Although Rift Riff has been on the market for a while, it still stands out among tower defense games. Not only does it have a distinctive style, but its great TD mechanics and forgiving game design also encourage experimentation.
Rift Riff is a strategic tower defense game with a pixel art aesthetic. Players must use towers to fend off increasingly challenging waves of monsters across various maps while defending an extractor that attracts enemies. Before each map/rift, players must select some towers from a pool and create a load-out. These towers can then be placed on predefined sites on the maps. However, there are usually several placement options to choose from, and the maps are quite open for a TD as well. The enemies attack in waves, either running directly to the extractor or attacking nearby towers - their behaviour depends on their type.
Rift Riff © Adriaan de Jongh et al.
Players earn juice, the building resource, during monster waves and by picking flowers that spawn after monsters pass certain map points. They can then use this juice to build and upgrade towers before and during each wave. Successfully fending off the monster onslaught rewards players with prisms, which unlock more rifts, towers, companions, and tower upgrades. This takes place on a world map that connects the individual rifts. Unlike in other tower defense games, players are physically present in the world, walking around, exploring the map, building towers and managing upgrades. There are also six companions who assist the player and their towers. The first companion, for instance, attacks enemies.
Rift Riff © Adriaan de Jongh et al.
Despite its minimalist pixel art style, which is somewhat reminiscent of Thronefall, the game offers plenty of tactical depth. As well as familiar tower variants such as Sniper, Slower, Mortar, Longshot and Weaken, there is also the Shrieker, which can be used to scare monsters and force them to take a different route, for example. Since the Gatling tower takes time to build up before dealing significant damage, it is a good idea to lure enemies towards an Obelisk beforehand, or draw them to areas where towers are unleashing their area-of-effect attacks. The key is to combine the towers effectively and place them so they reach as many enemies as possible. The game clearly indicates where and when enemies spawn, so it's easy to plan. The base version of the game includes 17 tower types with different upgrade paths that must be combined to survive against the various monster types. Five additional tower types (Boom, Firebreather, Bait, Pylon and Seeker) were later added in an update. The game relies more on a clear combination of tower loadout planning and smart handling of the different enemies than on pure 'spam-tower' mechanics.
Rift Riff © Adriaan de Jongh et al.
Unlike several other games in this genre, Rift Riff is extremely fair - or 'forgiving', as the developers call it. If a player lacks the necessary resource for a tower, the construction order is simply queued and executed automatically as soon as sufficient materials are available. The full cost is refunded when selling a tower. If a tower is destroyed during a wave, it is replaced for free once the wave has ended. Even if the enemies destroy the extractor, it is possible to reset the last wave. Because the game is so forgiving and there are so many different tower types, there is plenty to experiment with in order to complete the challenges.
Rift Riff - Mobile © Adriaan de Jongh et al.
Rift Riff was created by game designer Adriaan de Jongh, graphic designer Sim Kaart, enemy wave designer Professional Panda, music composer Matthijs Koster and programmer Franz LaZerte. The game runs on the open-source Godot game engine. The team came together as freelancers specifically to create the game. De Jongh has been making games since 2011, with his biggest hit being Hidden Folks, a hand-drawn game in which players search for hidden objects and listen to mouth-made sounds. A sequel is in development. Sim Kaart is an illustrator who has done graphic design for various creative projects since 2012, before joining Adriaan in developing games in 2020 - most notably the music party game Secret Shuffle. For programmer Franz LaZerte, Rift Riff is his first commercial game; he had previously worked in the renewable energy industry. Matthijs Koster is a music composer and sound designer who has been creating music and sound effects for commissioned projects since 2016. Rift Riff is his first game. 'Professional Panda' joined the team in the latter half of the game's development to help create enemy waves, having previously worked as a producer in the gaming industry.
Rift Riff was released for PC on 09 May 2025, priced at €12.99. It is also available for mobile devices on Android and iOS and works very well in portrait mode.
Rift Riff stands out thanks to its straightforward yet tactically engaging tower defense mechanics and its player-friendly approach to handling mistakes.
