Top-down games like The Riftbreaker have an upper limit on their aesthetic appeal. Thankfully, this world you’re stuck on is also utterly gorgeous. You think about every move on a much larger scale when success requires persistence and planning. The mission continues, so long as your respawn point exists. There’s no funneling all your resources into one big battle, no risky gambits that could win it all. This single design decision changes the flow of the whole game. It’s only game over if the main HQ building gets destroyed. You just respawn with some items removed, ready to try again. If a wave of enemies breaks through and murders you, it’s not the end yet. To that end, the mission isn’t over until this occurs, so you’ve got to persist in the meantime. Even the two major game modes merely adjust certain parameters within this simple goal. You’re here to open that rift, and survive long enough to do so. Unlike the average RTS game, things aren’t broken up into missions or separate objectives. This deadly equation is where the survival influences bubble up to the surface. How much do you spread out? What do you build first? How can you control the field of battle? You’ve got a ton of options and very little time to choose with. There’s an abundance of raw material scattered about, but you have to be smart about its extraction and dispensation. Here’s where that RTS brain comes in handy. You’ve got time to power up, but not a ton of it. The only concession is they wait a while before really storming the gates, so to speak. But the good ones run out of ammo crazy fast, and your opponents vastly outnumber you. Sure you’ve got a small but significant cache of deadly weapons on hand.
At least in the beginning, you’re in way over your head. Just You And The Deadly HordesĬombat feels frantic, and a little mismatched. It wouldn’t be a proper survival sim, otherwise. If this sounds tough, it absolutely is! But that’s the whole point. You need snappy reflexes for those hordes of aliens, but also an airtight strategy for a balanced, sustainable outpost. You’ve got to push your brain in three very different directions right from the jump. The true challenge is immediately apparent. You’ve got to gather resources, build up your outpost, and keep your defenses in order. Assuming you’re not murdered first, as this new world isn’t terribly friendly. Along with a single AI-powered mech, you’ll build the rift that brings two disparate worlds together. Your role in this story is the advance landing party. Whether this heady blend of genre spices appeals to you is another matter. Of course, you can add RTS elements, why on earth wouldn’t you? I’ve never played a game quite like this in my life, and it’s weird that I haven’t. Of course, you can mix survival sims and twin-stick shooters. The Riftbreaker feels more organic, more sensible. Disparate sections that sort of hang together, the connective tissues all fresh and raw.
Most of the time the results are a sum of their parts. Developers have been taking bold risks with blends of genres for years now.