Hello everyone!
We often get questions about our sources of inspiration for The Riftbreaker. If you want to know what games inspired us in terms of mechanics, graphics and design - today’s article is for you. We play a lot of games in our free time and our tastes vary from person to person, so there are a lot of titles that we could mention. With that being said, we are going to try to keep the list short, limiting ourselves to the most relevant titles. This should give you an insight into what games we like and, perhaps, what you should play next. ;)
One of the most important aspects of The Riftbreaker’s gameplay is base building. While it could be easy to draw parallels to Factorio, truth be told, that is only a part of the story. We have sunk countless hours in classic RTS games, where base-building and resource management have been the focal point. Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer and Supreme Commander all spring to mind here. Factorio got our attention quite late in the design phase. It showed us that making the base work similar to a living organism, with all the interconnected systems relying on each other facilitates creativity, and that’s what we wanted for The Riftbreaker. What can we say - we love strategy games, especially the ones that support various play styles.
When it comes to combat, there are loads of titles that influenced our game. We loved the mecha-combat against the alien hordes in Alienation, along with the loot and inventory system. Many of us are also fans of action RPG games, such as Diablo, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn and the Van Helsing series. The twin-stick shooter aspect of the game has been decided very early on, as it’s a very intuitive control scheme that works really well for single-character combat. It also supports both the keyboard + mouse combo and gamepads, which is very important for us. In order to make the game more sci-fi and less fantasy, we dropped the level and experience elements from those games, changing them to tech instead. That’s what gave birth to The Riftbreaker combat system.
As for the visual side of The Riftbreaker, all of the games above had their influence on what we wanted the game to look like. One game that we can add to that list is Starcraft. The way that buildings, units and the elements of the background interact with each other is great for the fast-paced, competitive aspect of the Blizzard RTS. However, its visual style is more cartoonish than what we are aiming for, so even though The Riftbreaker looks a little similar, it’s a different beast. We learned many things from Starcraft and you can see that in The Riftbreaker, but our influences are much broader, reaching beyond the world of gaming. Notable examples here are the Halo series, Peter Jackson’s Avatar, as well as nature itself.
This list is not comprehensive, of course. We play various games every day and you can find similarities everywhere. The most important thing is that we spend a lot of time giving The Riftbreaker an identity of its own. We aren’t afraid to look to other great games for inspiration, we try to evolve and innovate on the ideas that made those titles influential. We want the Riftbreaker to be a unique experience worth your attention and time, not just a blend of elements that worked elsewhere. We hope you’ll find out about it hands-on sooner rather than later!
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