Riftborne is a terminal-based space strategy game where you build fleets, wage factional wars, and manage espionage to expand across the galaxy. The game emphasizes real-time decision-making—raiding for resources, hiring assassins, and deploying spies—with enough depth to reward learning its systems without constant tutorials or distractions. It appeals to strategy players who enjoy the opacity of classic 4X games and want meaningful, long-term empire building with minimal hand-holding.
About this game
Riftborne is a classic terminal based, real time, grand strategy game. Construct space ships. Take part in factional warfare. Hire galactic hit-men on your rivals. Raid neighbors for rare resources. Train spies to infiltrate enemy bases for key intel. Grow your empire to dominate the galaxy.
Players, last 70 days
Peak 16 · Low 0
Daily peak concurrent players, sampled once a night from Steam.
What players are saying
▲ Recommended7 hrs
Day 1. Already obsessed. Send help!!!
Look, I'm not going to pretend I knew what I was doing for the first hour. Riftborne threw me into a terminal-based space empire and basically said "figure it out." And you know what? That's the best thing about it. Every time something clicked - a trade route, a raid, a spy mission — it felt amazing because I actually worked it out myself. No hand-holding. Just pure "wait, I think I get it now" energy.
The Discord community is half the fun right now. Everyone's in the same boat, piecing things together, sharing discoveries, hyping each other up. It's got that rare early-game buzz where the whole playerbase is exploring something new together.
And the dev? Absolute legend. Active in the community, great to chat with, and was pushing out fixes on the spot during launch day. That's the kind of passion that tells you this game is going somewhere.
It just launched and it's brilliant! If you like deep strategy games and enjoy actually thinking, buy it!
Take a look at the screenshots for this game. You'll know pretty much immediately by looking whether you're put off by ASCII graphics enough to be unwilling to play it.
Once that's done, if you're still interested - this is an excellent game, especially at the current price point. It has just enough elements to not be samey and have deep, emergent play patterns, and plenty of skill expression and learning to be done.
What separates this game from others in the genre is actually its developer. Unlike other similar offerings, Riftborne is changing, becoming more complex at a fairly blistering pace. This is all done extremely responsively to the wants of the Discord community, at fairly absurd speeds, actually.
I think it's worth your money today. However, it seems the developer is absolutely committed to making sure that if it's borderline for you, it will be worth the money tomorrow.
I have been looking for a game like this for a while now. This is a strategy game bordering on an idle game, without many of the negative connotations typically associated with idle games. It's not trying to beat you over the head with constant distractions and new toys. I would not be surprised if Neptune's Pride was an influence on this project.
There seems to be a lot of meaningful systems here and I'm slowly beginning to see how they fit together. If the strategy space is as deep as the in-game guide suggests, I could see myself playing this for a very long time.
If I have one gripe, it's that I'm frequently not able to find information that I'm actively seeking. This is partially a consequence of the game being a large sandbox. But there's also just a lot of places where the UI currently fails, which is completely fine in EA. It's just something to be mindful of. I'd say be prepared to do a lot of reading and reviewing in the codex.
- Fixed a critical bug causing intercepts to return without engaging in combat and added better server logs to record failed combat engagements if this happens again - Added 'total ships needed for active routes' to cargo route overview so you don't need to click into each route to check this - Added 'total current cargo capacity' of freighters when sending one off resource shipments so you don't have to click to the next page to check the math of your cargo capacity - Added the supply station capacity to the main left UI sidebar in the ship section so you can see your current supply limit and the astra % penalty - Added ability to repeat attacks multiple times from the ship selection screen, with an optional interval setting, and an optional loss % setting that halts the repeated attacks after certain amount of power is lost - Moved Nano storage to the 'Civil' section on the infrastructure page now that all cultures have it - Citadel gates now also block non allied fleets maneuvering while traveling inside them to fulfill their original intended function
Stop and station in place now works properly in multiplayer Fog markers now appear only in unexplored space Unusual commander names no longer disrupt terminal text spacing Settlements in fog now open the action menu as normal and it doesn't assume it's an empty tile Eligible stars show 'Dyson Capable' as their feature Diplomacy changes stay as drafts until leaving the faction page Cleaned up a few places with cluttered and inconsistent UI During a transmutation the arrow in the top left resource summary will turn purple for the output resource Rare metal outpost ship upkeep is now displayed correctly at the colony that pays it Reusing a settlement slot from destroying a settlement no longer farms founding directive progress You can now remove negative points from directives using earned points without needing a reset Added more tabs for F1/F2 keys, configured from the menu -> game settings
Hey everyone! We have our 7th Multiplayer Server launching next weekend - 24th October at around 1500 GMT. Pre-registration will be available tomorrow by opening the Multiplayer menu in game and selecting the Official Server at the top of the list. This update features a lot of new changes (most from community and player feedback) that we will be trying out on the new server. Looking forward to seeing you there! Radar & Vision Rework With the introduction of fog of war, radar upgrades and fleet espionage had become somewhat redundant. We've reworked radar to give upgrades more value and add another layer of strategy to gathering intelligence. New mechanic — Radar Accuracy: Each radar level improves the reliability of fleet information shown on the map:Near range (1–4 tiles): +8% accuracy per level, up to 80%.Far range (5+ tiles): +5% accuracy per level, up to 50%.Near-range radar shows estimated ship compositions and counts, such as Halo Automaton: 100 (80% accuracy).Far-range radar shows only an estimated total ship count, such as Ships: 100 (50% accuracy).Readings can vary within the accuracy margin. For example, a fleet containing 100 ships viewed at 50% accuracy could appear to contain anywhere from 50 to 150 ships.Successful fleet espionage reveals the fleet with 100% accuracy, making spy missions valuable even with an upgraded radar.Station LimitsThe number of fleets you can station on the map is now limited by your radar building's level. This is intended to reduce spy spam and make positioning and vision control more strategic.Reaching your station limit does not prevent you from sending attack, raid, spy, or intercept missions. You simply cannot stop and station additional fleets until capacity becomes available.Espionage ImprovementsEnemy player statistics remain hidden until you successfully spy on one of their settlements. The statistics screen now displays intel age, so you can see how current your information is.Allied factions share this intelligence....
Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.
