Hello Riftbreakers!

Today is the day you and we have been waiting for - The Riftbreaker 2.0 Update is now live! After almost four years of development, the Online Co-Op mode for The Riftbreaker is now available to everyone in the form of this massive, free update. However, the 2.0 Update is much more than the addition of Co-Op mode - it is also a massive expansion of the original Story Campaign, which will test your building, combat, and logistics skills more than anything you’ve encountered before. This update also comes with a host of gameplay improvements, quality of life changes, and performance optimizations.


Gather your team and jump in!

Thank you all for your patience and support during the development process. It was a bumpy road. Over the past few years, we have refactored almost the entirety of the game’s codebase to make online play possible. Such a massive rework wouldn’t have been possible without your help. Thank you for the countless hours you spent testing the game during our Closed and Open Beta periods. Thank you for all the bug reports, improvement suggestions, and feedback. Today’s release is our mutual success.

Let’s break down all the new features coming to you in this grand update.

Share responsibilities. Build bigger. Expand further. Conquer all.

FOUR-PLAYER CO-OP - Gather your team and conquer Galatea 37 together. You can play the entirety of the Campaign and Survival Modes, as well as the Prologue mission. You can play with your friends by setting up a server and inviting them to play with you, or you can join other Riftbreakers from all around the globe and find the perfect game through our in-game Server Browser. Our difficulty level scaling ensures that gameplay remains challenging but fair, requiring you to work together to reach the goals you set for yourselves. We have also implemented many co-op-centric features to enhance your online play experience. Use the in-game chat to coordinate your team. Teleport to other players at any time. Reactivate the mechs of your fallen teammates. Stick together and receive a temporary power boost. Most importantly, though, have fun together!


Our endgame content will allow you to build amazing structures, much larger than anything before. You can build them all over the world, or cram them all on one map. Which one will you choose?

EXPANDED ENDGAME CAMPAIGN - A brand-new story arc involving Megastructures - specialized buildings with massive resource and upkeep requirements that will test your planning skills and grant powerful passive boosts in return. The 2.0 update is fully voiced by Francesca Meaux and Ryan Laughton, reprising their roles as Ashley and Mr. Riggs. The new plot adds as much story content as each of our previous World Expansions: 40 minutes of new dialogues, giving you new insights into the world of The Riftbreaker. Expand your economy beyond what was previously possible thanks to the new outpost limit set to 15. Discover new planetary locations for resource gathering or exploration thanks to the new Orbital Scanner functionality (more on that in this article). Build up a massive mining operation, or cultivate resources to fulfill your needs. Whatever you do, don’t forget about defenses. Enemy attacks in the Endgame make the previous battles look like child’s play.


Omega-strain creatures hide everywhere. If you anger the wildlife enough, they will come knocking to your door.

NEW OMEGA-STRAIN CREATURES - These are new, more powerful, and tougher versions of the existing species. They are the new backbone of the enemy hordes, bringing destruction wherever they go. Defeating them will yield great rewards. Our artists had the opportunity to let their imagination go wild and have updated Omega creature models to command respect. Omegas also come in “elemental” forms, requiring you to vary your arsenal while fighting. In total, you will be able to encounter 73 varieties of these monsters! Each Omega creature receives additional abilities from a wide range of available options - we have explained all of them in this article. Given that the toughest Omegas out there can receive up to four of these special skills, the number of possible combinations is enough to ensure that no two encounters are quite the same!


The improved Orbital Scanner functionality will enable you to establish new resource outposts and explore never seen areas of the planet.

RANDOMIZED MISSION GENERATOR - After completing all of the main missions in any given biome, you will now have the option to look for new planetary locations. You can either look for hidden treasures and Bioanomalies in exploration-style maps, or you can set up new resource outposts in resource-rich areas. The Campaign is no longer limited to a predefined set of maps. The Randomized Mission Generator gives you access to countless variations of maps with unique characteristics. Utilizing this tool will grant you access to additional resources, equipment, and space to relocate your infrastructure if needed. Here's a more detailed article about this feature! As we mentioned previously, the new limit for outposts is 15, and with the ability to look for areas with lots of resource veins, you can easily boost your production to hundreds, if not thousands, per second.

Alternatively, you can give exploration missions a go. They serve as a great palate cleanser between planning and building your factories. You might even stumble upon some of our brand-new, unique encounters. They are special in-game events that happen on handcrafted tiles you won’t see often. When ‘rolling’ a new map via the Mission Generator, there is a chance that one such tile will be featured on your map. Ashley and Mr. Riggs will immediately notify you via custom-made dialog lines, tailored for that occasion. Each encounter stands out visually and narratively, and is guaranteed to never repeat in one Campaign playthrough. Once you see it, it’s gone forever (unless you set up an outpost to admire the view. It’s a viable strategy).


The more you explore the planet, the better the rewards you will find in the wild - they now range from decorations to powerful weapons.

LOOT SYSTEM REWORK - Crafting is not the only way of getting new gear anymore. You can now find weapons, mech upgrades, and other useful items as loot from enemy creatures, Biocaches, and Bioanomalies. The items you find have the potential to be much more powerful than those you can craft yourself - always check for upgrades! You never know what cool additional characteristics an item might have. As you complete research tree nodes, the lootable items will progress as well, increasing the pool of available items. You might even find ones that exceed your current level of research, making each find exciting. And if you don’t find what you want, you can always disassemble the junk and enjoy the extra resources. It’s a win-win. Read more in this article.


Even one mech is a force to be reckoned with. Given that you can now play with up to four, we had to give the Galatean creatures a fighting chance!

GAME BALANCE ADJUSTMENTS - We have rebalanced the entirety of The Riftbreaker campaign, taking all your feedback into account. The difficulty modes in version 2.0 have been redesigned to better suit the majority of players. Easy Mode has been toned down to allow for a more casual, leisurely style of play. Hard and Brutal Modes have been “intensified” to offer a greater challenge to those who want their skills tested. However, the game’s difficulty is not only about combat - the economy also plays a huge role here. With the new Loot System, the addition of Omega Creatures, and the increased number of outposts, we had to take a long look at how our buildings operate. We adjusted costs and production outputs and introduced other necessary changes. Also worth noting, difficulty levels are customizable both in single and multiplayer, meaning that you can adjust the game parameters exactly to your liking.


More weapons are useful now! We made sure that even the weakest weapons have a good use case. Not only did we tweak the stats, but we also introduced functional improvements to many of them.

WEAPON SYSTEM REWORK - We have rebalanced the entire weapons system to improve firepower scaling across the entire campaign. Weapons that were previously too weak have received significant upgrades, making more builds viable. We have also introduced functional changes to some weapons, like the Root Gun and Laser. We highly encourage you to experiment with all of them. You might discover a new favorite! We have also taken a good look at the weapon mods to make sure that everything you find and install in your guns has a meaningful impact on your firepower. We've discussed this process in detail here.


Researching new technologies will allow you to build even more complex bases.

RESEARCH REWORK - All research items in the Story Campaign will require both time and resources. Adding a research item to the queue will require you to pay a one-time resource fee. This cost will offset the extra resources that you will get during the new campaign. Survival Research tree remains unaffected. We highly encourage reading the article that we have written on this topic. You can find it here. It explains our reasoning behind this change.


You can now disassemble mods, mech upgrades, and weapons in multiples. Took us long enough, right?

QUALITY-OF-LIFE IMPROVEMENTS - We’ve added many features, such as mass item disassembly, research search bar, quick multiplayer teleports, and many other options to make your gameplay experience as smooth as possible. These tools have been added thanks to the feedback from our brave Beta testers, who suggested some brilliant solutions. Thank you to everyone who participated!


You will notice performance increases in the face of large hordes and in map-wide bases.

MASSIVE PERFORMANCE GAINS - Since this update required us to rework the entirety of the engine, you will now be able to enjoy The Riftbreaker with much smoother performance, able to handle truly massive bases and enemy numbers.

While we won’t be able to create a comprehensive changelog (the update is simply too big and it spans several years of changes), here are the most important changes coming to you in this build in a nutshell:


You can play in a group of up to 4 players over the internet or using LAN. The game dynamically adapts to to the number of players.

CO-OP MULTIPLAYER

• Online Co-Op has been added. All game modes are available for online play - Story Campaign, Survival Mode, and the Prologue mission.
  
• Added a Server Browser screen. Browse all available servers, check what they’re playing, and join the one that suits you.
  
• Added the Dedicated Server option. It allows your PC to serve as a host of a Co-Op session, without the performance overhead that comes from rendering the game scene. Warning - if you enable this option, you can’t play in the session you’re hosting. We will move this option to a separate, free app in a couple of weeks.
  
• Added multiplayer-centric features: in-game chat, emote wheel (accessed with the ‘H’ key by default), and teleports to other players.
  
• Added the ability to reactivate the mechs of your fallen co-op partners. After a mech is destroyed, you have 30 seconds to get to your friend and pick them up. If you manage to do it successfully, both of you will get a temporary invulnerability and a damage boost.
  
• Added the option to share items with co-op partners via the inventory screen. You can share mech upgrades, mods, and weapons this way.
  
• Added “Join through Link/IP” option. You can use this option to play on a LAN network even when you are completely disconnected from the internet. This is also currently the only way to connect to players who own the game on other PC storefronts.
  

You will have the chance to start the endgame after activating the Rift Portal. Two important pieces of info: 1) the endgame is entirely optional, but highly recommended, and 2) you can start the endgame on a save from your old campaign if you wish to do so.

ENDGAME

• Introduced a new part of the Story Campaign that becomes available when Ashley decides not to go back to Earth through the portal. The mission objective text has been adjusted to hint at that option.
  
• Added Megastructures - 6 massive buildings that pose a significant challenge in a couple of ways: large upfront costs (requiring you to build up your economy), high upkeep requirements (posing a logistical challenge), and enormous size (requiring you to plan space for them in your base). Completing these building projects will lead you to the ‘true’ ending of the game.
  
• Added new Story Missions and encounters to guide you through the process of building the Megastructures. They are fully voiced by Ashley and Mr. Riggs.
  
• Added the Mission Generator feature to the Orbital Scanner screen. After completing the main storyline for any given biome, you will now have the option to look for new areas of interest within that biome.
  
• Added more than twenty handcrafted gameplay tiles with various shapes and sizes to create new tactical gameplay scenarios. Fun fact: The Riftbreaker 1.0 launched with 30 unique gameplay tiles for 4 biomes. The Riftbreaker 2.0 currently includes 225 gameplay tiles across 7 unique biomes.
  
• Added 14 new ‘encounter tiles’ - special map tiles that you can find during the generated exploration missions. They stand out visually and narratively, giving you new insights into the world of Galatea 37.
  

Most important change: there is a dancing emote. Activate the emote wheel by pressing "H" by default.

OTHER MAJOR CHANGES

• Added 73 new Omega-strain creatures. These are more powerful and tougher versions of existing Galatean species. Each of them has received a visual overhaul to emphasize their high power level and terrifying nature. They serve as Boss encounters in attack waves on higher difficulty levels (but not only there! You can also find them in the wild!)
  
• Introduced a major rework of the Loot and Weapon system. You can now find complete weapons and items as rewards for exploration and combat challenges. Weapon firepower has been adjusted to ‘flatten’ the power disparity between the most and least useful weapons. The least popular items have been reworked to encourage players to find new uses for them.
  
• Changed the looks and functionality of the Minimap and the large Map screen. Instead of ambiguous colors, resources, and important buildings are now marked with icons. There are also several toggles to adjust the objects displayed on the map.
  
• Introduced the Mass Disassembly option, which allows you to quickly dismantle large quantities of unused mods, mech upgrades, and weapons.
  
• Added a Search option to the top of the Research Tree Screen.
  
• Added the Death Skull system - a new way of encouraging a more measured and careful approach to combat. You can read about this system here.
  
• Added new compositions of attack waves for Endgame purposes. You’ve seen nothing yet. If you think your defenses are enough - think again!
  
• Reworked the UI of the Liquid Compressors and Decompressors to improve your experience with them. We also fixed a lot of bugs connected with these two buildings.
  
• The capacity of Solid Material Storage has been increased from 200 to 500 units per building on Level 1 and proportionally on Levels 2 and 3.
  
• You no longer need to build multiple Armory buildings - the new limit for this building is one. Its production output has been adjusted to compensate for the new limit. Upgrading it as soon as the next level becomes available will guarantee the maximum ammo production. One Level 5 Armory is equal to 5 Level 5 Armories before the update.
  
• The limits for Ammo Storage buildings have also been adjusted. You can build 2 at Level 1, 4 at Level 2, and 6 at Level 3.
  
• Maximum weapon ammo has been adjusted to the new firepower balance.
  
• Carbonium and Ironium Factories Level 2 and Level 3 output has been reduced from 2 and 4 per second, respectively, to 1.5 and 2 per second. Energy requirements have been reduced to match the new production level. This has been done to offset all the extra resources you will be getting from various drops and generated missions. We have also significantly increased the amount of resources that are available in resource deposits in campaign missions.
  
  
  
  
• Crafted weapons no longer have randomized statistics. You are always guaranteed the weapon of the exact characteristics as advertised during the crafting process. You can still use mods in those weapons to improve them.
  
• Weapon Mods have been thoroughly revised. We have removed some categories that went largely unused and improved the truly useful ones.
  
• Defensive Towers no longer have mod slots. This feature didn’t work correctly for the majority of the time, and modding 1000+ towers in the late game was a dubious pleasure. We decided to scrap that feature altogether to avoid further issues.
  
• Mech Upgrade parameters have been revised to improve the usefulness of various combinations. Bonuses granted by mech upgrade modules are now additive, not multiplicative. Previously, if you equipped a 10% resistance bonus upgrade and then another one, you would get 11% as a result. Now, the bonuses will add up to 20%, as one would expect.
  
• Removed Grid Culler from various medium-sized trees and other props to make building large structures easier. You won't have to cut down all the trees before you set up your HQ anymore.
  
• Damage reflection limits have been added to various creatures to prevent them from getting one-shot by reflective armor builds.
  
• Nuclear Power Plants no longer have a uranium upkeep cost.
  
• Reduced the size of the collision box for Walls to prevent the player's projectiles from hitting them when standing on the Heightened Wall Floor.
  
• Changed the effective radius for the Shockwave Tower from 13 to 18.
  
• Added health bars to all Canceroth central cells.
  
• Laser beam behavior has been improved. Previously, the beam would get stronger the longer you kept it on target, but you lost the bonus immediately after you stopped shooting at the target. Now, the beam will retain the damage increase even if you switch targets - as long as you keep hitting enemies. You only lose the bonus damage if you miss completely. This change will make the Laser a better weapon overall.
  
• Fixed the streaming integration by switching the OAuth token generation from an external website to www.riftbreaker.com.
  
• Biocaches now always drop Carbonium and Ironium, with a chance to drop advanced and rare resources.
  
• The Acidic Yeast Colony event has been changed - the colony now grows at a rapid pace, making it a real threat that you can't ignore for more than a couple of minutes before it destroys your base.
  
• Drexolian Ultra has been added to the Volcanic Zone survival ambient creature pool as a possible spawn after completing the Heart of the Swamp storyline.
  
• Added more dialogue variation to multiple game objectives.
  
• Added unique meshes for all upgrade levels of AI Hubs and Liquid Storage buildings.
  

We're not laying down arms. Job's not done!

This is a lot of changes already, but we are not slowing down one bit. Here’s just a couple of things that we are still working on that we aim to add in the following weeks:

• A standalone dedicated server app is in the works - please DO NOT BUY additional copies of the game to host a dedicated server. You won’t need them.
  
• We’re still tweaking gamepad controls within the game’s UI.
  
• We have more performance and network optimizations incoming!
  
• We’re listening very closely to your feedback, and we’ll be reacting to any “hard edges” that you may find while playing this update.
  

With a good team behind your back, no horde will be able to stop you.

We've been testing this update with the Riftbreaker community for more than a year - since the start of our Co-Op Playtest. At first, it was a closed test, with a couple hundred invites going out every couple of weeks. By the end, we have reached truly staggering numbers. 88 140 people took part in the testing process via our Multiplayer Playtest app alone. They spent more than 280 000 hours playing the game, reporting bugs, and suggesting improvements. We have also received incredible help from all of you who participated in the Open Beta via the Steam branch. While we don't have the exact numbers in this case, you can rest assured that they helped us immensely with Campaign Mode testing. With today's release, both the Multiplayer Playtest app and the Open Beta branches will be closed. They have done their job - it is time to rest now.

If you would like to "relive" the process of the Co-Op mode development, we have compiled all our 'Co-Op When?" articles in Linktree format. You can check them out here.

If, for any reason, you would prefer to play the 'old' version of The Riftbreaker, we are keeping it live on the legacy branch on Steam. You can find it by right-clicking on The Riftbreaker in your Steam Library, choosing 'properties', then 'betas'. You can choose the legacy branch from the drop-down list. No password is required. This version will no longer receive any updates.

We would like to thank you once again for your patience and support that kept us going through the years. We hope that the results of our work will bring you hours of joy spent in the company of your friends. We don’t have much else to say, except for maybe one thing…

CO-OP NOW!