Inspired by the likes of real-time strategy titles like Total Annihilation and Factorio, The Riftbreaker was born out of an internal game design competition at EXOR Studios which it overwhelmingly won.

“After releasing X-Morph: Defense we were looking for ideas for a new project, so we decided to run a game design competition within our team,” said Piotr Bomak, community manager at the studio. “Each member could submit as many game concepts as they liked. We ended up with over 40 ideas for new games. After reading through all of them, we held a vote. The concept for The Riftbreaker ended up getting votes from every single member of our team. We knew at that point that the idea of making The Riftbreaker resonated really well with us—there is something in it for everyone!”

Bomak said the studio spent hundreds of hours playing games like Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Starcraft, and Factorio. 

“Whenever we hear someone say 'Hey, that looks like a mix of Total Annihilation and Factorio!' we are honored and humbled,’ he said. “Naturally, we want The Riftbreaker to have its distinct feel, but such comparisons mean that our inspirations show and we are doing something right.

In The Riftbreaker, players take charge of a combat scientist driving a massive mech nicknamed Mr. Riggs. The pair are dropped on a hostile planet in an effort to lay the groundwork for full colonization. The game’s two chief focal points are the global economy and setting up a robust defensive system, Bomak said.

“When it comes to the economy, the challenge is to find a balance between resource production and energy requirements,” he said. “Players will have to set up a network of mining outposts all around the planet to supply their economy with all the required resources. Various biomes of the planet pose different challenges when it comes to resource generation, base layout, and defense. By solving these problems, players will be able to create a system of interlocking mini-bases, each fulfilling the needs of the other, much like a living organism. 

“Additionally, rather than micromanaging lots of specialized units, the players are in control of just one Mecha—Mr. Riggs. You will carry out the most important tasks, such as building new structures or exploring new areas yourself, but most other things can be automated. In the end, you will want to create a base that's capable of carrying out all the basic operations by itself.”

In action, the game has a bit of a hack-and-slash component to it as you wander the colorful alien landscape hunting for mineral deposits, alien nests, and other surprises. You’ll also spend quite a bit of time fortifying and building out your base with Mr. Riggs. The mix of hands-on action, and strategy is a nice departure from the bird’s eye command view offered by most real-time strategy games.

The flora and fauna of Galatea are based on the different biomes of the planet. The creatures you will encounter during your mission range from small, scavenging bugs to monstrous giants, which seem to be made of stone. And not all Galatean creatures are aggressive—some will be happy to ignore you as long as you don't cross them. 

That said, nothing on the planet is happy you’re there.

“Each creature you fight has a different set of skills, vulnerabilities, and resistance,” Bomak said. “You will have to experiment with lots of strategies and tactics to find out what works against your enemies. That's all we can say for now—half the fun is in discovering all those things on your own!”

To help you survive the planet, Ashley—the scientist driving Mr. Riggs—can download blueprints from Earth by using the communications hub, once you build one. This allows you to build more advanced structures and tools to expand your base’s infrastructure and upgrade your mech.

The Riftbreaker also has a crafting system, which means you can gather resources to craft new weapons, upgrades and, items. You can also build an alien research laboratory, which will allow you to analyze samples of the things you find on the planet and then develop blueprints for new inventions.

“Each weapon you craft gets randomized statistics and properties,” Bomak said. “You can also download blueprints for better versions of your weapons, with more potential for truly devastating firepower.”

A key element of the game allows you to drop mini rifts on the map, which you can use to instantly move back to your base. So no matter how far afield you get, you can always jump back home to save yourself, or the entire base.

Those rifts play a major role in the game’s backstory. Earth is barely habitable due to a series of disasters that pushed humanity to look for a new home. Fortunately, scientists created rift technology, artificial wormholes between two distant points in space. They allow humans to instantly teleport to any point in the galaxy. The technology, though, comes with some significant limitations: The further the destination, the more unstable the connection becomes.

“That's when the Riftbreakers come into the picture,” Bomak said. “They are an elite squad of scientists/commandos who jump through those unstable Rifts to distant planets, knowing very well that the portal will close as soon as they're through. The job of a Riftbreaker is to establish a full-sized rift station on the destination planet. That is the only way to stabilize the connection between Earth and a new world to send colonists through.”

On top of the campaign, The Riftbreaker includes a survival mode that has a fun little twist. Streamers can enable a function that allows viewers to interact with the game directly.

“Every couple of minutes, a list of voting options will show up on the screen,” Bomak said. “They will range from things like 'Add/Remove X resources' to full-sized natural disasters, like sending down a tornado on the streamer's base. The voting is handled by our chatbot using very simple commands - !A, !B, and so on. Streaming interaction is entirely optional and can be limited to negative or positive events only.”

You can pick up the game right here on the Epic Game Store when it hits on October 14 and when you do, Bomak has some advice for your first visit to Galatea:

“Pay attention to your energy generation. Make sure you have enough power stored to last through the night. Build multiple layers of walls. Always have a couple of different weapons equipped.”