EXOR Studios

Indie game development company. Creators of D.I.P.R.I.P., Zombie Driver, X-Morph: Defense. Our next game: The Riftbreaker - Wishlist Now

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

THE RIFTBREAKER 2.0 IS LIVE! CO-OP IS OUT!

The wait is finally over! After months of development, testing, and countless iterations, the Update 2.0 has landed — and it’s the biggest leap in The Riftbreaker history.

Check out the overview here:
https://t.co/MU3BvQRcJ3

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Lay a row of mines along your walls in The Riftbreaker, and the Canoptrix will do most of the work for you. The flamethrower can handle the rest!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

On today's Riftbreaker stream we are getting our hands dirty and digging through the Crystal Caverns biome in Survival mode. Join us at https://t.co/frDPHDoJRJ

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Some of the numbers behind The Riftbreaker's economy were picked on instinct, back when the game didn't have an economy model at all.

In our first prototype, we wanted you to see a steady stream of resources while mining, and five pieces per second felt about right. From there, a Carbonium Factory cost 50 Carbonium - ten seconds of 'manual labor' for Mr. Riggs. The Headquarters cost a little more than the mech starts with, so you'd learn to dig before you could build. (It also gives you something to do while the dialogue plays!)

We expected all of it to change. Instead, those first numbers stayed put, and the rest of the economy was built on top of them!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Killtech's REDI mod for The Riftbreaker turns upgrading your extractors into a real decision. His Ore Mill boosts your factories, but level three factories waste some of the deposit they're mining. So, what's it going to be: more income now, or a deposit that lasts longer?

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

In The Riftbreaker campaign, every research item costs resources as well as time. You pay once, when you add it to the queue.

We added the cost once the campaign started showering you with loot, biocaches and Omega rewards. Resources piled up fast, and research had turned into a waiting game - you could queue up everything in a tier and just wait. Now you have to decide what you need first, and your economy matters right until the end.

Survival mode keeps its old rules, with no research costs. Oh, and if you can't find something in the tree, there's a search box in the bottom-right corner!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

The first time people could play The Riftbreaker was at PAX East, and we gave everyone a small, pre-built base to start with. We figured a busy show floor was no place to build from scratch, so we let you skip straight to the action.

Instead, players spent their time upgrading our base, and some of them took it apart to build their own! (We made all those buildings look nice, too.)

So the next version of the Prologue started with nothing at all. Your first objective became digging up some Carbonium and building your own Headquarters. Thanks for the hint! (The footage above is from those early days, too - the game has changed quite a bit since then.)

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

When a nuclear power plant goes down in The Riftbreaker, it doesn't go quietly. Give it some space from the rest of your base!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

We have not played The Riftbreaker in co-op for a long time, so today we are giving it a try! We're live at https://t.co/frDPHDoJRJ

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

You might have noticed a little skull hovering over Mr. Riggs after he goes down in The Riftbreaker. That's our Death Skull system, and the first skull is free!

Go down again while a skull is still active, and it takes your friends longer to pick you up. If nobody gets to you in time, respawning at the HQ costs you some of your Carbonium and Ironium - 5% for each skull at default settings. Every skull wears off after 90 seconds, so the system only kicks in when you keep going down in quick succession.

We added it after co-op players found out that charging in, going down and getting picked up for the revive boost was a winning strategy. If it's not your cup of tea, you can tune every part of it, or turn the penalty off completely, in Custom Difficulty!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Tracers first to soften them up, then the Piercer shot to finish the job. Those swamp creatures in The Riftbreaker never stood a chance!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

The Riftbreaker stream is back, and we are doing something fun today - Frognik managed to pack an entire arcade of open-source games into a Riftbreaker level, so let's check it out live at https://t.co/frDPHDoJRJ

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

You might expect The Riftbreaker campaign to get harder at the same pace as Survival mode. It's actually far more relaxed than that, and spread over a much longer time.

There's a catch, though: completing key story events raises the difficulty too. That means you get to decide when the next jump happens - so make sure your base is ready before you push the story forward!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

A rate-of-fire mod in The Riftbreaker can't do the same thing on every weapon.

One extra bullet per second on a machine gun that already fires 30 makes no difference. One extra rocket per second on a launcher that fires one doubles your damage. That's why our designers set the range of every mod by hand.

We can't test every possible combination, and since The Riftbreaker isn't a competitive game, we're happy to let some really powerful combos exist. It's your game - play it how you want!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

In X-Morph: Defense, not even Paris was safe. We might have gotten a little carried away with the Eiffel Tower!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Online co-op wasn't in The Riftbreaker at launch, and people sometimes assume we just didn't think of it. The truth is simpler: we didn't have the means to build it from the start.

When we finally could, adding co-op meant reworking the entire engine. There was no guarantee it would work, and no guarantee it would pay off. Luckily, both came good (we never got it running on consoles, though - that's how it goes sometimes).

Would we build co-op in from day one next time? Yes! For now, we're just really happy that you like playing it together.

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Seeing 'resisted' pop up when you hit a creature in The Riftbreaker might make you think your weapon is useless against it. Not quite!

A resisted hit still deals 10% of its damage. So at range, resistance works more like a tax - bring a powerful enough weapon and you can push through it. Yes, even a Gnerot with an SMG!

Melee is a different story, though. Resisted melee attacks simply bounce off, so there's no brute-forcing your way through up close.

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

In X-Morph: Defense, some bosses don't need weapons to flatten a city block. Watch your step!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

We 'tested' destruction in The Riftbreaker again. Don't worry, we can rebuild just as fast!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Mr. Riggs has never been one for subtlety. Here's what a few volleys of missiles do to anything waiting in the jungle in The Riftbreaker!

[EXOR Studios @EXORStudios]

Finished a biome in The Riftbreaker campaign, and then noticed something unfamiliar attacking your HQ? That's not a bug!

Once you complete a biome, its creatures can travel to your HQ and attack it. So the further you get, the more your home defenses have to handle - not just the locals, but everything you've already beaten.

Plan your HQ defenses with that in mind!