Hey Rifters! Our musical artist and sound magician Matthijs Koster compiled all of Rift Riff's music and remastered it for the perfect listening experience outside of the game. It is available on the Steam store page as of NOW. We won't be releasing it on vinyl (yet), but here's a mockup anyway!
The Rift Riff Original Soundtrack is built from the same sonic fabric as the game itself. It all began with a single theme the musical heart of Rift Riff which then unfolded into a collection of tracks, each a variation shaped by different moods, levels, and gameplay dynamics.
Blending ambient soundscapes, hypnotic rhythms, and expressive synth layers, this electronic score moves fluidly between tension and release, harmony and dissonance. Its a soundtrack designed not just to support the game, but to stand on its own as an immersive listening experience.
Disc 1 features a wide-ranging selection of original compositions from the game, offering a diverse musical journey through its world. Disc 2 zooms in with a focused set of alternate takes and variations on the tracks Building Towers and Enemy Wave each reimagined to explore different tonalities and rhythmic approaches. As a bonus, Disc 3 includes a comprehensive soundpack featuring many of the custom-designed sounds created for the game.
And for the completionists among ya'll, we made a bundle with Rift Riff + OST, to get both at a discount. Happy listening, and keep on Rifting! Adriaan, Sim, Matthijs, Franz, Professional Panda

[ 2025-05-30 13:19:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=AJrb-dpicxg;full][/previewyoutube] Hey Rifters! A dome keeper landed on one of the worlds accessible through a rift in Rift Riff. The keeper has long left the facility, but the orchard tree they planted thrives. There must be a reason the keeper thought this was a fertile location to start doing their digging. And this lush world seems to be the perfect place for us to start tapping some juice! We collaborated with Dome Keeper's artist to create this awesome looking artefact in the middle of Rift Riff's world 'Dome'. Suck in the pretty art while you defend your base from monsters in both the Dig and Storm scenarios!
PS: find the little easter egg in this world to complete one of Rift Riff's achievements! HAPPY RIFTING!

[ 2025-05-17 13:01:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Rifters! The games been out for a week now and we just want to take a minute to appreciate all of the wonderful reviews youve been leaving behind: Tower defense is a genre that comes with a lot of baggage, and Rift Riff successfully ditches so many kilo's of unnecessary nonsense, resulting in a game that is incredibly playable jwaap The gameplay strikes a perfect balance between depth and accessibility. It encourages creativity without punishing experimentation. DiasAida Very nice tower defense game, makes me use my brain but doesn't make my head hurt Eevulpix So much charm and joy in the game design, the visuals and audio in this. It's just a happy tower defense, "Otto has joined", he certainly has! Muppetpuppet Between the beautiful art design with smooth movement and satisfying animations, original music and adorable sound effects (Do yourself a favor, turn up the volume), and painstakingly balanced difficulty between the levels, this game is an absolute masterpiece with an entire little world to explore. mollycancook Rift Riff is endlessly charming, with a good bit of challenge as well. The gameplay loop is made even more satisfying with the art style, music, and overall sound design. Who doesnt love it when your protagonist starts humming or making funny noises?? Go play this game!! Cognitive Glitch Were still recovering from the game's release for a bit. Once we have regrouped, well update you with what the future for Rift Riff holds. Currently in the works: - The Rift Riff OST & Soundpack - Better challenge tracking Thanks for playing and reviewing the game! It really helps a lot and supports future development!! Happy rifting! Adriaan, Sim, Franz, Matthijs, and Professional Panda

[ 2025-05-16 15:04:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

New

• Move using mouse. Can be enabled in the game's settings.

Changed

• Improved the graphics of the 'untouched' basecamp.
• Updated Steam plugin.
• Improved various sound and music volumes.
• Improved flower blossoming in Gloves.

Fixed

• Fixes to Japanese translation.
• Fixed being able to set interface scale so small that you couldn't ever get it back to a reasonable scale.... woopsie

Full changelog, including history: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2800900/discussions/0/595148973628484603/

[ 2025-05-16 13:37:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Rifters! We're super thankful to all of you playing and reviewing the game. Thank you thank you thank you! It's wonderful to read through the reviews and see so many of you liking what we're doing here. So here's a small post-release patch. Most importantly, for the completionists among you, we've fixed some bugs that prevented you from being able to 100% all the achievements.
We've also added new visuals for the mini boss 'Sentry', which you will find in Dome > Storm (second scenario).
And then we'd like to remind you again that we go through all the messages on the Steam forums, and we read every review, so if you have any suggestions: please reach out to us. Also, there's a discord where we discuss balancing, go over suggestions for challenges, etc. You can find that here: https://discord.gg/3J4JWhBCkq The full changelog of this and future updates to the game can be found on the Steam forums here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2800900/discussions/0/595148973628484603/ Thanks again for buying and reviewing the game. It helps us a lot with visibility and will support continuing development of Rift Riff. Bye for now! And as always.. GET RIFTINNNNNN!

[ 2025-05-14 13:57:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=-2QpKy6I7HM;full][/previewyoutube] Hey Rifters we JUST released Rift Riff but quickly wanted to highlight a small collaboration with the developers behind Thronefall! It's no secret Rift Riff and Thronefall have similar art styles and fall into the same category of games. We really love Thronefall and suspect you do too! That's why we worked with Grizzly Games to created a bundle, to get both games at a discount, and to create a world heavily inspired by Thronefall's map Sturmklamm. You will find a rift in Rift Riff with the name Keep, available after unlocking the Gatling tower. Enter that one! We hid a little easter egg in there for you to discover. GET RIFTING!

[ 2025-05-09 14:54:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=ePCOuvXU-t0;full][/previewyoutube] After 1,5 years of development, Rift Riff is finally out!!! And just these last 6 months have been particularly exciting for us as we've been playtesting and iterating heavily on the game: producing more rifts, more towers, more monsters, more scenarios, more challenges, more achievements and we're proud to say we didn't cut any ideas and it all made it into this release!
With this release, playing all rifts once will take you 5 hours. But there's a lot more to the game! Completing additional scenarios and challenges will help you unlock more towers, tower upgrades, and companions which time and time again playtests have shown enable more creative tower loadouts and therefore juicier strategies. We genuinely can't wait to see what you all come up with (aka how you'll break the game finding OP tower combo's haha).
Any player should be able to beat most of the scenarios in the first half of the game without too much resistance, but once you unlock the challenges, that's where REAL difficulty will come in. Edge of your seat kind of difficulty. The race to getting the 'completed all challenges' achievement is on?
As always, we are open to all ideas, suggestions, bug reports, and any feedback you may have. Please share them in the Steam Forums or on our Discord server.
We'd like to thank all playtesters for being so generous with their time and guiding us through development. We genuinely couldn't have made it the game it is today without them. They're all in the game's credits! Anyway, if you've read this far: please buy the game & leave an honest review! Maybe even share it with someone who you think might like Rift Riff. If the game does well enough, we will be able to create more worlds, towers, companions, bosses, etc. We'd LOVE to do that, but we can only do it sustainably. Get in and GET RIFTING! Bye for now! Love, Adriaan, Sim, Professional Panda, Matthijs, and Franz

[ 2025-05-09 13:49:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rifters May 9th!!! We're happy to announce that Rift Riff will be releasing in two weeks on Friday, May 9th! We've been working on a final world, with a big bad ancient citadel from eons past. Maybe it's still operable, even?
You can also expect a lot more upgrades, towers, companions, and the necessary balancing of those against all the existing and new enemy waves. New? Why yes! There are completely new second scenarios for all levels, along with new enemies to discover. Let's count it up. On release, Rift Rift will include the following content that should be good for 1015 hours of gameplay:

• 15 worlds with 30 scenarios
• 30 challenge variants; one for each scenario
• 14 towers further exploited with 6 types of overpowered upgrades
• 25 monsters, including some one-of-a-kind boss monsters
• 6 companions to keep you company
• 36 Achievements for those 100%ers

We can't wait to get this thing shipped, and we have plenty of ideas for post-launch content that will be fantastic additions the Rift Riff universe.
- Adriaan, Sim, Franz, Matthijs, and Professional Panda

[ 2025-04-25 14:15:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Rifters, Ya'll probably know by now how important Steam Next Fest is for small devs teams like us! So please play the heck out of the demo and wishlist the game it helps in reaching more people who may love the game as well, in getting us more feedback and prioritizing development of remaining features, and it helps us get ready for the game's launch in April.
And in case you missed it: we JUST added companions to the Next Fest demo so that you can play around with it and tell us how it feels!
We look forward to a fun and hectic week! If you need us, for anything, reach out to us through the Steam Forums. <3 - Adriaan, Sim, Franz, Matthijs, and Professional Panda

[ 2025-02-24 15:29:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Rifters! We just updated the demo and added companions! You can now use a prism to unlock the first companion: Otto. This little guy follows you around shooting things. Pew pew.
We added companions partly because many of you played the demo and gave us the feedback you were missing a bit of action with the player character. Companions are only part of the answer to that; we have another feature in mind that we'll share with you later.
We've so far designed 6 companions that'll make it in the final game, but we'll reveal more at a later point. Have fun with Otto! - Sim, Adriaan, Franz, Matthijs, and Professional Panda

[ 2025-02-21 15:15:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Rifters! Localisation just hit the demo build! Which means the game is now available in 14 languages. Good luck defending your basecamp in your preferred language :D

[ 2025-02-12 11:51:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Rifters! We're super excited to announce that our new demo is now live! We've worked our asses off to get this demo into your library. It's the first hour of the game + a bunch of challenges if you really want to get your hands dirty :D
In this demo:

• 8 worlds
• 6 tower types
• 1 upgrade type
• 10 monster types
• 8 challenges

This will certainly be enough to give you an idea for where the full release is headed. As we speak, we're making more worlds, more towers, more enemies, more scenarios, more challenges, more, more, more.

NOTE

Localisation will drop on the 13th. So if you fancy playing in a language other than English, hang tight!

[ 2025-02-10 15:59:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're looking for people to play Rift Riff and help us understand what parts of the game need improvement. At this stage in the game's development, a screen recording of the game paired with your voice (no face necessary) is the only feedback useful to us. If you're open to that, we'll send you a Steam Playtest key for the latest full version of Rift Riff, include you in the in-game credits, and send you a key of Rift Riff as a thank you (should you want one). Sign up to playtest here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2I12Gc9X1iCB3toLAB0maFnZ0HJwqVUjIlqRpxrMhTjV85w/viewform If you have questions, we can answer those on our newly setup Rift Riff Discord server: https://discord.gg/3J4JWhBCkq We look forward to seeing Rift Riff in your hands!

[ 2025-01-13 15:30:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! We're making a new demo that we'll be releasing soon. We just took the current demo offline, because we feel we made too much progress in mechanics, worlds, quality of life improvements and over-world progression, to just patch the latest demo. There are so many small and large things we can't wait to share with you! We're now working on more levels, more levels and.. more levels. Once we've tied it all together we will publish the new demo and update ya'll here! NOTE: If you're a streamer/content creator, reach out to us for full access to our current build!

[ 2024-12-16 08:53:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

New currency alert! While Juice is being sucked out of the ground to feed your insatiable tower construction lust, Prisms will be granted to you after completing a level:
These prisms can then unlock new towers, features and upgrades at shops scattered throughout the over-world. Youll need these unlocks to broaden your playing style and enable different strategies and tower combos as you delve further into the later levels.
See you in the next announcement!

[ 2024-11-28 20:05:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

In Rift Riff, your Basecamp is not just an object you have to defend. It can actually do things: It shoots, it generates resources, and it now has a shield! Your Basecamp has a certain amount of health, which will regenerate in between waves. Its shield works just the same, and will protect the Basecamp as long as it's in tact. When it breaks, it explodes, which will deal damage to all monsters surrounding it. After that, the Basecamp revives its health to 50% and is ready for battle again!

[ 2024-10-28 08:58:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

One of the key differences between Rift Riff and other tower defense games is that Juice, the build and upgrade resource in Rift Riff, is generated during waves and not simply granted to you after you complete a wave. Story-wise, the juice-generating towers are actually the very reason the enemies are attacking you... but I won't be going into the game's lore here. Because juice is generated during waves, you'll find yourself going into the wave with one plan but restrategize into another: more and more monsters enter the battlefield, more juice flows in, and you have more and more build options.
How much juice is generated each wave depends on how many juice-generating towers you have. Those kinds of towers can only be built on these different-looking tower bases that have a bit of energy flowing out of them. We're currently calling that class of towers 'Defensive towers' but that name may change before the game comes out.
Your Basecamp generates juice, as well as the towers with the fitting name 'Juicers'. There's a few more towers that generate juice, but we're still designing and improving those. One of those is an armored well that doubles as a bunker with a lot of health, but doesn't generate as much juice as its alternatives as a result.
One feature in Rift Riff that feels really good is that destroying towers fully refunds the costs of both building and upgrading that tower. This means that after barely surviving a wave, you can refund a bunch of towers and restrategize your defense based on the incoming enemies.
That should explain the main build resource in Rift Riff! If you have any questions, drop 'm in the comments.

[ 2024-09-17 16:59:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! Thanks for playing the demo! We're collecting feedback, fixing bugs, and improving the demo continuously. Here's everything we've updated since the initial demo release:

New

• Shops in the overworld show a swirly thingy when there're something you can buy there.
• Added a wave counter to in-game interface.
• Added a settings button to the pause menu.

Improved

• Improved tower targeting. It's the same algorithm (the enemy closest to its target) but more reliable.
• Made both scenarios in Pondonia a tiny bit easier to beat.
• Improved edge colliders of Pondonia to reduce the chances of getting stuck with the player character.
• Made enemies less likely to get stuck behind towers.
• Differentiated tower base types (basecamp, defensive, and offensive) more from each other.
• Slower projectile graphics better match their range.
• Scenario description now also highlights when a scenario is still locked.
• Minor improvements to English translations. (Other languages will have to wait for now, sorry!)
• Various minor interface improvements.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed flashing cloud reflections in the ponds of Pondonia.
• Fixed the in-game interface disappearing on with multiple monitors setups on Windows.
• Removed unused tower bases in the Beach level.
• Fixed loading getting stuck in the overworld when trying to escape during the loading screen.
• Fixed option not being shown as selected when running into a build inspector with an input direction.
• Fixed various small bugs relating to pausing the game.

Please let us know on the forums here if you stumble upon anything we should improve or fix. Happy Rifting, Sim & Adriaan

[ 2024-07-31 10:57:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

We launched our demo! It contains 3 scenarios in 2 worlds, a few towers to play around with, and a lot of pesky monsters to destroy. Can you defeat all challenges and unlock all upgrades? We would very much like your feedback on all aspects of the demo! Just leave us a comment here :)

[ 2024-07-25 13:29:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're working our butts off creating level candidates for the demo :D Here are some sketches for biomes:
The one we felt complemented the green and pink ones we've already made:
And the 'end' result:
The relaxed vibe may be misleading though :P It's probably going to be a very challenging level.

[ 2024-07-04 08:30:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

We finally got to creating an over-world and connecting the levels we've made thus far. It's literally an in-between world, enabling you to jump between rifts as you progress through the game. A riff....of rifts, one might say. We'll, off course, be adding more levels, but this is what it currently looks like:

We also added a pickup at the end of each level:
with which you can shop for new towers and upgrades (and more?) in the over-world, at this obelisks:
looking forward to testing and refining all these things! Until the next one!

[ 2024-06-06 11:39:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our friend Aran (part of Sokpop) just released clickyland! It's a really fun, clever, and totally underpriced tower defense game / village builder where clicks are your main resource. Check it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2751050/ Fun GIFs from his steam page:

[ 2024-06-04 07:42:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! We gave the UI some love. We decided it should live in hi res space instead of pixel land, because we want to be able to use normal fonts (legibility of pixel fonts is meehh) and 'cause it ended up actually looking better!
We redesigned the icons that represent the towers to be more intuitive.
Costs are now shown in numbers instead of dots.. which was somewhat impractical.
We added a 'spawn point inspector' so that you can now make informed decisions.
And the upgrade icons got a small overhaul after the feedback we've received on the previous ones.
We also simplified the HUD. Left is an icon indicating what's going in the world (here, it show enemies are currently spawning) the number in the middle is the amount of resources coming your way, and the number to the right is the amount of resources currently available.
Next up is making an over-world/level selector with the ability to configure your experience (i.e. choose tower setup, challenges, unlock things, et cetera). Bye!

[ 2024-05-23 10:19:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Helleeeuuu. We're making some exciting progress in game design! It's Adriaan's department, so I can't speak to the details of what went on in his brain :P But I can show you some of the screen shots I made during testing and explain what's new. First off, I turned more of our tower designs into pixel assets, and added them to our test level. Here are most of them:
We designed a couple of placeholder enemies, and created larger waves:
And We've put assets on spawn points, so it's clear the enemies spawn out of the Rifts:

We've also added indicators to spawn points, to make building decisions more strategic.
And we made a decision to have resource generators remain inactive when built during a wave, to nudge more towards saving resources for 'engine building' rather than stressing optimizing the exact moment the generator is built. (That's the best I can do at explaining it in 1 sentence :P You'll see what I mean in the demo :D). Here's a gif of the new generator!
More in the next update!

[ 2024-05-09 06:56:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ola! Sim here again, working on the art of Rift Riff. A small update/catch up on the tower designs we're trying out. We're still testing all these elements, but I think it's cool to share some of the progress we've made with the towers. We started off with dummy's for testing game flow and animations.
Then I made an overview of designs and upgrade shapes we may need.
I then saw everything was pretty stale and needed some character in order to really have fun with it. I went back to the drawing board and drew up some designs.
And I'm now in the process of turning these into pixel designs and creating animations:
On to the next! :)

[ 2024-04-25 07:43:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there! Sim here. I work on the art of Rift Riff. Thanks for following and wishlisting! It's really motivating and helps us spend more time on the game :) I want to use this place to share some short, things-in-development-right-now, stuff. But before I do that, I think it'd be cool to give some quick background from the first 100 days of art creation. 1 to catch you up to speed, and 2 because my brain can't handle starting somewhere in the middle :D Here's a summary of how we created the biomes you see in the screen shots. Let's go! First I sketched the things I knew for certain were going to populate the worlds: enemies, towers, main character.
Then I put them on an isometric grid (the perspective of all Rift Riff worlds) to quickly find out it was... boring.
It needed some objects with more height, like rocks and hills, which brought more atmosphere.
So I started a sketch in pixels, instead of the line art Id previously made.
Turned that into some game assets.
Placed it in the level Adriaan created for testing.
And added shadows and improved the colors further. This was a nice start off point to make more.
So I took the same process and applied it to other environment concepts.
And voila, that's how our first few biomes came to be :)

[ 2024-04-12 09:49:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are happy and proud to announce Rift Riff, a new minimalistic tower defense game with concise gameplay, a light story, and vibrant pixel art!

Progress

Were currently knee-deep into making Rift Riff and will be sharing our progress with you regularly here on Steam. We have already come a long way in setting a baseline for gameplay, story, art style and music, but theres a lot that has still to be decided and made. Things like level designs, enemy types, tower types, bosses, upgrades, tier lists, modifiers, over-world, plot twists Wed love to keep you posted on our progress here on Steam and hope to receive feedback as to what to explore next.

Very Indie

Rift Riff is Adriaans first game using the Godot game engine, graphic designer Sims first pixel art game, and music composer and sound designer Matthijs first game ever. We think a team setup like this will take unique approaches and different perspectives on game conventions that will rub off onto the game. We expect a juicy, small, and casual but tactical game experience, with a light storyline, vibrant visuals, and beautiful music. Were *very* excited to show you more!

Currently Pre-alpha

Weve so far made a few levels and found some fun and interesting gameplay, but theres a lot more work to be done before we can get it into your hands. Mainly balancing the towers and enemies, coming up with a few more tower and enemy types, more juicy art and animations, a meta game and an over-world, extended UI, some essential technical features, steam deck support, and many more things. As of right now, we are working on a solid demo that will be hella fun (we hope :D).

Demo soon, full release later

In short, were planning to release a demo in a few months and do the games full release later this year. Theres also a few Steam festivals were hoping the game to be part of, such as the Tower Defense Fest and the Steam Next Fest. Wishlist and follow the game to make sure you dont miss the demo & release! ttyl, Adriaan, Sim, and Matthijs

[ 2024-03-25 10:52:30 CET ] [ Original post ]