Hello Riftbreakers!
14th of October 2021 was a special day for us. On that day, we released the 1.0 version of The Riftbreaker. It was a huge milestone for us and the biggest launch of any EXOR Studios' titles. Over the course of the year, the game changed a lot - in a large part thanks to your thoughtful feedback. We managed to publish more than 20 updates, including the first World Expansion - Metal Terror. The Riftbreaker has sold over 500.000 copies across all platforms, with Game Pass users boosting the total number of players to over 1.000.000!
The success of The Riftbreaker allowed us to continue improving the game and motivated us to formulate plans for the future. We have presented them to you in the form of our roadmap. However, a roadmap doesn't leave a lot of room for an open dialog. This is why we have recently opened a suggestion board over at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. In the first couple of weeks, you have made over 250 suggestions already, and there are some clear favorites among them. In this article, we will highlight and discuss the top 10 threads on the Feature Upvote board and tell you what we are planning to do about them!
If you see a suggestion that you like in this article, click the title - the link will take you directly to that topic on the board!
CO-OP MULTIPLAYER
A clear winner. No questions asked. It’s in development, and we’ve said a lot about it already. It will most likely be one of the major updates of 2023, which is going to be preceded by many beta tests, both closed and public. For a more in-depth take on this subject, we highly recommend reading this article.
EXTENDED STORY CAMPAIGN
We are already developing a meaningful extension to the original Story Campaign. It will allow you to continue playing even after finishing the main storyline, keeping all your buildings and tech in place. We want to give you the ability to generate additional missions on all biomes in the game. We’re also thinking of adding some more long-term objectives always to give you something to strive for. We aim to deliver on this in 2023.
ECONOMY MANAGEMENT SCREEN
The first surprise arrives at the number 3 spot! We honestly had no idea that this feature was so badly needed by so many of you. We knew that you were asking for it, and we had this on our internal roadmap for months, but always thought of it as a low-priority ‘nice-to-have’ rather than a ‘must-have.’ Needless to say, we have bumped up the priority of this feature. We're aiming to release this feature by the end of 2022, but it is not certain yet.
BIOME BOSSES
Another eye-opening suggestion. Even though we do have a couple of rare and powerful variants of creatures from each of the biomes, many of you do not consider them ‘real’ bosses. We can see why - despite the high power level, they do not require you to switch up your combat style and tactics. They also do not pose any kinds of unique challenges, as you are most likely to stumble upon them during random encounters or final mission waves. We have plans for true arena bosses, but currently, there is no ETA for them. They need to come in at the right moments in the game.
BIGGER DEFENSIVE TOWERS
This is a real shocker as we had no idea there was any demand for bigger guns among our community members. Currently, the only defensive towers that differ in their form factor from regular sentinel towers are the Heavy Artillery and Drone Towers (both variants of the latter). We assumed that 1x1 size is generally accepted as the standard and did not want to reinvent the wheel. However, this suggestion gives us encouragement to experiment some more and offer you some bigger, more powerful, and more expensive pieces of gear moving forward. The most probable ETA for the first batch is the World Expansion II update.
NEW BIOMES
This point needs no real explanation - new biomes are definitely going to happen. Our current plan is to introduce a new biome with each of the World Expansions we release for the game. All biomes are going to get their own sets of flora, fauna, and unique features and events, just like in the case of the Metallic Valley in the Metal Terror expansion. We are also going to follow the same release model for all such updates - all mechanical content (buildings, technologies, weapons, creatures) is going to be available for free for everyone in the Survival Mode. Stories that take place in those new biomes are going to be treated as paid expansions. Creating an entirely new biome and its own campaign takes us about half a year. You can expect World Expansion II to arrive in early 2023.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/
ALIEN STRONGHOLD
This is an idea that we tried out already in the last mission of the Metal Terror Story Campaign. The idea is very simple - Mr. Riggs enters an enclosed space inhabited by hostile species. Battling against various types of defensive structures and enemy units, Riggs eventually reaches the final arena for a spectacular showdown. The rewards for completing such a run can be varied, from piles of resources to entirely new technology blueprints. The popularity of this suggestion clearly shows us that this is something we should definitely think about.
ABILITY TO RENAME OUTPOSTS AT WILL
A very straightforward request and one that we should have implemented from the start. Some explanation first. When you discover a new area of the planet through the Orbital Scanner interface, at first, it is named after the main mission objective connected to that place, for example, ‘Scan the area for Uranium Ore samples.’ After the mission is completed, if you set up a permanent outpost in such a place, it changes its name to “Outpost X”. We implemented this to make sure that you know you have completed all objectives on any given map and that they were no longer relevant to the story. However, what we achieved, was a confusing system with up to 10 outposts only distinguishable by their location on the planet. This is not good enough, and we will implement this change as a part of the Extended Story Campaign update.
NEW BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH
These will, of course, successively be making their way into the game as we add more biomes and World Expansion content. We are monitoring Feature Upvote boards, looking for the ones that you would like to see the most in addition to the ones we are planning ourselves. Again, this is a process and not a one-time upgrade, so it is difficult to give you an exact ETA on this.
SUPERWEAPON BUILDINGS
This suggestion might look quite similar to the bigger defensive towers. However, this idea is not about just bigger towers but unique buildings that serve as rewards for completing the entire technology tree. SenorRagequit included examples such as a massive nuke silo or an earthquake generator. This idea is really interesting and would offer a reward for putting the effort into discovering all the branches of the research tree, but also poses some challenges. What do we do if the technology tree changes? What happens if nodes get added or removed? What if we want to rework it entirely? Those questions aside, it’s a brilliant idea.
CONCLUSION
Our first couple of weeks spent on Feature Upvote was an exciting experience. We feel that thanks to structuring your ideas and suggestions this way, we can better tailor our solutions to fit your actual needs and expectations. If you have an idea on how to make The Riftbreaker a better game, go to https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com and create a post. And if you’d like to have an influence on which suggestions make it into the game, upvote the ideas that suit you. We also wait for your feedback at www.discord.gg/exorstudios and here on the forum.
Here’s to even more great years together!
EXOR Studios