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 30 days
Peak 11 · Low 3
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.
Come and join us next weekend for our 6th Multiplayer Server Experience! Pre Registration is now open.Fog of war onVisible fleet movementsFull independent spawn (no pre-set factions; they can be player created)Slower map travel speeds than previous serverMore details to come next week!
Overclocker Buff: Increased from 225% max bonus to 400% max bonus (20% per level) New Manage Shipyard Queues function where you can adjust the ordering and refund for 80% of original cost Astra costs have been increased a bit as the previous reduction went a bit crazy (it's still still cheap overall) More advance time improvement optimizations Storage building scaling has been smoothed a lot and they are now single copy buildings that can be built all the way to level 100 Keystone storage capacity has been reduced Not that anyone was considering it... but colonizing a win condition tile now voids starter protection
- AI overhaul: Bots now plan expansion, production, attacks and faction objectives more carefully, and use more expedition, relic and aid features. - Vision reworked: Vision now depends on a new ship stat and the fleet size. Vision expands as the fleet size grows. - Fleet pursuit: Attacks, raids and spy missions against stationed fleets can follow their target when it moves or splits. Pursuit ends if the target docks at home or disappears from shared vision. - More fleet control: Launch missions from reinforced ships, recall part of a stationed fleet, and choose which ships and cargo move together. - Allied station defence: Eligible allied fleets at the same location now defend together. Participating fleets’ carried cargo can be looted. - Stronger logistics buildings: Logistics Shipyard bonuses increase from 1% to 2% per level for cargo capacity and logistics speed—+40% instead of +20% at level 20. - Better cargo automation: Routes can wait until selected source resources are above or below specified amounts. Editors now show planned resources transported per hour in both directions. - Combat fixes: A fleet’s last ship no longer automatically routs, so fortified remnants can keep fighting. Fixed a separate damage bug that made some remnants effectively unkillable. Combat previews also better match actual battles. - Fairer interception: You can intercept incoming raids that diplomacy previously allowed opponents to launch but prevented you from defending against. Blocked interceptions now explain why. - Faster banishment: The faction leader’s vote carries more weight, and the exile countdown drops from 24 hours to 4 hours, with a notification when it starts. - Steam achievements fixed: All nine achievements support single-player and multiplayer, including custom campaigns, with more reliable milestone recovery and delivery after reconnecting. - Clearer interface: Unified the faction + personal radar, which now includes stationed fleets in it. Spy only stations have ...
Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.
