The Riftbreaker

Overview

All in all this game plays like Factorio mixed with a twin-stick shooter/arcadey hack and slash. That is to say, it's a hack and slash tower defense game, with just a little bit of resource gathering thrown in for fun. You start out on an alien planet with an exosuit capable of building anything, assuming you have the resources. You establish a base, slowly expand, and as you expand, set up more and better defenses.

The mid game is a little bit sloggy. There's a short period where you need to research better buildings, and that takes a little while, but you can spend most of it exploring and doing quests while you finish your research queue. Once you get most of the towers unlocked (most importantly is the healing tower), you can mostly AFK your base and not really worry about it, only coming back to level up your HQ and add more research points, so you can research later game stuff faster. Once you get to that point, the game really opens up and becomes genuinely fun.

Melee weapons are super powerful. The Trident was my favorite weapon in the game, second only to the laser sword. Some ranged weapons are great, like the shotgun or mini nuke launcher, and, of course, the minigun. But, by and large, your biggest damage dealers are your sword or spear/trident, keeping a hammer for niche use cases.

The game also forces you to explore new maps to pick up new resource types. Thankfully this isn't like Mindustry, where your maps that you aren't in will get attacked, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. It allows you to only have to pop back in to random maps when you need to set up a new mining outpost or something like that.

All that being said, I was unable to complete one of the DLCs, due to a bug in the liquid compression system (the ability to send liquids between maps). No matter what I did, I could not get the game to send any liquids through, and I suspect it's because I played it all on Steam Deck and I simply couldn't access a UI element to pick a liquid type. Either way, that had no effect on the main story or any of the other DLCs, so I really only missed a cutscene and a special weapon.

Should I Buy This?

The main story is about 30ish hours if you go at a normal pace. I beat the main game with all the DLCs (minus one because it was bugged) in a little under 60 hours, and I got it on sale for $30 all in, I'd say I more than got my money's worth. I don't know if I would pay more than $60 for this, but somewhere in the $35-$50 range is a perfect value.

Replayability is kind of mid. Once you beat the DLCs and main story, there's a survival mode, but that honestly didn't entice me. The main story was great and just about the right length. The DLCs were absolutely fantastic, and are a must-buy if you pick this up.

Conclusion

If you love tower defense games, Factorio/Mindustry, or hack and slash type games, this game is perfect for you. The setting is perfect, the graphics are great, and all around the game just flows really nicely. This feels like a much more refined product than most AAA slop coming out today.

I would have appreciated a bit more difficulty in the late game. Once I got most of my towers and walls to the second tier, the game became a little easy. I spent most of my time just waiting to get enough resources to expand or upgrade my HQ, and not really having to worry too much. I would pick a spot, wall it off, set up a combo of artillery, short range towers (lightning if I have lots of power, shotgun otherwise), drone hubs, and healing towers. Once you get that basic setup, your bases become immune to 95% of the mobs. Once you get the missile towers, even the longest range mobs will simply get nuked from orbit before they can cause any real damage...which admittedly is a lot of fun to sit back and watch. I also think the drone mechanics in the game are fun, they add a bit more utility and the drone swarm really helps large waves. Even the second and third tier drone towers are capable of causing a lot of damage to the weaker mobs, and have a large enough range that they will pick off stragglers before they can even get close.

I would rate this game a solid 8.5 / 10, only losing a point due to a DLC breaking bug. Without that bug I would have easily rated it a 9 or 9.5. It's a solid game, with a clear and interesting progression, albeit somewhat lacking in replayability. I probably won't pick this up again in a year or two like I do Factorio.

One of my Fav games of all time beat all maps on brutal difficulty, would be nice if it was a little harder but 9.8/10 for me <3

The Previous Patch is Better Smooth Gameplay Than The Latest Patch. This Game Version Patch must be Fixed

If you loved factorio, wanted a 3D neon visual upgrade and a sci-fi rainforest theme to go along with it.

Then yes.

Although the separate map resource sharing thing is wonky in nature and the maps are smaller in a sense to incentivize travelling between maps to obtain rare ores; the game is actually pretty fun and works just like another tower defense resource management game.

The arsenal is large between DLCs and even the vanilla game, as players can research more weaponry to deal with the alien mobs and certain weapons are obviously more strong, the weapons are unique enough and still viable allowing players to still explore unique ways to destroy the aliens rather than sporting the rocket or shotgun all the time. This is also true for the tower's variety.

Only qualm is this limit on bases and specific buildings. I'm never a fan off limiting an open world/open concept game, games should strive to allow player who can go above and beyond in their resource/building management to go ham and crazy for more fun times in these games.
Resources are finite in a sense and in the end game, the only way of having renewable sources is to "go green", so unless that was an intended design choice it puts 'industrial deforestation' players at a certain disadvantage.

It's a good game because of all the reasons people having mentioned before me. I've purchased all dlc and I'm enjoying it all. It's def worth the money and time.

Once you map your buttons and memorize the shortcuts etc then the game becomes pretty quick to advance in, building and combat become more enjoyable.

It'd be nice to have a radar of sorts so I can watch my towers obliterate them from the radar/minimap screen or from afar.

I cant recommend this game as of yet because I'm at the end game stage and have developed the known power outage bug. Apparently its been around for years and still hasnt been addressed. I'm currently broken with resources running out and unable to rift jump because of no power. I know of the debug command but it doesnt work and zeroes out my resources. I thought I had it solved by replacing certain buildings but all my bases have it and all I do is rebuild and when I'm attacked I have no power to my towers so this is broken and I dont really feel like starting over..for it to happen again.

EDIT - I removed all energy-into-resource stations and the problem has disappeared for many hours now from all my outposts. I will recommend this game 9/10 right now but will leave this as a negative review only because this issue should be looked at as the forums are full of people with this issue and its somewhat game breaking. Fck Trump.

its basically factorio but more focused on wave defence. I liked it but found it was a bit of a grind sometimes but with coop coming i think il get back into it. also runs like a bitcoin miner so expect high requirements late game

Great game for folks who likes beautiful graphics and base building.

They re-coded so much for coop, released amazing end game content, optimized the shit out of everything, and constantly release new and free updates. 10/10 game

So much fun and the mods make it even better. Adjust settings to have it play the way you want. Want to face huge hordes of enemies constantly? There is a setting for that. Want to have abundant amount of resources? Yep you can change that as well. Want research done in an instant? No problem. The Dev's are active and listen to the players and have made several great dlc's. I really hope another riftbreaker game is coming as I cant get enough of it.

Pretty neat, worth the price. Not really like Factorio or Satisfactory, really fun using two nuke launchers.

Towers + walls. Wind / Solar power. Machines that summon resources out of thin air from electricity. More towers.

Repeat.

Fun game is fun.

Very fun action tower defense base building story driven game. The variety of towers and weapons was a bit overwhelming though. The expansions are well made and integrated in a way that makes them feel natural and the story elements they add are intriguing.

A solid wave-based base builder. Has very fun combat, and the hordes are satisfying to vaporize. It has a good variety of towers, a chunky and nice mech, and plenty of environments with different issues to work around.

It's definitely up there for base builder RTS, possibly one of the best in the sci-fi genre (which has been starved for years at this point), and has gotten better since I last played (with new updates over 4 years after the game dropped).
Certainly a labor of love from the devs, and I appreciate their hard work greatly.

Unique base builder and diablo style game mixed in one but done extremely well.

This game has a bad game experience and progression, and misunderstands what excitement is. They truly went with quantity over quality; everything is there, but the result is just not very fun.

First of all, I've heard this described as base building with tower defense; really, Riftbreaker is a one-character RTS, where instead of defeating an enemy, you sometimes get enemy waves coming from a random direction that are telegraphed, and you complete objectives (in Campaign, anyway).

It's almost a good game, but its flaws are very frustrating. The presentation is great, the weapons are fun, but little thought has been put into the progression and the experience. Research takes so long that you will have long lulls in the game where you have nothing to do until research completes; the tech tree is immense, but you're not really incentivized to try anything since you can research tons of things at once and the content isn't drip-fed and you learn and master what every little thing does, instead the content is just kinda all thrown at your face and you deal with it. And then you unlock one thing, and it's like, whatever, right? I can unlock 30 things.

Getting a new turret in Riftbreaker isn't a lot of fun; not compared to getting new turrets in Factorio or Mindustry, or learning to create a new unit in Starcraft, Your old turrets kinda felt like they did the job, and your new turrets, you're not sure how better they are. Maybe you would have better spent your long minutes of research by researching the hammer weapon for your mech; or maybe not, because maybe that weapon isn't good either.

One part where it's very clear that there is little thought in the game design/experience is how the main character talks to the mech AI. You, the player, arrive in the game and don't really know how things work, and you would think that the mech pilot would be in that role of a rookie who doesn't really know how things work while the mech's AI acts as guidance. But no, both the pilot and the AI know how things work and what all the buildings do, AND they spend time explaining to each other what the buildings do."Captain Novak, you should build an Armory." "You're right! The armory will generate ammunition for your weapons." As a player, you're never the one being talked to; instead, you're eavesdropping on a conversation between two characters who know how the game works. It's extremely unnatural dialogue, and that dialogue is never, never, never never-ending. I'm convinced the voice actress isn't a video game VA, because she speaks exactly like these ads where family members awkwardly talk about house insurance in the kind of unnatural conversation that humans never have with each other.

In an RTS game, or any sort of simulation game like Sim City, you will constantly be juggling between different things to do; maybe you want more resources, maybe you wanna expand your base/city in that direction, maybe you need to explore. But in Riftbreaker, you only do one thing. You build resources; then, you do research, and you have nothing to do while doing research, so you build more resources. Then, research is still going and you have way too many resources, so you just kinda explore around boringly.

Also, that's something else, but enemies don't attack you that often. A wave of monsters will arrive, and your turrets will beat them super easily. And then, 10 minutes later, you might get another; the game tries to hype up that this wave will be huge, it's gonna be super dangerous, there's super tense music, and then it's just a couple monsters that you beat in 10 seconds. And it's just ludo-narrative dissonance like that kinda all the time. You see big scary monsters and then you defeat them super easily.

Overall the game feels processed. It's got a tech tree, it's got good graphics, it's got nice weapons, but the gameplay loop feels off, everything feels kinda disappointing, and you're just wondering if the next tech or the next event will be exciting, but it's not.

I hard a hard time getting into this game, because I was scared to learn about a new ressource management game, but I was wrong..
Yes you do need multiple material to advance, but I did not feel rushed in any way to get it, in fear of getting destroyed.
I finished the main story and I played a very little of survival, so I can say that I enjoyed the game enough to recommend it.

Graphics are pretty well done
Gameplay is great
I did not care about the story much, but it was good to have.
Sound was also good quality.
Variety of guns, enemies, research and map was pretty good

I would give this game a 7/10 because it was a great game, but I did not get hooked enough to want to play more then the mainstory.

Seriously love this game! Between the laser towers, miniguns and Gatlin laser and rocket towers, I feel like I have a chance. Gotta cover those corners though!!!

Combination base-builder, tower defense, and ARPG.

Looks good, smooth gameplay. Systems are a little confusing at first, but the learning curve isn't too bad.

Overall, very fun. I was also a big fan of Xmorph Defense, the game-play is somewhat similar, but different enough with the addition of melee combat and different styles of ranged weapons. The base building is more complex than Xmorph, but still intuitive enough to be enjoyable. I actually found as much, if not greater joy in base optimization than in the combat itself. The end of the campaign felt a bit abrupt (I played without DLC but intend on playing again with) most of the enemy attacks felt trivial until the final fight which felt like a huge step up, which was actually quite nice. Overall, great game, go buy it.

Good fun game, simple formula with an interesting amount of content so it's executed well.

However, the game is extremely badly optimized and really struggles to be played in the moments where gameplay absolutely peaks - when alien hordes attack your base.

Devs have so far been promising more than my local government, and somehow have delivered less. A solid year or two of "what we are working on" with just bullshit written in between the lines of each paragraph.
It all sounds like amazing stuff, but they are building towards "Riftbreaker 2", and I doubt that we will ever see a single bit of it added to this game. Certainly not for free.

Apparently there is also a coop beta that "thousands of people have been invited to", yet nobody in the steam comments has ever posted about being a part of it or knowing anything of it. Every couple of months its "closer than ever", and then never released.

Worst thing is, I would have recommended the game if they would just stop lying and listen to the community.

Still an amazing game! And it will be 2X better with the upcoming multiplayer co-op support (working pretty well in the closed beta). Can't wait to play version 2.0! :D

Surprisingly good hack-and-slash.

It’s presented as a base-building game, but it feels more like a pretext to replace the mindless RPG grind with a well-balanced mix of collection, management, and building. It stays straightforward and balanced, avoiding the spreadsheet-like gameplay that plagues most games in the genre.

I also really appreciate the sci-fi discovery mecha setting—it’s a refreshing change from the usual dark fantasy. The narration is a bit clumsy (the mech’s voiceover is pretty dull…), but that’s my only complaint so far.

Good game, great experience, does need polish but overall is a good.

Fun game to hide from the reality of the world with. 10/10 would play while Nero fiddles!

Amazing game! Currently playing the multiplayer beta and having a blast.

This game is fucking amazing. Think Starship troopers and Diablo fucked a command and conquer game

Like Building shit? here build a nuclear powered war base capable of launching attack up to 30 percent of the map with your artillery towers. Build some mine layers, drone attack towers, giant shotgun towers, etc.

Care about the environment? Plenty of green energy options here for you hippies. Solar power, wind power, geothermal. Fuck they even have buildings that help you plant trees.

Like fighting shit? here you fucking psycho take your chainsaw, sword, spear, trident, sledgehammer, brass knuckles and go smash shit up close.

Like shooting shit? we got you fam! here's a mortar gun that launches an array of cryo bombs at the enemy. Or maybe dual wielding guns chasing aliens is your thing. Your gonna have you some fun.

Like different environments? Say less home skillet. Swamps, caves, jungles, etc. Fuck the jungles even have camouflage aliens attacking you reminiscent of predator.

The onlt time this game runs smoothly is when it is autosaving. I play space marine 2 with no slowdown. But wether I go full potatoe settings or hi spec this runs like hard poop. This is not just a me problem. I am still recomending because there is nothing like this, and it's a fun concept.

Awesome mix of Tower defense, real time base building, RPG research and upgrade, and bullet hell just to make it a true mixing bowl. There is so much to do and there are tons of random events to keep you on your toes.

Really an awesome game

I don't really know where to begin—this game has huge potential but ultimately falls flat due to its oversimplification and an endless grind with no real payoff.

Base Building:
At first, it seems like a straightforward yet satisfying base builder. No logistics to worry about—just plop down buildings, and everything connects via a magical grid where resources are teleported instantly. This makes it highly approachable, as you never need a guide or tutorial to make things function. However, that simplicity quickly becomes its downfall.

There’s no strategy involved whatsoever—your only limiting factor is how fast you can slap buildings onto the map. Energy too low? Just dump a 10x10 block of generators wherever there’s space. Need more towers? Toss down "max cap for towers" buildings randomly and keep going. There’s no need to optimize layouts, no logistics to consider, and no meaningful decision-making—just endless clicking to keep up with resource consumption.

A good base builder challenges your strategic thinking—how to optimize space, how to make efficient layouts, how to manage logistics. Riftbreaker does the opposite: it removes all complexity, leaving you as a mindless drone performing manual labor. The real-time busywork of placing structures replaces any sense of planning, and in the end, it just feels like a chore rather than a game.

Enemies & Combat:
Enemies spawn both dynamically and in preset attack waves, but the difficulty is nonexistent. Even the most basic mix of tier 1 towers behind a couple of walls becomes an impenetrable death trap. You can effectively turn the map into a Great Wall of China where nothing gets through.

The core gameplay loop becomes depressingly predictable:

Spam buildings until resources run out.
Check for nearby mines to boost income.
If needed, add more energy generators and "max cap for towers" buildings.
Repeat.
Once you’ve secured the map (which is trivial), random enemy spawns inside your perimeter become an annoyance, forcing you to place redundant fortresses just to protect your infrastructure from arbitrary events. Clearing the map feels less like fighting an alien horde and more like mowing a lawn—pull some enemies, watch them get instantly vaporized, claim nearby resources, repeat. No tension, no challenge, no strategy.

Traveling Between Maps - The Final Nail in the Coffin:
Once you’ve secured your first map and have unlimited resources, you gain the ability to travel to new locations. At this point, the last shred of base-building relevance vanishes. Your infinite resource pool carries over, meaning new maps don’t require building a functional economy—just more Great Wall of China spam and another round of lawn mowing. There is no meaningful progression, no difficulty curve—just the same mindless cycle in different environments.

Research & Tech Progression:
The tech tree looks vast at first glance, but don’t be fooled—unlocking new technologies is just a matter of waiting. You don’t need to gather resources, solve puzzles, or make strategic choices. Just place down a research lab, let time tick away, and eventually, you’ll unlock everything. There's no sense of progression, just another passive system that removes player agency.

Final Verdict:
At first, Riftbreaker might charm you with its accessibility and action-packed pace. But its greatest strength—its simplicity—is also its biggest flaw. There’s no depth, no challenge, and no reason to keep playing once you’ve experienced the first hour. The rest of the game is just mowing the lawn and building the Great Wall of China over and over again.

Unless you enjoy repetitive busywork with no real strategy, Riftbreaker is a hard pass.

Haven't played in a while so I thought i'd come back and see what the changes were like. It was fun for the first playthrough and i dont remember having any issues but now its crashing constantly. I've upgraded my pc since i played last so you'd think it would be running better not worse.

no co-op even though listed as "top priority" for years while they have released multiple DLCs

super fun base building and horde game
large tech tree, good visuals and style, mechanics and everything is fine but the dialoges between the lady and her bot are just cringe :D

Overall good game, played it a few years ago and it was much more stable back then, playing now it was very frequently crashing to desktop with different reasons. May be it is related to DLCs, may be to some incompatibilities with newer hardware, overall I have a decent PC build and was able to play on stable FPS, but constant crashes were unbearable... I do trust in devs doing their job and fixing things so I'll give it a positive as overall It was well worth the money.

It has its flaws, but was made with great care, as you can see in the details all around the game. Recomend buying with a small discount.

Hands down one of the better more fun defense games I have ever played, and they are adding coop to it!

It's a fun bit of slight automation nothing major on that front, and horde defence which is where I think it shines. I like to bump up the hordes to make em larger cuz it's fun to see :auyay:

Fantastic game. I've played through the campaign multiple times and buy each and every new DLC. Looking forward to the promised COOP getting added.

A wonderful blending of tower defense/lite base building and twin stick shooter. Feels very nice to move around, shoot and melee enemies. Variety of sandbox play options and ways to tweak game settings, even for the more structured campaign. Mods also supported as well. DLC support and continued updates have kept me coming back to re-experience the game each time, very much looking forward to the new weapon and enemy tweaks and coop coming in the future.

I think anyone who enjoys arpgs or twinsticks and also likes base building games will enjoy this.

Mashing a bunch of genres together is normally a recipe for mediocrity, if not failure. However, Riftbreaker manages to pull this off amazingly. With the base-building and resource management of an RTS, the strategic development of a tower defense network, and the hack-and-slash combat of space Diablo, you'd expect the game to fall flat in all three regards.

I'm happy to report that you're wrong. This game really nails everything it sets out to do and then some. Base building is enjoyable, though do note it is rather clunky on the Steam Deck; there are a variety of buildings that can vary in their utility depending on location. It's fun learning a level's enemies and how best to construct your base defenses. Critically, a good chunk of the game is exploring your surroundings, and it's terrific fun to do so. The game will start you with your trusty cyber-mecha-sword on a planet with feisty critters. You learn in your first few minutes of gameplay how good it feels to literally hack-and-slash your way through the flora and fauna of this brave new world.

After a while, the gameplay loop comes to entail periodic waves of increasingly numerous and powerful hostile fauna, and in the interim you carry out a variety of tasks not limited to exploring, expanding and repairing your base, and working towards your ultimate goal of returning home.

As you progress, you learn more about the flora and fauna of your world, which gives you higher resource yields for flora and a flat damage boost against fauna. Much to my dismay, your encyclopedia does not have the same level of world-building as the one in Subnautica, but it still has a lot of effort behind it.

I would also like to mention how cathartic it is hitting major progression milestones. Getting your first nuclear artillery piece and obliterating a horde of critters is purely delightful.

Overall I would consider Riftbreaker to be something of a hidden gem. There is a lot of fun to be had if you enjoy its component genres.

amazing game if you like a shooter, rts and base building combined!

fantastic game and the devs are still quite active on providing more! it is a full game, but don't expect it to play the same a year from now, major reworks are coming and multiplayer intergation is happening eventually, it's all inhouse work so it's a little slow but they aren't hush hush about it. follow their social or the updates on steam! you learn lots and have fun!

Unique and lots of fun. Devs are always improving and expanding. The included controller support is appreciated.

Game is rad af.. love it. The best combo platter available straightup.

I bough this game mostly because co op was a feature being teased by the devs. For years. Still no co op, so negative review stands until they release it.

"Co-Op mode for The Riftbreaker is expected to release no sooner than Q4 2022."

Its 2025 for fucks sake

This game is absolutely amazing! I am not a tower defense game enjoyer and often hybrid games fall short, but this game is an exception. The best elements of fast, hard combat, tower defense, strategy, economic and research management, outpost management. The graphics are amazing, the game runs smooth at a high frame rate. The soundtrack is equally amazing, one of the songs feels like it was plucked right out of the mid-90s, giving an older gamer like me a wonderful sense of nostalgia. The game alternates between fast-paced combat and quiet base building.

TL;DR: BUY THIS GAME! You will not regret it!

Amazing replayability. Fun, addictive. Can't wait for COOP.

A great game to keep you coming back. The campaign does get a bit repetitive; find new biome, scan for deposits, finish some research, setup subsidiary base, defend it from enemies, realize you need to expand, repeat. The loop is certainly entertaining, while offering a large variety of weapons and customization options. I love base-building/tower defense games and this one scratches that itch. Fast paced and lots of carnage!

fun base building, exploring, and killin' game. Also they run it on their own custom engine which is pretty cool

The endgame is nearly unplayable even on a high-end desktop which is sad because I really love this game.
It's the kind of game where you can relax/waste entire days easily by trying to build just one more building or push deeper into the fog of war. Maybe it'll be worth the purchase in 5 to 10 years or when PC components are priced affordably.

It's a beautiful game hindered by CPU limitations and the computational complexity of having everyone and their mom zerg rush your base when you get up to take a piss.

I would recommend this game, but the game crashes. In fact the game powers down my system. I tested other games thinking my system was overheating and had no problems. Such a bummer as this game is fun. Maybe in the future an update will address the games instability it, may even be a driver issue.

Fantastic game!!! This game mixes so many different mechanics together to make a game that for me, ticks many boxes together. Tower defense strategy to protect from hoards of enemies. Base building/resource management. Tech tree development on massive tech trees that require some exploration to fill out. Add on the Diablo style third person combat and it's a winner.

While the graphics are beautiful, they don't tax the system too hard and a high frame rate experience isn't hard to achieve. Ray tracing can even be added in without crushing your AMD system. Ray tracing however seems to add very little in the way of actual visual benefit.

The one negative that I've been able to find is that the hoards are fairly predictable and with only a couple of fortified positions you can hold off all attacks. The hoard AI being a little predictable can take the game from feeling a bit too difficult in the beginning of the game to feeling a bit too easy at the end. It's a matter of figuring out where they are going to appear from. They do spawn some nests that challenge your defenses coming from seemingly random places. But the massive hoards always come from the same places around the edge of the map.

Overall, I've really enjoyed my time with this game and will be buying the expansions to continue. Maybe the addition of a character leveling system would add to the game a bit.