If you want a TL;DR of this article, this commentary trailer will give you all the essentials in a nutshell.

Hello Riftbreakers!

We are very pleased to announce that the new World Expansion IV Update is now live!

We have just released a huge, free content update for The Riftbreaker! It features the highly anticipated World Expansion IV, including the brand-new Cryo Fields biome, as well as an entirely new way to play the game - the Open Campaign mode. This update brings many changes and improvements to the game.

We might be a little biased, but this artwork hits all the right notes for us.

All the features of the World Expansion IV Update are available both in solo and co-op play. If you want to test the co-op mode, please make sure that all players are on the same version of the game. You can check the build number at the bottom of any menu screen in the game. This is also important if you want to play using the dedicated server. You must update the server separately from your main copy of the game.

All the features from this free update are availalbe both in solo and co-op modes. Invite your friends to try the game - it's free to play for the weekend!

It’s also a great time to try The Riftbreaker if you haven’t played yet! The game is 66% off right now, the deepest discount to date! Moreover, The Riftbreaker is free to play on Steam as part of our Free Weekend promo - you can play the game absolutely for free until Monday, the 9th of March. Promo starts at 10 AM PST, March 5th, 2026..

Judging by the intensity of Brutal Survival such a layout would never happen. However, freedom is the name of the game in World Expansion IV - you can set your game up in a way that allows you to build pretty bases like this one.

Open Campaign Mode

The Open Campaign Mode is finally here! This new game mode allows you to skip the Story part of the regular Campaign, and gives you full control over how and where your mission on Galatea 37 begins.

In Open campaign, you can start where you please.

You can choose any of the biomes available in the game as your starting area. No DLCs required! Each biome will put you in a completely unique early-game situation. Starting in the Tropical Zone is perfect for those who want a smooth start with few threats from the environment. Choosing harsher regions like the Volcanic Area or Acidic Plains will immediately test your survival skills with environmental hazards and limited technology options. However, we can guarantee that all biomes are viable starting points that allow you to complete the game - we checked ourselves!

Some biomes offer a more relaxed start, others are complete chaos from the first minutes. This mode is not intended as a first-time experience, but you can try!

There are no dialogues suggesting what to do next. There aren’t any short-term objectives to follow, either (apart from dynamic, random encounters). Your only goal is to construct and activate the Prime Rift Station. How you go about completing this task is completely up to you. Resource availability, environmental threats, and expansion strategy will all depend on the starting biome you choose and the decisions you make along the way.

Building a structure that requires a ton of liquids in the desert just because a buddy said it would be funny? Sign me up!

Open Campaign Mode is available in both single-player and Co-Op. It’s a great alternative for players who want a more open-ended experience and greater control over their progression from the very beginning. You’ll also enjoy it if you like figuring things out on your own - no hand-holding whatsoever!

The new Cryo Fields biome can sometimes look serene and beautiful. Sometimes being the key word. Prepare for mayhem.

Cryo Fields - A Completely New Frozen Biome

This is a permanently frozen region where nearly everything behaves differently from what you’re used to. One of the first things you’ll notice is how far apart the resource deposits are. They’re much larger than usual, but rarely close to each other. During our internal playtests, this quickly pushed us toward building multiple smaller outposts rather than a single centralized base. Trying to stretch a single base across the entire region usually creates more problems than it solves.

Unless you want to take over the entire map, we recommend building smaller extraction outposts. Resources are spread far apart in Cryo Fields.

You’ll also find natural Supercoolant deposits here. Until now, Supercoolant was something you had to manufacture yourself. In the Cryo Fields, it occurs naturally in large quantities, ready to be extracted and transported wherever you need it.

How many of you are wondering what will happen if we touch this thing?

The local ecosystem is very much alive. Creatures that evolved in these conditions won’t behave like anything you’ve encountered in other biomes. Some of our usual early-game defensive setups performed surprisingly poorly here. We had to adapt and come up with new strategies for survival, and you will likely need to do the same!

Wonder no more.

You can access the Cryo Fields biome in the Story Campaign through the Mission Generator after completing the Palladium Handling research. In Open Campaign, you can start there immediately. Godspeed, you brave soul!

Pro tip: attack waves in Cryo Fields are often accompanied by strong wind. Make sure to have a couple of turbines ready to take advantage of this effect.

The Cryo Fields biome is also available in Survival Mode. If you’re looking for a more intense and demanding Survival experience, this is it - Brutal difficulty level does not forgive mistakes here!

If the sheer number of storage buildings shown previously is making you dizzy, we have some good stuff for you, too.

New Buildings and Defensive Towers

We’ve added larger versions of the Solid Materials Storage and Energy Storage buildings. These are significantly bigger and more expensive than the regular ones, but the capacity increase is hard to ignore. Once your base reaches a certain size, replacing several smaller storages with a single large one simply saves you space.

A typical solar farm in the Radioactive Desert. The Solar Panel/Energy Storage split is roughly even.

Now, you can replace the smaller storage buildings with the new large storage. It's a lot more space-efficient and will allow you to better utilize the room in your base.

Both storage types are available in three upgrade levels. At higher tiers, they can support much larger production chains without running into a storage cap every 15 seconds. Be careful, though, the Large Energy Storage gets volatile when damaged…

And here are the three levels of Large Solid Material Storage.

There are also three new defensive towers.

ICICLE TOWER

A complete opposite of a 'warm welcome.'

The Icicle Tower fires a cryo projectile that breaks apart on impact and slows enemies in the area. It doesn’t deal a ton of damage to most creatures, but if you target something that’s vulnerable to cryo-damage, the effects are pretty spectacular. The added bonus of crowd control gives you and your other towers time to deal more damage. We think it’s a great addition to the lineup.

INFERNO TOWER

If you like the idea of HCM, but are afraid of pipes, this one is for you!

The Inferno Tower launches cluster fire projectiles that split mid-air and ignite the ground. It covers a wide area and works well as a mid-range defensive option. It’s like a mini-HCM. Perhaps it doesn’t deal as much damage, and the range is much shorter, but it’s only a fraction of HCM’s cost! Plus, you know, there’s fire. We like fire. There are also several explosions. We like those, too. When fire and explosions are put together, we are happy. Does this tower make you happy?

SHREDDER TOWER

Acid-laced, splitting, razor-sharp needles are a nightmare scenario for me. Also for these Krocoons.

The Shredder Tower fires a rapid stream of acid projectiles. The individual hits aren’t the strongest, but the sustained fire adds up quickly. The little acid needles split on impact, hitting several other enemies with every single impact. It’s primarily a single-target weapon, but thanks to the extra cluster projectiles it will hold its own against groups, too.

The various rock structures will make you feel like you are inside a cave at times.

That’s not all!

World Expansion IV also includes plenty of smaller features, changes, optimizations, and bug fixes. Take a look at the full changelog if you would like to see what we were up to these past couple of months!

This is an official invitation to the "build a functional Prime Rift Station in the weirdest place you can find" challenge. No rewards, this is just for fun and pushing your limits!

The Riftbreaker World Expansion IV Update, March 5th, 2026 Changelog:

Additions and Changes:

• Added Open Campaign Mode
• Added Cryo Fields biome
• Added Large Energy Storage building
• Added Large Solid Material Storage building
• Added Icicle tower
• Added Inferno tower
• Added Shredder tower
• Added Colgan species
• Added Frigmon species
• Added Frostiroth species
• Added Glaciogan species
• Added Hibernus species
• Added Spikodon species
• Added Temperoth species
• Added Brabice species
• Added Mantnice species
• Added Iceder species
• Added spline-based attack events in the Fungal Swamp, Crystal Caverns, and Cryo Fields biomes in Survival mode and on generated maps
• Added two new unlockable skins for Mr. Riggs - Snowman and Mr. Freeze
• Added Blizzard weather event
• Added Snow Devil weather event
• Added three versions of the Ice Bobardment weather event
• Added alternate Sunburn weather event voice lines if the player has Sun Shielding researched
• Added Cryo Fields specific cultivator rules for all plant species
• Added new destruction effects for multiple flora species
• Open Campaign objectives don't have the "Always Visible" flag anymore. Only the final Prime Rift Station opening sequence has the "Always Visible" status. This change will only affect newly started campaigns
• All research items are now visible in Open Campaign Mode. Their research requirements are unchanged.
• Added new Ambient Creature Spawner feature
  • creature nests can now be placed in missions during map setup
  • ambient nests are initially inactive
  • ambient nests are activated on player proximity
  • spawn numbers based on biome, map size, and threat level

  Open Campaign is not any easier than the regular campaign. Every battle can turn into a full-scale war.

• Added ambient creature nests across the story campaign
  
• Added new flora species and decoration prefabs to the Cryo Fields biome
  
• Updated Mr. Riggs' lines with final VO recordings and Ashley with temp silence
  
• Added dedicated Bioanomaly meshes for the Cryo Fields biome
  
• Added translations for WE IV for all languages
  
• Added ice material to ice spawners
  
• Added idle effect with sound to all spawners - to easily identify direction and distance
  
• Added missing advanced resource cost to some mech superior upgrades
  
• Added ice flora missing icons
  
• Added specimens for new creatures and flora species
  
• Added Colgan nest objective to the debug menu for testing
  
• Added Cryo Fields creatures to the discoverable system
  
• Added missing new species icons
  
• Added loot to new big loot containers in the Cryo Fields biome
  
• Added new creature and loot spawners to precache
  
• Added new player skins to the debug menu
  
• Improved the scanning speed of the Standard, Advanced, and Superior Bioscanners. Extreme level remains unchanged.
  
• Open Campaign Prime Rift Station final attack waves support metallic, caverns, and swamp waves if there are outposts built in these biomes
  
• Improved fighting music blend between DOM-based attack waves
  
• Tweaked emissive time and factor in all new towers
  
• Removed duplicated BurstWeaponComponent from icicle towers
  
• MainMenu: new_headers, and a new label for Open Campaign and Survival screens
  
• Objective markers - changed material on sparks, fewer particles
  
• More loot drops from Shegrets
  
• Changed destruction particles in all frospore props
  
• Changed ammo fire rate and ammo cost limits to fix the ammo powerwell
  
• SettingsMenuScreen: added a hint on how to change monitor setup
  
• Inventory: fixed crafting parameters display
  
• Improved palladium, titanium, and uranium handling research description for Open Campaign mode

The Open Campaign does not have any objectives that tell you where to go next. Random encounters can still happen, though!

Fixes:

• Fixed Health Bar update problems
• Fixed wall gates receiving damage from quicksand and magma when they were placed close to these surfaces, but not directly on them
• Fixed hiding "always visible" quests
• Fixed the missing tooltip from global awards on the Research Screen
• Fixed multiple loot system bugs
• WeaponItemUtils: fixed ammo cost modification (min scale is set by config variable weapon_max_ammo_cost_modification_factor )
• Fixed specimen names for new species
• Fixed Cryo Fields creature names in blueprints
• Fixed metallic biome spawners appearing in ice biome survival mode on easy
• Fixed partially missing loot from all elite spawners
• Fixed loot missing from elite alien towers
• Fixed "no wind" weather event in ice biome
• Fixed the scale of units that walk out of crevices
• Fixed the Minimap solar power display value
• Fixed the elapsed playtime gameplay statistic
• Fixed quicksand damage announcement
• Fixed alpha mask in new vegetation props
• Fixed debris limit calculation - improved performance in high-density scenarios
• Optimized destructible parts limit for the Steam Deck
• Open Campaign: fixed hardcore mode
• Open Campaign: fixed the open campaign warning pop-up saving
• GameServerOptions: fixed SetServerPassword
• Multiple other small fixes and tweaks

Enough talking, go and fight for peace on this planet engulfed in interstellar war, that you most certainly had nothing to do with!

As always, we are grateful for all the feedback and support that allowed us to finish this expansion so quickly. We hope you will have a lot of fun with the Open Campaign. We also hope that the falling ice blocks in the Cryo Fields biome won’t hurt you too badly (they absolutely will). Have fun conquering these new challenges!

If you would like to always be up to date with The Riftbreaker and EXOR Studios, sign up for our newsletter and join our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios.

EXOR Studios

PS. Sorry, Wirawan, for breaking your mod again!