The Riftbreaker: Release Date, Trailer, Gameplay, and News

Recently revealed strategy title The Riftbreaker promises a compelling blend of base-building, survival, and RPG mechanics.

“You play the role of captain Ashley S. Nowak – you are the Riftbreaker, an elite scientist/commando inside a powerful Mecha-Suit,” reads a description of The Riftbreaker on Steam. “Enter a one-way portal to Galatea 37, a distant planet at the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, with the purpose of building up a base that will allow travel back to Earth and further colonization. Ashley’s Mecha-suit, which she calls ‘Mr. Riggs,’ can withstand the harshest environmental conditions and has a full range of equipment for base construction, resource extraction, gathering specimens, and of course – combat. It is capable of traveling through rifts that connect space across vast distances.”

Your basic goal in The Riftbreaker is to build a rift back to Earth. Doing so will require you to gather a variety of materials and build a series of elaborate devices. That element of the game will undoubtedly bring to mind titles such as Factorio and even Minecraft.

One of the big “twists” with that mechanic, though, in terms of how we’ve seen it utilized in recent survival games is the idea that you’ll need to create research stations that allow you to utilize new technology and build more objects. That concept will undoubtedly seem familiar to fans of Civilization or even many early RTS games, but it’s not an idea that we always see in roughly similar experiences.

On top of that, The Riftbreaker utilizes a base defense mechanic similar to what we saw in one of our favorite PC games in recent years, They Are Billions. Just as in that game, you’ll need to set-up a series of defenses designed to combat large waves of enemies that grow in size and intensity each day. Part of the challenge there comes from finding a way to manage your resources in such a way that allows you to work towards your overall goal while improving your defenses.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of The Riftbreaker is its action-RPG combat. When wandering the game’s world looking for resources, you’ll often have to participate in Diablo-esque large-scale battles that encourage you to upgrade your suit and skills in order to survive. We don’t often see such an intense form of action-RPG combat in games such as this, so we’re incredibly eager to see how The Riftbreaker balances those elements.

You can check out The Riftbreaker‘s intriguing blend of concepts for yourself via this trailer:

If you want a deeper look at this project, be sure to also watch this video which showcases about five minutes of uninterrupted gameplay:

Definitely be sure to keep The Riftbreaker on your radar when it is released for PS4, Xbox One, and PC sometime in 2020.