Interstellar Rift
Interstellar Rift is an open world Starship Simulator with an emphasis on ship construction and multi-player interaction. Players can explore and conquer the galaxy with their own custom designed and constructed starship. Space is vast, but you don’t have to face it alone, other players will be able to join your crew, and help out, or build their own rival fleet and fight you across the galaxy.
Prepare to make these custom built spaceships your home when exploring the galaxy! Use the ship editor to design a ship to your liking, from small exploratory vessels to large cargo haulers, or even enormous battleships. With the editor you build your ship deck by deck, inside and outside. If you’d rather get going immediately you can always browse the workshop for ships that other players made, or you can upload your own blueprints.
The galaxy can be a dangerous place, even when playing solo. Strange rifts have opened up, unleashing a hostile race of alien creatures called the Skrill. If left unchecked, they will take over solar systems wreaking havoc on your enterprising. You can fight them alone, or call in the help of your friends, and man a ship together. But not all pilots will fight for a good cause, pirates and opposing fleets can come after you and your cargo at any time. Fight them ship versus ship, or hack your way aboard their vessels and bring the fight to them, in close quarters shootouts.
The economy of Interstellar Rift runs on the resources that can be gathered out in the galaxy. Vast asteroid belts circle planets and solar systems, filled with precious ores and minerals. Start up your resource extractors, or send out a wave of mining drones to do the hard labour for you. Visit the stores of LogiCorp and Galactic Trade, or drive a hard bargain with stranded pilots as you delive them fuel. Automate production lines with the ACTR (automated cargo transfer relay), and set up your own store to trade with other players, or any trade drones that might be nearby.
After choosing a faction to ally with, the galaxy is open for you to explore. Use rift generators to open up spatial rifts that transport you to new systems, exploring a system will help you map out the galaxy, and pinpoint the location of systems with special resources you might need. Construct new trade posts for the companies and factions that want to expand their influence, and help them set up secure stations and sectors. Take on missions for U-nits, or find good deals across multiple systems to make a profit from.
Game Discussion
Steam User 13
For starters, I'll give a quick review in case you don't like to read. The game is good at what it does, but it also lacks on several things.
Now for the breakdown, in case you DO like to read.
Interstellar Rift is a good game for several reasons:
~~The main one being how well it runs on nearly any machine even when combating swarms of enemies or multiple enemy ships (in PvP)
~~The Enemy variety is pretty decent, and encountering several types at the same time can result in death (kaboom)
~~The difficulty between the different star system tiers is apparent (ignore the warning at your own risk)
~~The resource variety is pretty good and you can't get it all from the same place (go exploring)
~~The ship designer gives a lovely level of detail to your ships (be creative)
~~You can get scrap from combat, which makes obtaining some rarer resources in low-tier possible (get some kills)
~~Ship combat is nice, and goes fluidly with the flight controls (get some skill)
~~Good to play with friends, especially when you consider the weapon turrets you can install on a ship (party kaboom)
~~Stronger ammo types (3 tiers) to help deal with troublesome foes, with noticeable damage differences between each tier (and noticeable resource cost)
Now for some of the bad
~~~Not much variety for quests. They can typically be put into 3 categories which are Material-related (5 varieties), combat-related (2 varieties), or scouting-related (one type, with possible combat).
~~There's no EXO of any sort. The only time you leave your ship is if you teleport to another ship or station.
~~Mining can be... tedious. Even when you have high spawn chance of certain resources, you'll still get tons of unwanted resources in the process, which can typically be sold for pocket change.
~~No up-to-date wiki. Even the most recent one on fandom hasn't had an update in a while (I'm sorry, I retired from the game)
~~ Not much options in the realm of preset ships to buy from shops. Each faction only has 2 or 3 and they're specifically for whatever the faction specializes in, and only mediocre at best.
~~Game is not very Solo friendly. You can't really do anything besides shop in a safezone in peace. You'll constantly get attacked when trying to mine, survey, etc.
~~No preset modules for ship designer, and it takes quite a while. Even after getting used to using it, the fastest I've ever designed a ship to my liking (minus extreme detailing) was about 2 hours.
~~AI factions don't automatically expand their turf, players have to do it for them... so dead servers mean zero activity going on
~~Player-fed economy, very bad for the same reason as the above statement. If there's zero players supplying the system, then it's worthless... especially the starter systems.
All-in-all, my friends and I loved the game for the time we played it... but we've moved on. A space-type game with zero EXO activities, minimal community activity, very repetitive quests, basically no AI minus the Skrill, and essentially zero endgame made us grow bored of it. For what it was, I'd say it was more good than bad. Not many games get my group hooked for a couple weeks on end. This game barely, BARELY, gets a recommend from me. Just go find a populated server, or a consistent group of players to actually enjoy the game.
If.... and I mean ***IF*** this game were to get a sequel... then more quest variety, more enemy types, more preset ships, more preset modules for ship builder, ship builder auto-detailer, more weapon types, some sort of EXO, AI that can do things themselves.... literally anything to make the game feel alive if it isn't populated by hundreds and thousands of players. Players continuously leave the game because there's literally nothing to do at all other than mining and fighting Skrill.
Steam User 3
I loved the game when it was out. It was like the original StarBase.
It had a pretty fun blend of go out to space gather loot (Mining/hunting), go "home" then buy/sell your loot with real players on a space platform you or they have built, with a player made automated shop. then Use the money to expand your knowledge to go deeper in space or use the materials to build your ship one block at a time.
It must of seemed not that intriguing to the masses but there's something great about being able to walk around your creation.. Coordinating guns, collectors, and piloting with fellow friends / server-mates.
I was sad to see they didn't have any funding left and shut down.
Steam User 3
Ship building, alien shooting, explosions, trading, factions, some exploring, all the good stuff.
Other players are (mainly) friendly. The main restriction is higher tier resources from higher tier systems are harder to find.
For those wondering, there are unlikely to be more updates as the game is considered "completed", so that means not early access, not alpha, not beta, but a complete game. Fun and worth playing ? Yes.
Steam User 1
One of the unsung heroes of the space sim genre! Interstellar Rift can be best described as Space Engineers meets Star Citizen with X-box 360 graphics. It's got everything to fit your fancy (mining, combat, quests, exploration, hauling, etc.) plus there are a lot of little things that take the immersion to the next level! You'll notice pretty quickly that there are almost NO popup menus. Any machine you interact with uses a touch screen... that you press the buttons on. There's an in-game wiki, but those terminals are at most stations and both you and the in-game character end up flipping through the directory like you're actually there! Not to mention there's a custom ship editor, so you can do all that from your hand-built vessel... or 6... or even a personalized space station! The options are basically endless!
I love the aesthetic feel of this game so much... it's a shame I haven't found very many people who stream or have let's plays on YT / twitch. Highly recommend this game to anyone!
Steam User 1
Good game - fully developed. If you're looking for PvP or combat, this probably isn't for you.
Steam User 1
With all the various slopes, and limited greebling and colour palette, this takes me back to building spaceships out of Lego as a kid. Flying around and doing little tasks to improve your ranking is alright, I find it cathartic. Cozy 80s and 90s Space Lego vibes.
Steam User 0
easy achievement and fun game overall, got most fun out of building ships and designs. its very well made in that aspect of the game. also looks great while inside of the ships while outside feels a but of minecraft vibes, but overall good. because most of the time your inside anyways. only negative thing i could really say is that its servers are going dead. lot less people play this game nowadays. hope it gets more but i doubt it