Ripping onto the untouched surface of Galatea 37 is calamitous. Whatever environmental feature or fauna lies below this open portal is immediately obliterated when a bipedal mech emerges and touches down. A sign of the unrelenting industry to come.

The developers of The Riftbreaker call it a "Factorio Diablo Crossover". In it, the player is sent on a colonization mission. The task is to construct a base amidst the alien jungle of of Galatea 37, that will need to sustain and defend a Rift Station. A stable portal with the power to bring in further colonization efforts from Earth.

The difficulty (at least on Normal) has a respectable learning curve without being overwhelming. Harvesting natural resources, forming them into buildings, walls, power generation and defensive towers is easy and scratches a constructive itch, leaving me proud of my creation. It harkens back to Starcraft as any Protos player will find their home among Riftbreakers defensive strategem.

The mission is sustained by ever increasing numbers, constantly hungry for rarer resources, introduced piecemeal through linear objectives required to progress. The entire tech tree gapes in front of you with mystery nodes - an exciting prospect of discovery that is home to a cornucopia of destructive and defensive options. Eventually, the game loop becomes diluted with repetition: finish a research tier and expand further by mining a new resource in a different environment, rinse repeat. The carefully placed defensive structures in early game are upgraded but only bolstered with more. New options arrive but defences quickly become a high tech cheese grater instead of a bastion of precision I hoped to create.

Its clear to see why so many bullets are needed once the alien fauna discovers your presence. The first stream of quadruped creatures attack in a ravenous, shoulder to shoulder wave, plant life swaying in the beasts forward momentum. An impressive sight that holds true throughout, reminiscent of a Zerg swarm. When bigger creatures puncture the incoming carpet of teeth, a confident defence can quickly devolve into panic not only from number of on-screen enemies but by the end game, the inexcusably eviscerated frame rate.

Each enemy type brings their own defensive resistances to mitigate. Mild AI limits their tactical intentions, hellbent for destruction in a straight line, standing range attacks or directly chasing the player with the exception of a few. Variety is commendable but leans obtrusively on re-textured or scaled enemies to provide it. There are emerging nests that spawn enemies at a quicker rate but these are dispatched before the voice over can finish yet another description of their potential danger, if left untouched.

A generous element of player agency is what makes The Riftbreaker stand out. A player controlled mech with its own equipment screen, housing slots for tools, weaponry and mods, support the tower defence efforts. Teleporting or jumping into battle along side your defensive structures to repel xeno waves makes the tower defence foundation more enjoyable and failure less of an outcome. It sucked me in. Customized loadouts opens the buffet of destruction. Base resources are used to craft your weapons of choice. Flamethrowers, grenade launchers, shotguns, plasma cannons abound. Everything can be dual wielded. The sound of dual miniguns, ferociously spitting metal at an oncoming horde, felling tree and beast alike with a wave of your hand makes it instantaneously clear why The Riftbreaker works so well.

The developers made a new vision of the tower defence genre. They made something complex while being responsive to player choice and creativity without being punishing or too overwhelming is to be applauded. In this sense, The Riftbreaker is a captivating base builder!

But...

It's devoid of world building merit. It is aggressively unaware of itself either by omition or complete oversight. I doubt the absence of message is meant to goad the player into discovering their own ethical stance either. For a player to come to a desired conclusion that stems from frustration with the product is unlikely. Whats disappointing is that the failure in writing takes away from potential game design and completely keeps Riftbreaker from being great.

You play as Ashley S. Nowak, an elite scientist/commando inside a powerful [talking] Mecha-Suit, awkwardly called 'Mr Riggs'. Throughout the campaign, Ashley and Mr Riggs exchange expositional dialog, for the purpose of mission objectives, world building or jokes, presented in a way that is slightly preferable to silence. A duo with TitanFall potential with the execution of flat cola.

There is only line of dialog that presents the games entire ethos that lies in the opening 15 minutes of the campaign. Mr Riggs states that Earth is "Barely Habitable" and that colonization of Galatea37 is critical by any means, in order to survive. "Damage to the [Galetea] ecosystem is inevitable".

Ashley retorts: "We can do this in a better way. We have to defend ourselves and we have to secure the necessary resources to set up the Rift Station, but we don't have to destroy all the wildlife we encounter. Humanity doesn't need another stripped down factory world. If we want to progress as a species, then we should study this planet and learn how to blend with the environment and prepare a safe home for humanity."

The player is then greeted with solar and wind power generation, an honest start that's spit on by a 30-50 hour campaign of destruction at the mouth of dual miniguns, flame throwers, mine fields and unmitigated colonization. The gameplay demands this approach for progression.

• but we don't have to destroy all the wildlife we encounter.

You can, likely will and you'll be constantly rewarded for it.

• 'Humanity doesn't need another stripped down factory world.'

Funny...that's what is required to win. The map became covered in my presence.

• '...then we should study this planet'.

Everything researched is for exploitation.

• '...and learn how to blend with the environment and prepare a safe home for humanity'.

More time is spent burning jungle to the ground than blending into the environment.

What would make RiftBreakers gameplay express its philosophy would be to pit Mr Riggs and Ashley's approaches against each other. A choice between iron fist colonization and environmentalist blending, perhaps similar to Anno 2070. Environmental energy generation is available but seemingly has no effect on the world or character development. If the game gives players the ability to chose their approach but stays silent, does that count as political commentary when the gameplay encourages scorched earth at every turn? This sort of political awareness doesn't feel in the wheelhouse of their intent.

The most fulfilling moment was finding gaps in rock terrain to feed power or plumbing lines through, for economical use of space. That felt like blending and using the terrain for the advantage of Ashley's approach. Everything else is against it. Why not use the environment, research its needs which in turn stop certain aliens from attacking? No. We don't do that here. You want nuclear fucking missiles.

The most egregious aspect is the ending. Fulfilling the objectives and activating the rift station gives the player a small cinematic of its activation and a voiceover screen of the galaxy, congratulating the player for saving humanity with the tone of a pleased corporate memo.

Unbeknownst to me, there is a secret ending. Either by choice or chance, if the player refuses to complete the final stages of the Rift Station activation, which is sheer madness after 30-50 hours of forced objective gameplay, you get a paragraph of speech from Ashley in an act of mutiny, saying Galetea's colonization can be done better, that she'll do everything right herself - Mr Riggs stating that humanity will come and take over. That's it.

The Riftbreaker is wholeheartedly dependant on this hidden ending in order to make any sort of philosophical standing. Most players experience will be egregiously bereft of message and left blindly enjoy the fun of rampant industrialized colonization without speaking of its dark side. I can't believe it was the developers intent to say that the only course of action is individualistic mutiny. It feels like a gigantic afterthought. With this as the take away, the Earth of Riftbreaker is not worth defending. All of its technology and science sent an agent of destruction to continue a pattern that doomed Earth to begin with. If highlighting this was on purpose, then Riftbreaker is smarter than it lets on.

The devs on Riftbreaker were interested in making colonization fun and they succeeded without understanding what it means. One can easily argue that a game shouldn't have to say something to be great. Except that the inherent dark side of colonization and climate change is now front and center. To root the gameplay in the face of these topics and lean on a flippant secret ending for vague commentary is irresponsible. Especially when environmental interaction is waiting to support deeper gameplay as well as ethical commentary. The devs didn't take Riftbreakers world into account and this mistake wont allow its potential to survive.

Playtime: 67 hours (Normal + Easy campaign completed, 35 hours each)

Intro

In Riftbreaker you control a big, powerful robot that is a deadly fighting machine as well as a builder. You build bases with power plants, mines, walls and towers. It's basically a defense-only version of Total Annihilation in which you fight randomly spawning enemies instead of an enemy base. Also you can freely move between different maps and build bases on each of them.

The Good

• It looks great and runs surprisingly decent on my ancient RX560.
• Lots of different buildings, weapons and upgrades to try out.
• Decent variety in enemies and environments.
• Building ridiculous defenses was always the best part of Total Anni.
• No builder units, buildings construct themselves (huge improvement over TA).
• It's fun to determine when and how you're gonna build a base.
• You can freely teleport with cheap, unpowered telepads.
• Sprint/jump/stealth options.
• Enough random events to keep things interesting.
• Lots of research options to keep you busy.
• Killing huge hordes of enemies is fun. Minigun goes brrrrrt.

The Bad

• Annoying Geiger counter sound near uranium on one map.
• There are too many resources required for upgrades.
• I didn't even bother with the "build a huge pipeline" map. No tnx.
• Scanning seems to be pretty useless.
• Enemy resistances/weaknesses are kinda irrelevant because you have to look them up.
• Sometimes you have to wait quite a while for resources to gather.
• Resource management takes a bit too much time for my liking.
• I could have done without the whole "biomines" thing.
• The game doesn't make it clear you can store plasma in liquid tanks, which is essential at the end.
• After playing on the volcano map your defenses on the HQ map get roflstomped by new enemies with physical damage immunity. Really could've used a warning those would magically show up now.

The Ugly

Build heavy artillery is a chore. You need pumps for sludge, water refineries for water, plasma plants for plasma then converters for supercharged plasma. It's not even that powerful so i only bothered with it for the final battle.

Conclusion

Riftbreaker is a game for people who would build extensive defenses in RTS games like C&C and TA. It's sort of a middle ground between RTS and Tower Defense. I quite enjoyed it, but if you don't enjoy obliterating hordes of aliens with automated guns and flamers/miniguns/grenade launchers/mines this game isn't for you.

The Riftbreaker is difficult to describe without comparisons to other genres as it really is a grab bag in terms of gameplay. The moment-to-moment action has you, as Ashley, piloting Riggs, a mech with an AI, using a varied arsenal of weapon types with stat effects and abilities a la an ARPG in the vein of a Diablo. Ashley and Riggs’ mission is to explore the alien world of Galatea 37 and make it habitable for human colonization. The overarching campaign objectives have you building, upgrading, and maintaining a base with an array of different structures, towers, and research technologies, all the while defending against the hostile alien inhabitants of the world. The ebb and flow of earning research and eventually automating your resource production follow similarly to a slightly less complicated version of Factorio or other base-building games. Lastly are the enemies themselves, a collection of different alien types who attack in waves of increasing difficulty and quantity, such a large quantity in fact that the base-defense and tower management becomes something more similar to a PVE tower-defense or even RTS game like They Are Billions.

There is a decent enemy variety, but they are simple alone. The most intricate enemies are the ones that teleport away if you get too close or ones that dash towards you in a straight line, not exactly peak enemy design. The AI and its pathing are also quite rudimentary and as a result they are easily exploitable such as when they will attack walls even when there are holes, or mindlessly chase you as you widdle them down into chokepoints or traps. These design decisions are likely intentional as the enemies’ strength lies in their numbers and if they were more competent the game would be tremendously difficult. I played the demo and thought it was too easy, but the challenge ramps up considerably as the enemy counts go through the roof. There is also a great variety in weapons and research and a huge tech tree with lots to upgrade and a bevy of different playstyles to choose from or things to specialize in.

The campaign offers objectives that have you jumping to different instanced worlds, you don’t stay on one outpost, which came as a surprise to me. This made the game feel staggered or disjointed to me. I wonder if it would’ve been possible or would I have enjoyed having one contiguous world. Instead, you travel zone to zone, get resources, and ferry them back to base. Different areas do have different environmental hazards (heat, acid, etc.)which makes it really feel like a hostile alien planet. My first visit to each new area was a mad dash for glacial plants to lower temperature in a volcanic area or traverse a minefield of explosive plant life, making for a frantic and fun experience. There was also this feeling of accomplishment and “conquering the land” as you progress, making the area habitable and not just surviving but thriving and harvesting its rare resources, a seeming impossibility upon first arrival. However, this is a double-edged sword as you are constantly hassled while trying to do other stuff. Enemy nest spawns, large boss creatures, random attack waves, and a variety of earthquakes, tornadoes, storms, or meteor showers will constantly distract and potentially frustrate, at least they did for me. There is also a survival mode with customizable parameters in addition to the campaign.

The story and writing are not great. There’s lots of technobabble and jargon with very little chemistry between Ashley and Riggs and some downright groan-inducing humor or completely substanceless exposition. The voice acting of Riggs is weirdly inconsistent, as some lines are clearly coming from at least one different actor or he has wildly different inflection and mood from line to line. There are the faintest of themes surrounding globalization and the industrialization of an “untapped” piece of nature but nothing substantial. The ending I got was super inconsequential, a mostly static image with a few lines of voice-over from a newly introduced character, spouting generic platitudes of a “job well done”. I audibly laughed when the credits rolled, a very sudden and stark conclusion to a story that really dragged its feet for the majority of its 20 plus hour runtime.

I played on PC with an RTX 3070 and thought it looked stunning and was surprised by how well it ran given just how many enemies, particles, and effects can be onscreen at once. The game hangs on auto-save and can occur mid-combat which can be distracting. Funnily enough, there are massive hitches when destroying some crystals or trees, which is surprising considering how smoothly the combat ran for me with its screen-filling assault of enemies and explosions.

While the game certainly seems disparate in all its components, there are moments when it really does come together and shines. The absolute spectacle of your carefully constructed base withstanding the onslaught of thousands of enemies at once while you launch an arsenal of different weapons at them is truly something to behold. Unfortunately, it suffers from a fate that many other games I play now do, which is I wanted to be done with the game far before it wanted me to be done. It took me over 30 hours to complete a campaign that has the bare minimum of a story, some subpar writing and voice performance, and absolutely zero substance or reason to pay attention to. The gameplay has an insane amount of depth but can sometimes feel extremely bloated as a result, with its 4 different biomes housing 10 different resources, all of which must be managed and harvested. At one point I thought I was building up to a conclusion of the story only to be greeted by another objective that required an additional enormous supply of material which warranted a complete redesign of my base and padding on more fruitless hours to my playthrough. I remember failing the last objective due to unforeseen circumstances and having to redesign my base and accommodate again when all I wanted was to be done by that point. The moments when this game shines are few and far between and the frustrations of some design decisions and the complete dud of a story really hurt my enjoyment. This may be the hardest I’ve turned on a game, from loving it completely to wishing for it to be over by the end. I do think there is a lot of merits to be given for this thing actually coming together and not being a total mess, but it certainly comes across as messy at times.

Main + Extras – 35h 12m 19s

Score: 7/10 (Good)