- What's next for EXOR Studios? - 11 September 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/2a0186c704696c6ec17d45f7144bce3b.webm?t=1788513894 If you take a look at the comments sections for our articles as of late, you will notice that the same handful of questions keep turning up: What’s next for The Riftbreaker? Is there more content coming? When? Although we have been answering all those questions one at a time, we have never actually put together a structured Q&A. Today, we are going to fix this mistake and go through the list of most frequently asked questions in detail. We hope that by summarizing our answers in one article, we can set your expectations for the future and clarify where we stand right now. Let’s start with the question we get most often. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/dbe0751db4b37bf787e3b3aff7eeb84e.webm?…
- Mod Spotlight: Rift Exploration Defense Industry revisited - 28 August 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! Today, we want to shine a light on a mod we first mentioned back in 2024: Killtech’s Rift Exploration Defense Industry, or REDI. Back then, the mod was just getting started, but it already showed a lot of promise. Two years later, it has gone far beyond what we expected. REDI is now almost a complete overhaul of the game, and making it took an incredible amount of work. We reached out to Killtech for some insights so we could share what it’s like to play REDI now. Click the image above to get the mod or install it via the in-game mod browser! Killtech started working on his mod because he enjoyed The Riftbreaker, but thought the economy did not exactly hold up during a longer campaign. Once your base has power and resource production set up, you barely have to do anything else. Killtech thought that it was meaningful enough for survival, but left him wanting more whe…
- Trailer_final_6_better_7_fixed_4_4k.mp4 - 7 August 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! The title of today’s article is not a mistake - that’s a typical filename for an EXOR Studios trailer in the final stages of its production. Looking at our gameplay trailers, you’d never expect that their production takes a long time - it’s just a couple of gameplay clips stitched together, after all. However, the opposite is true. Our trailers are a result of a long process that is a bit messy at times, but always very fun and definitely more interesting than the file name suggests. It's also a process that makes the game itself better in some unexpected ways. This article will talk about gameplay trailers only. We have a couple of CG trailers out there, but the workflow is completely different in their case. Our very first gameplay trailer for The Riftbreaker. What you can see in the video is pretty much EVERYTHING we had in the game at that point. If you pay atten…
- The Evolution of The Riftbreaker Graphics - 23 July 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! Our game has changed a lot since it came out in 2021. Over the past five years, we've added a lot of new content and features for you to enjoy. The Metallic Valley, Crystal Caverns, Fungal Swamp, and Cryo Field biomes bring more variety to the original four biomes. We've also added hundreds of new technology items to help you take on the challenges in these areas. The expanded endgame campaign gives you something new to work toward after finishing the main story. And of course, we can't forget multiplayer mode. It took us a bit longer than planned, but it's become a big reason why many of you still play. These updates are easy to spot on the release calendar. But there's another change, or a series of changes, that's harder to pinpoint on our development roadmap: the graphics. Today, we want to give you a quick look at how the graphics in The Riftbreaker have evolved…
- The Rules Behind the Guns - 10 July 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! In the past few weeks, we’ve shared some of our design choices and how your feedback has shaped The Riftbreaker. You’ve seen that being a designer means making creative decisions while working within the limits of the game’s world and genre, and giving you what you expect. Today, we want to discuss one of our toughest challenges with every World Expansion: designing Mr. Riggs’ weapons. Combat is a big part of what makes this game unique. Our goal is to let you feel powerful while still keeping the game challenging. In this article, we’ll go over the rules, limits, and ideas we use when creating new weapons for The Riftbreaker. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/70daeb4508f3583a826fd22c9bb2b213.webm?t=1756478584 Since there are dozens of enemy creature types in The Riftbreaker, we made sure to give you a lot of toys to dea…
- Players vs. Developers: What We Learned - 26 June 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! As game developers, we have the incredible pleasure of building games that we would want to play and sharing them with millions of people around the world to enjoy. As awesome as that is, we are often quite anxious about every new release. After all, the release day is always the ultimate test for the game - not only when it comes to the technical side, but also from the game design standpoint. Luckily, playtesting exists, and players are usually more than happy to play the game early and share feedback. This allows us to fix the vast majority of serious errors, but also reveals that real players play the game very differently from developers. Today, we would like to share some things we observed when watching you play the game - what we saw in live playtests, streams, YouTube videos, and co-op sessions. Some of these things really were eye-opening! https://shared.ak…
- Design is All About Choices - 12 June 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! It is often said that good game design is largely invisible. It subtly affects your decisions and gives you a sense of direction, without many obvious clues. We do not mean to say that painting ledges yellow is necessarily wrong. On the contrary, overthinking simple scenarios may complicate them beyond what's necessary. Today, however, we won't be talking about simple scenarios. It's the complex moments that truly allow a developer to create something memorable. In this article, we will examine a couple of moments from The Riftbreaker's campaign that posed a challenge for us. We will explain what we wanted to achieve through our design, and show you what we didn't want you to notice. Warning - spoilers ahead! THE PROLOGUE https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/9c35527885aadc10851e04731997186d.webm?t=1756478584 Even in the pro…
- Optimization in The Riftbreaker: What It Takes and What It Costs - 29 May 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! We often mention optimization in our articles, release notes, and other interactions with you. It is one of the pillars of programming. It is usually not a problem to program the computer to do something for you. It is much more of an issue to make the computer do what you want quickly, without using 100% of CPU/GPU/RAM while at it. The Riftbreaker is a collection of thousands of such features. Making sure they all play nice with each other often takes more time than developing the feature in the first place. In today’s article, we would like to show you that optimization comes in many forms and is never an afterthought but an integral part of the development process. https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/780310/extras/640734b237241b553735350555b6f355.webm?t=1756478584 Just like you strive to optimize your bases, we are constantly fightin…
- Small Details We're Proud Of - 15 May 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! There is an old saying in the game industry: “Getting the last 10% done requires 90% of the total effort.” This “proverb*” essentially says that the final layer of polish for any given game is a difficult, demanding process. The game needs to hold its own without any additional fluff, but the attention to detail and subtle features make the difference between a mid game and something special. During the final phase of production, developers often come up with a ton of small details that bring the game world to life. It was no different in The Riftbreaker's case. Today, we would like to highlight some small features that often go unnoticed but play an essential role in shaping the game's atmosphere. *The word ‘proverb’ implies the existence of ‘noobverb’, and I find it amusing Where the Wild Wind Blows One feature we are particularly proud of is our dynamic vegetation…
- Changes We Made Thanks To You - 1 May 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! We have always said that keeping in touch with you, our players, is one of the most important things we can do as game developers. Publishing our thoughts consistently, weekly, opens avenues for constructive discussion and allows us to plan for new features and content. In fact, over the course of The Riftbreaker’s history, we have added, removed, and modified countless things in the game thanks to you. Some of those features turned out to be the best parts of the game. Today, we would like to highlight our personal top picks for features we added thanks to our community at various points in The Riftbreaker’s history. Click-And-Drag Walls A closer look at the first version of our defensive walls from the Riftbreaker World Editor. All the individual wall pieces were 2x2 structures back then. Wider wall pieces were supposed to reduce the number of structures you have t…
- Dedicated Server Setup Guide - 23 April 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! Long time no see! We apologize for the radio silence these past couple of weeks, but our plans have been thwarted by various issues beyond our control. We're happy to let you know that things are back on track, and our regular content schedule should resume without much issue. We are grateful for your patience. Many of you have already started using our Dedicated Server app. It works just fine for most people on its default settings, but it is not exactly “headless”. The app still shows a simplified UI that lets you configure basic gameplay options. In some cases, this is a problem, especially if you want to control the server fully remotely. While we do offer a Command Line Interface (CLI), it’s not exactly trivial to figure out how to configure the app, especially since it is still our custom-built game engine. Today, we want to give you a crash course on how to se…
- The Riftbreaker Hotfix for Windows Update KB5086672, April 2nd, 2026. - 2 April 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! We have just released an emergency hotfix for severe performance and game cursor update issues that were caused by the recent Windows Update KB5086672 (Windows 25h2). The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, April 2nd, 2026. Changelog: Changes: fixed severe performance and in-game cursor update issues caused by Windows Update KB5086672 (Windows 25h2) fixed mission name display for missions locations found using the Planetary Scanner in Open Campaign Mode. This fix only works for freshly generated missions. Thank you for all the feedback so far, keep it coming! EXOR Studios
- The Riftbreaker Maintenance Update, March 26th, 2026. - 26 March 2026
UPDATE: - These changes are now live on the default branch of the game. Hello Riftbreakers! We hope you've been having a lot of fun with the World Expansion IV Update! We're happy with the current state of the game, but it doesn't mean our work stops there - we still have a lot of things we can fix and improve! Today, we are bringing our Experimental branch back to life. This is a special branch where we test our upcoming patches in preparation for their official release, usually a couple of days later. This Experimental Release is available to everyone on an opt-in basis. Please be aware that things might not work as intended, and you may encounter problems. If you don’t want to take any risks, please wait for the public release of this update. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe. With all thes…
- The Riftbreaker's explosive blend of co-op base building and Diablo-style action is free to try right now - 7 March 2026
A gorgeous blend of base building and ARPG, The Riftbreaker manages to bring its numerous component parts together into a slick and rewarding co-op game with plenty of polish. It just got a whole lot bigger with the launch of the clinical-sounding 'World Expansion IV' update, which adds a new biome and a fresh game mode designed for more advanced players. To celebrate, developer Exor Studios is letting you and your friends jump in for free this weekend, and it's at a deep discount if you like what you find. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Become a sentient AI in one of the most laser-focused strategy games I've ever played, Heart of the Machine Slay the Spire 2 dev Mega Crit is "totally blown away" by its half-million player peak, but it's another indie triumph Hytale founder Simon Collins-Laflamme does not "expect modders to carry the game for us"
- The Riftbreaker Hotfix, March 6th, 2026. - 6 March 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! We have just published a patch that will help you with the following problems: The Riftbreaker Hotfix, March 6th, 2026, EXE: 1179 DATA: 837 changelog: Fixed crashing issues with the Cryo Fields Survival mission on Easy difficulty. Meteors, stalactites and ice rocks weather events have been added to precache and should no longer cause stutters. Supercoolant Refinery lvl 2 and 3 have been added to the Survival Mode research tree. Ionizer lvl 2 and 3 have been added to the Survival Mode research tree. Loot added to all frospore mushrooms. They now yield rewards for cultivation. Added a missing tree species to the cultivation saplings list. Added the blue Crystal formation from the Cryo Fields to the Cultivation saplings list. Fixed switched icon names for frospore mushrooms skins 1 and 2. Special Into the Dark bioanomaly added to precache and should no longer cause stut…
- It's Here! World Expansion IV Free Update - Open Campaign + Cryo Fields Biome - 5 March 2026
If you want a TL;DR of this article, this commentary trailer will give you all the essentials in a nutshell. Hello Riftbreakers! We are very pleased to announce that the new World Expansion IV Update is now live! We have just released a huge, free content update for The Riftbreaker! It features the highly anticipated World Expansion IV, including the brand-new Cryo Fields biome, as well as an entirely new way to play the game - the Open Campaign mode. This update brings many changes and improvements to the game. We might be a little biased, but this artwork hits all the right notes for us. All the features of the World Expansion IV Update are available both in solo and co-op play. If you want to test the co-op mode, please make sure that all players are on the same version of the game. You can check the build number at the bottom of any menu screen in the game. This is also important if…
- We Have a Launch Date, and a New Experimental Update is Now Live! - 26 February 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! We have some good news for you today! The Riftbreaker World Expansion IV will be released on Thursday, March 5th, 2026! This free update brings you an entirely new way to play the game in the form of the Open Campaign mode, a new biome to explore, and new buildings to expand your logistical and defensive options. In just one week, it’s all going to be in your hands. Let us remind you what awaits you in this update: Open Campaign Mode If we had to describe this game mode in one phrase, it would be “freedom of choice.” In Open Campaign, you decide where you want to start your adventure on Galatea 37: chilling in the Tropical Zone, or fighting for your dear life from the first minutes in the Volcanic Area. All the biomes are available right from the get-go. There are no dialogues, no story-based locks, or objectives to tell you what to do next. Your only task is to buil…
- Cryo Fields Creature Gallery - 12 February 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! In this week’s article, we are going to take a look at the (literal) meat and (figurative) potatoes of the Cryo Fields biome - the creatures that inhabit the area. The local fauna has adapted to the cold in various ways, often increasing its overall resistance to external threats in general. This, of course, means that Ashley and Mr. Riggs are going to have their hands full trying to defend their Cryo Fields outposts from hordes of attackers. Let’s take a look at the creatures that you will face in battle in the free World Expansion IV update. You can use the buttons on the sides of images to cycle between the regular, Alpha, and Ultra strains of these creatures. This will allow you to familiaraize yourself with your new best friends. Colgan A small. but deadly short-range attacker. Colgans always travel in packs, using the numbers advantage to hunt much larger creat…
- Cryo Fields - A Harsh New Biome Coming in World Expansion IV - 6 February 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! Welcome to the Cryo Fields! We have bloodthirsty proto-Kermons, lakes of supercoolant that will destroy any untreated materials, and trouble with power generation. You're gonna love it here! World Expansion IV is getting closer, and with it comes a brand new biome to explore. Cryo Fields are part of a free update for all The Riftbreaker players and are designed as a new mid-game challenge with a strong focus on survival, expansion, and tough trade-offs. This is not a beginner-friendly location. Cryo Fields are meant to test how well you can adapt your base-building and logistics to extreme conditions. If you do survive the harsh conditions, you will find great views, plenty of resources and lots of hidden treasures! What Are the Cryo Fields Cryo Fields are located in the northern regions of Galatea 37 and are defined by extremely low temperatures, dropping as low as…
- The Riftbreaker Experimental Hotfix, January 30th, 2026. - 30 January 2026
Hello Riftbreakers! We have just released a tiny hotfix for the experimental branch. It fixes a bug that caused the users without access to DLC content to crash whenever they generated a map in a DLC biome in the Open Campaign mode. There are no gameplay changes or any other fixes in this build. EXOR Studios
