Some people like to ease into the week, as though dipping toes into a frigid northern sea, and some people Monday Hard by wrapping their arms around an iceberg. Are you the latter kind of bather? Try this on for size, then: Riftborne is a real-time sci-fi grand strategy game that’s controlled using an old-fashioned, “terminal-style” interface.
Seize your silly computer mouse and feed it unto the dog. Where you’re going, there shall be no drag-selects, cursor animations, right-click menus, and all the rest of that piddly frippery you are accustomed to in these modern SO-CALLED “best strategy games“, with their cosseting, 32+ colour visuals that even your dog might be able to understand, assuming you didn’t just kill your dog by feeding her a piece of plastic.
Riftborne is now out in early access. Let me cool your ardour a bit, ASCII fanatics and spreadsheet sickos. Created by Pitio Productions, Riftborne uses AI generation for “some” of its capsule art – that is, the spaceship art you see on the game’s Steam page. This seems a bit ludicrous, given that the project contains barely any illustrations otherwise. I don’t run a small indie studio and I’m not up to speed with current freelance art rates, but surely commissioning those pieces would not be a huge expense. Perhaps it’s something they’ll address following feedback in the course of early access – the developers are hoping to 1.0 the thing in around six months.
As for how it plays right now, “[t]his is not a fast campaign game,” Pitio write on the Steam page. “It is meant to be lived in for a while. A run can unfold over weeks or months as your empire develops and the galaxy around it changes shape. This is the single player foundation for what is planned to become a much larger multiplayer world with real time strategy mechanics and long term planning.
“Riftborne is aimed at players who enjoy learning a dense system, building momentum slowly, and seeing small decisions matter much later,” they go on, later adding that “if you want constant action, rapid unlocks, or a campaign built to be finished in a weekend, this probably will not be your kind of game”.
The current early access build includes procedural galaxies, resource trading on a simulated market, fleet combat involving over 200 kinds of ship, six factions, and different types of star system with specific resource bonuses. Going by the current user reviews, there aren’t many tutorials and the whole thing works like an idle game, at times – create a production order for some starfighters and come back in 30 minutes. If you enjoy the visuals, but don’t have weeks or months to spare, please remove your mouse from your dog’s mouth/other orifice and click on this link to free space exploration game Ascii Sector, which is more digestible. Of course, there’s always Dwarf Fortress.
