EXOR Studios and The Riftbreaker
Last year, EXOR Studios took part in the 2020 GWB Game Awards by entering their title The Riftbreaker. Among hundreds of entrants, The Riftbreaker was one of the titles that stood out the most and so we wanted to talk more to the team to learn more about the game and their studio.
Located in Szczecin, Poland, EXOR studios started out as many indies do — as a modding group, before growing to become a fully-fledged studio. We talked to their Chief Operating Officer, Pawel Lekki, who was kind enough to answer our questions and tell us more about the studio.
For those who might not know much about the game, The Riftbreaker is based around the core tenants of base building, exploration, defense and action. In this game you take the role of an elite commando as you control a mecha-suit and attempt to survive against countless enemies. The Riftbreaker stands out not just because of its gorgeous visuals, but also the way it marries multiple systems and genres so seamlessly. It was also for this reason that we took the game to demo at the WePlay convention in Shanghai last year, completely for free.
If you’re interested in following the game, we suggest wishlisting it on Steam as well as following them on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
Studio Background
GWB: For those who may not be so familiar with EXOR Studios, can you tell us a little about the studio? What is the history, work ethic and philosophy of the studio?
EXOR Studios: EXOR started in 2003 as an unofficial modding group working on Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2 mods. In 2007 we officially incorporated the company as EXOR Studios and in 2008 released our first debut title — DIPRIP (a Source Engine total modification). At that point we decided to switch to developing our games using our own tech, and that’s how we started what would later be called The Schmetterling engine. Our first commercial title was Zombie Driver in 2009 which we re-released in 2012 as Zombie Driver HD, which was effectively a sequel. After that we started working on X-Morph: Defense — a unique tower defense / twin-stick shooter hybrid X-Morph: Defense was released in August 2017 after five years of development and released a lot of praise from both players and reviewers. It is that game that laid the foundations for The Riftbreaker.
GWB: We saw some great games from Polish studios this year at the GWB game awards — The Riftbreaker included. What’s your feeling about the game dev scene in Poland right now?
ES: Gamedev in Poland is stronger than ever with some of the most anticipated games coming from our fellow developers like CD-Projekt, Techland or 11bit Studios. There’s also a literal explosion of new studios popping up now and then. I think that the industry is becoming very mature in Poland with a full spectrum of big, small and Indie companies.
The Game
GWB: What’s your pitch for the game? As in, how do you describe it to people who have no idea what it is? What are some good reference points in games or other media?
The Riftbreaker is a novel mashup of base-building, strategy and hack & slash games. In The Riftbreaker your task is to travel through a one-way portal to a distant planet with the goal of building up a base that’s going to support a two-way portal back to Earth, so that you can go back home and so people can colonize the planet.
Some people describe The Riftbreaker as a mix of Starcraft, Diablo and Factorio. I would also add Alienation, Helldivers and Stardew Valley as some of our references.
GWB: It straddles a lot of genres — RTS, hack and slash, survival, RPG. How would you describe the balance of these different elements?
It’s a very free form mix of these genres and their balance depends a lot on the player’s game style. The game provides a lot of freedom in terms of how much you want to focus on base building, exploration, or direct combat. We didn’t think as much in terms of genres as in trying to provide interesting gameplay that makes sense in the game’s world. We wanted to provide as much agency to the player as possible. There’s a lot of things that can be done directly by the player or automated by expanding base construction.
GWB: The Riftbreaker was one of the most graphically impressive titles we saw in the 2020 GWB awards. How did you settle on the visual design for The Riftbreaker?
Our initial goal was to create a lush, colorful world which the player would like to explore and to be in. We wanted to use high saturation, intense colors and contrast to compliment the intense survival gameplay and homey base building. We also use a lot of bioluminescence to highlight the exotic nature of the planet. We take a lot of inspiration from coral reef documentaries as well as sci-fi movies such as The Avatar.
Development
GWB: How did you first start working on the game? What was your original concept?
We had a very long brainstorming process at the company, before we settled on the concept for The Riftbreaker. During the process everyone at the company was able to pitch in ideas and we created a total of 73 different game concepts, before everyone unanimously voted that we want to work on The Riftbreaker.
GWB: What has the development process been like?
The development process is very iterative, and we work a lot with our community for gameplay refinement and to double-check some of our ideas. We usually introduce new content or gameplay elements and then iterate on them until we are happy with the result.
One of the biggest challenges in early development was finding the right balance between enabling full automation versus manual tweaking of every gameplay aspect. Our early gameplay was a bit closer to Factorio with tedious base management, but as the action and exploration components grew bigger, we decided that it doesn’t make sense to micro-manage some aspects like ammo production. It was initially managed separately for each of the 8 ammo types, with separate production costs, production quotas etc.
Later on we decided to simplify the process so the player only has to construct ammo production facilities, provide power and resources and the rest of the process is handled automatically.
GWB: Did your previous development experience (on X-Morph and your other titles) help at all with the development of the game?
Yes. The Riftbreaker is largely built on the foundations of X-Morph: Defense. It is actually an evolution of that gameplay style in which you can directly construct your base and at the same time directly fight your enemies. The Riftbreaker is a much more complex and much bigger game and it builds on these base principles.
GWB: What are you the key parts of your future plans and roadmap for the game?
We are planning to start work on adding online coop to the game after the release as well as a bunch of other features that we won’t be able to add in version 1.0. Some of those include extended mech customization, a progressive survival mode and much richer base decoration mechanics.
Lessons Learnt
GWB: What, if anything, have you learnt from developing this game?
We learned that it pays off to make the game engine as customizable as possible. We were very positively surprised to see a vibrant modding scene building up around the free Riftbreaker Prologue. We wanted to enable easy modding, but we didn’t expect it to blow up just after releasing a demo of the game.
GWB: What advice would you give to other indie developers approaching a similar type of game?
If you are aiming for a mix of multiple genres, remember that all of them have to work well on the base level otherwise they will sink your game. If one of the elements is underperforming, then it will drag the entire game down. Focus on the base gameplay, refine it, and then start adding features and complexity.
GWB: Thank you for your time
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