival mode is made for one hour of gameplay, at least for the Early Access. This time limit goes against the base building aspect of the game. It would be more challenging and fun if there was no time limit. But for it to be playable for longer than one hour, it needs more research topics and upgrades for the base and your suit’s equipment. Hopefully, we will see this in the final version of the game.
One of the selling points of The Riftbreaker is its interactive streaming capabilities. You can stream the survival mode on Twitch or Mixer, and your audience can influence positive or negative events in the world as you play. This is a new feature that we should see in more games with popularity of streaming services, but Riftbreaker might be the first game that has a special focus on this feature. However, its success is unpredictable. It remains to be seen if the game can attract streamers and their audiences after its release.
Graphics and Audio
The Riftbreaker’s world looks amazing. With inspiration from games like Starcraft and Outer Worlds, it shows a colorful and wild planet with hordes of monsters waiting in the corner. With the level of detail in world design, the fact that the game runs smoothly, even in Early Access, is promising. Hopefully, it will only get better as the development continues.
The music and sound effects of the game are average, and I have a feeling if it stays this way, we might end up with a game that feels better when you play it while listening to your own music. For the long sessions of gameplay that the game provides, it needs more captivating and engaging soundtracks.