The Riftbreaker: The Action/RTS Hybrid You’ve Been Waiting For?

It’s a niche alright, but over the years there’s been a number of games that attempted to meld action combat with RTS-style base building. Some readers may be old enough to have played Battlezone when it came out back in 1998, and there’s been some modern takes on the Action/RTS hybrid like Warshift and Natural Selection II (which is still worth checking out if you haven’t already) in recent years, but there haven’t been many titles that have truly taken off. The Riftbreaker, which had a fresh trailer for the game’s weapons drop today, is looking to change that.

In The Riftbreaker, you’re sent to an alien world with a mission to construct a portal back to earth. You’ll accomplish this by using a powerful mech that functions as both base-builder and alien-smasher, using it to slowly spread automated mining facilities across the planet, all the while discovering new locations, researching upgrades, and destroying the local flora and fauna for their tasty resources.

There’s a playable demo for The Riftbreaker you can find on its Steam page, if you’re curious to see how it plays. While the demo right now is basically the game’s first tutorial, it gives a good overview of the various systems and how they’ll probably play come release. The base building is satisfying, and combat feels smooth and skill-based. The exploration aspect of the game is also one of its selling points, however, and it remains to be seen how fun it is hiking around Galatea 37.

Developed by Exor Studios, The Riftbreaker is using Exor’s Schmetterling 2.0 engine, which was previously used to create X-Morph: Defense and Zombie Driver. The engine looks great, boasting bright, colorful graphics and sweet explosions. The previous two games on the engine are similar top down, action-driven shoot-all-the-stuff type titles, and both look fairly similar to The Riftbreaker. In my opinion, it’s always a good sign when a developer hones in on a style and works to perfect it (think FromSoftware), and I have high hopes for The Riftbreaker.

The Riftbreaker is slated to release on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X and S, and PC via Steam sometime in Fall of this year. Have you checked out the playable demo yet? Let us know what you think of The Riftbreaker in the comments!