The end of the year is just around the corner, and so are the annual Steam Awards. This event highlights the most significant achievements in the gaming industry every year. While most categories focus on crowning the best new gameplay, storytelling, and technology marvels, one is slightly different. The Labor of Love category is dedicated to older games that have been released in years prior and are still receiving improvements and expansions to this day.

The Riftbreaker has received a great deal of changes and improvements over the course of the year. The seven major updates we introduced allowed you to:

• Explore the Crystal Caverns biome and discover over 30 new species of fauna and flora in World Expansion II, using the new cave excavation mechanics.
• Save the world once more, battling the demons of your past in Into the Dark story DLC.
• Enjoy the new level of graphics in the game with the introduction of Volumetric Lighting.
• Revisit the biomes in the original story campaign after the addition of the new, atmospheric map tiles. More than 20 new tiles have been added to the map generation algorithm for the Tropical Zone, Radioactive Desert, Acidic Plains, and the Volcanic Region biomes.
• Give your bases a makeover with the introduction of the new decorative structures from the Summer Update. You can find 148 brand-new structures in total, and completely change the look of your base.
• See performance improvements thanks to the optimizations of our game engine’s resource management systems and new rendering techniques. The Introduction of Tiled Deferred Shading alone got you an average 10% GPU performance boost
• Got to experience community-suggested quality-of-life improvements, such as the new, compact building menu.

World Expansion III is in development, bringing you access to another Galatean biome, setting new challenges in the story campaign, and expanding the technology tree even further.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2506610/The_Riftbreaker_World_Expansion_III/

We’re reworking the very foundations of the game to bring you the long-promised co-op mode. We report our progress in the periodic Status Report articles, which you can find here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3381659291157676103
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3701435238673426124?l=english
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3657536564724315072?l=english
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3657539010840327508
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3752120943822713623

The development of the Co-Op mode for The Riftbreaker is one of the most complex quests we have ever undertaken, but our progress is tangible. We have even started a closed beta test with our community members to test the networking aspect of the game. The test is limited to old-school PVP gameplay at the moment, the data it provides us is invaluable for the project as a whole. If you would like to participate in our test (which will evolve into a fully-fledged Co-Op test over time), you can do so by signing up here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3803913612004075220?l=english

Our plans do not end there, as we aim to reinvigorate the endgame with the option to generate additional missions. You will be able to explore the planet and grow your bases even further. We will also add the economy management screen and rework the mod system. You can see what we’re planning on our roadmap:

If you think The Riftbreaker deserves to be called a ‘Labor of Love’, please nominate us for this year’s Steam Awards. It would be a great honor for us and a crowning achievement of what is soon to be six years of very hard work.

Thank you,
EXOR Studios