RIFTSTORM Review: Early Access Extraction Shooter, Tested

RIFTSTORM review time, and the timing matters here more than usual. This is a co-op extraction shooter that entered Steam Early Access on August 11, after close to five years of development and three public playtests, and it has already been patched four times in its first eight days. Judging it on launch-day footage would have missed both the worst bugs and the fixes for them. This RIFTSTORM review is written against version 0.6.2, released August 18, with the developer's own week-one feedback post sitting right next to the patch notes as a second source.

TL;DR: RIFTSTORM review in short: 7.2/10. Confiction Labs and Agate's co-op extraction shooter has a tense, well-built core loop (deploy as a Weaver, fight escalating Mythic threats, choose when to extract or push deeper) built around Weapon Scarring, a real risk-reward penalty for failing to get out. Mostly Positive on Steam at 505 reviews, priced at $14.99 ($11.99 during the current discount). The patch cadence is fast and the developer is unusually candid about what's still broken, but crashes, unfair Weapon Scarring losses, and an always-online default are real problems right now, not just launch jitters.

Key Takeaways

• RIFTSTORM launched into Early Access on August 11, 2026, at $14.99, currently $11.99 during a 20% launch discount
• Developed by Confiction Labs and Agate, published by Confiction Labs and Gamersky Games
• Steam score: Mostly Positive, 355 of 505 reviews positive as of this review
• Core loop: deploy as a Weaver solo or with up to two friends, fight through a Rift Exposure Zone, then choose to extract or push for better loot
• Five playable Weavers at launch, with two more confirmed on the roadmap
• Windows PC only, always-online by default, with a Solo-Offline Beta added August 12

Overview: What RIFTSTORM Actually Is

RIFTSTORM puts you in the boots of a Weaver, an operative working for something called the Mythic Protocol. The pitch, straight from Confiction Labs' own launch post, is direct: deploy solo or with up to two friends into a Rift Exposure Zone, an unstable pocket where mythic threats have leaked through, fight your way to a set of objectives, and then decide when to leave. "Push their luck, and extract before the mission goes bad" is the exact framing the studio used when it announced the launch, and that phrase does most of the work in explaining what kind of game this is.

It's a co-op PvE looter-shooter with an extraction skeleton bolted on, and the skeleton is doing more work than the loot table. You're not just farming; every trip in is a bet on how much you can carry out. That's not a new idea in this genre broadly, but RIFTSTORM commits to it harder than most looter-shooters, which tend to soften the loss condition until it barely stings. More on that in a minute, because it's the single most interesting design decision this RIFTSTORM review needs to unpack.

The launch build ships with the PADDOCK Contingency onboarding campaign, opening missions built around a base-wide containment breach, online solo and three-player co-op, a starting arsenal of around 30 weapons, several dozen Lythogram power-ups, two primary Mythic enemy species to fight, and the first version of a progression system called Periapt. That's a reasonable amount of content for a week-one Early Access launch, and Confiction Labs is explicit that this is a starting point, not the finished game: the studio's own roadmap splits Early Access into four named phases (PADDOCK, BLACKSITE, GREYLINE, STORMSURGE), running from now through 2027 and beyond.

At $14.99, RIFTSTORM sits at the affordable end of the genre, and the current 20% launch discount brings it to $11.99. If you're weighing it against other co-op picks this season, our roundup of the best indie co-op games this summer covers a wider price range and a few genres RIFTSTORM doesn't touch.

Gameplay: The Weaver Loop, Rift Zones, and Weapon Scarring

The moment-to-moment combat is a top-down, isometric shooter: you and your squad move through a Rift Exposure Zone, clear objectives, fight escalating Mythic threats, and collect weapons and Lythogram power-ups as you go. It reads as familiar on paper. What separates it is the extraction decision layered over the top, and specifically Weapon Scarring, the mechanic that gives that decision teeth.

Here's how it actually works. If you extract successfully, everything you found that mission is yours to keep, weapons included. If you don't, whether you died, got overwhelmed, or just ran out of time, the weapons you brought into the mission lose everything they picked up during that run and get hit with a random negative mod. The gun still works. It's just worse now, permanently "scarred" until you repair or replace it. That's a meaningfully sharper penalty than most looter-shooters bother with, where failure usually just means walking away with less loot rather than walking away with damaged gear.

A full three-player squad deployed into Op. Keystone 5, the maximum size RIFTSTORM supports at Early Access launch.

Confiction Labs frames the whole design around this tension in its own words: "RIFTSTORM is not about hardcore tactics, gear fear, or punishing players for wanting to have fun. This is power-fantasy forward looter-shooter, with the freedom to extract." That's a fair description of the intent. Whether it holds up depends heavily on whether Weapon Scarring only fires when you genuinely overreach, or whether it also punishes you for things outside your control. Right now, it's doing some of both, and that's the biggest thing keeping this RIFTSTORM review from landing higher. More on that below.

GODEEPER: If a tightly-scoped Early Access action game with a small, distinct threat roster is more your speed, here's how a similarly early shooter handled its launch lineup. Killer Bean Review: 9 Missions, 4 Bosses, One Dive →

The Five Weavers (For Now)

RIFTSTORM launched with five playable Weavers, and Confiction Labs' own launch post names them directly: Rook, an adaptable Protocol generalist; Starling, a sustained-fire Vanguard weapons specialist; Hertz, a Roseguard frontline disruptor built to hold enemy attention; Botsy, a Containment technician who turns the battlefield into a problem for the enemy; and Caracal, an Interregnum marksman supported by his Kestrel drone. That's a workable spread for a three-player squad on day one: a generalist, a damage dealer, a tank-adjacent disruptor, a utility-focused technician, and a precision sniper.

The in-game recruitment screen makes it clear this roster isn't finished. Alongside the five active Weavers sit two more character slots, silhouetted and locked, labeled Thumper and Thistle. That lines up exactly with what Confiction Labs stated in its roadmap: "we plan to introduce two additional Weavers as soon as we are ready" during the current PADDOCK Contingency phase. So "five Weavers" is accurate as a launch count, not a final one, and worth keeping in mind if you're comparing this to games that shipped with a locked eight-or-more roster from day one.

The in-game Weaver roster already shows two locked slots, Thumper and Thistle, matching Confiction Labs' own roadmap promise of two more operatives after launch.

Each Weaver runs on a skill tree with active, passive, and evasion nodes you unlock with skill points earned from leveling, which gives even the five launch characters real build variety rather than a single fixed kit. Expect a dedicated breakdown of each kit and early build paths on this site once the roster and skill trees settle down past their first few balance passes.

Early Access Growing Pains: What's Actually Broken

This is the section that separates a fair RIFTSTORM review from a launch-week hype piece, because the most useful source here isn't a player review, it's Confiction Labs' own words. On August 14, three days after launch, the studio published a post titled "Launch Week Feedback Recap & What We're Doing About It," and it's unusually specific about what's currently wrong.

The headline issue is performance. The developer directly acknowledges severe FPS drops tied to something called Simulation Thread Count, and its stated workaround, as of that post, was for affected players to manually set that value to 2 in the settings menu while the team investigated the underlying cause. Update 0.6.2 on August 18 followed with spawn-timing changes, camera fixes, and an improved automatic graphics preset that separates CPU and GPU performance pools, which should help, but the studio's own patch notes for that same update still note that "desync can still occur in some cases from other causes, and we are continuing to investigate."

The second issue is a direct consequence of the first, and it's the one that actually bothered me most reading through the patch history: Weapon Scarring was applying its full penalty even when a crash or disconnect caused the mission failure, not the player. Confiction Labs' own words on this are worth quoting in full, because they're honest about it rather than spinning it: "Our immediate goal is to remove unintended losses caused by deaths or mission failures outside the player's control. You should not be punished because the game crashed or disconnected." The studio also says it's investigating an early version of a weapon repair system to give players a way to deal with existing scars sooner, and recommends holding onto scarred weapons rather than scrapping them until that lands.

There's also a lobby compatibility issue worth flagging plainly, since it's the kind of thing that ruins a co-op session before it even starts. Update 0.6.2's own patch notes carry this warning verbatim: players on different game versions will mostly be unable to see each other's lobbies, but trying to join via an invite or lobby code across versions "will likely cause a crash." If your squad hasn't all updated to the same patch, don't try to force it.

One of the game's escalating Mythic threats fills the arena with a ring-shaped attack pattern that rewards good positioning over raw damage.

None of this makes RIFTSTORM broken, and this RIFTSTORM review isn't trying to talk you out of it. What it does is confirm the game is exactly as early as the "Early Access" label suggests, and that Confiction Labs is treating launch week feedback as a working list rather than a PR problem to manage. Custom keybinding for keyboard and controller, missing at launch, shipped in 0.6.2. Increased Threat-level rewards, faster early-game progression, and rebalanced enemy spawn rooms shipped the same week. That's a fast cadence for a small indie team, and it's the strongest argument for buying in now rather than waiting.

GODEEPER: If you want to see how another co-op roguelite handled a rough Early Access launch and turned it around with fast patching, this one is worth reading. Dark Scrolls Review: 9 Heroes, One Sharp Roguelite →

The always-online requirement is the last real friction point. RIFTSTORM launched with no offline mode at all, which is a hard blocker for anyone without a stable connection or anyone who just wants to solo without server dependency. Confiction Labs added a Solo-Offline Beta on August 12, a day after launch, which is a fast response, but it's explicitly labeled a beta layered on top of an online-first design, not a fully supported second way to play. Treat it as a stopgap, not a finished feature, until Confiction Labs says otherwise.

Verdict

Rating: 7.2/10

This RIFTSTORM review lands at 7.2 out of 10 because RIFTSTORM earns its Mostly Positive score honestly, not by accident. The extraction loop works because Weapon Scarring gives it real stakes: pushing for one more room is an actual gamble, not a formality, and that tension is rare enough in this genre to be worth the price of admission on its own. Five Weavers with distinct roles, a roadmap that already shows two more coming, and a launch content slate that includes a real onboarding campaign rather than a bare mission select screen all add up to more game than $14.99 usually buys in week one.

The problems are real, though, and they're not vague first-impression grumbling: they're the developer's own words. Weapon Scarring punishing crashes and disconnects the same as a genuine failure is the kind of thing that should get fixed fast, and Confiction Labs says it's working on it. Performance issues tied to Simulation Thread Count needed a manual settings workaround through launch week. Cross-version lobby crashes mean your squad needs to update together or risk a session-ending crash. None of these are exotic problems for a week-old Early Access launch, but they're the kind of thing a cautious buyer should know about before clicking purchase.

Where that leaves you: if you have two friends willing to ride out patches with you, and you find the extraction-with-real-consequences hook as interesting as I do, $11.99 during the current discount is a fair bet, especially given how fast Confiction Labs is already moving. If you want a stable, finished offline-capable game with zero crash risk, wait for the next major patch and check back on the review score. This is an honest week-two read, not a launch-day hot take, and the number could move either direction from here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is RIFTSTORM worth buying in Early Access? At $14.99 (currently $11.99 with the launch discount), yes if you have two friends and can tolerate real bugs. The extraction loop and Weapon Scarring risk are already fun. Wait if you want a finished offline mode or zero crashes.

What is RIFTSTORM's Steam review score? Mostly Positive, with 355 of 505 reviews positive (about 70%) as of a little over a week after the August 11, 2026 Early Access launch. Check Steam directly since this can shift fast on a new release.

How many Weavers are in RIFTSTORM? Five at launch: Rook, Starling, Hertz, Botsy, and Caracal. Confiction Labs' own launch post confirms two more Weavers are planned for the PADDOCK Contingency roadmap, and the in-game recruitment screen already shows two locked slots waiting for them.

What is Weapon Scarring in RIFTSTORM? If you fail to extract from a mission, the weapons you brought lose everything found during that run and get a random negative mod applied. Scarred weapons stay usable, just weaker, until you find or build a replacement.

Does RIFTSTORM require an internet connection? Yes, RIFTSTORM launched always-online with no offline mode. An August 12 update added a Solo-Offline Beta as an option, but it is explicitly a beta layered on top of the online-first design, not a core feature yet.

How many players can play RIFTSTORM co-op? Up to three: yourself plus two friends. You can also deploy solo online. There is no larger squad size at Early Access launch, though the game's roadmap includes a planned raid experience for a later content update.

References

• RIFTSTORM on Steam: official store page, current price, and live review score
• RIFTSTORM - Official Early Access Launch Trailer on YouTube: the official launch trailer
• RIFTSTORM Is Now Available in Early Access + Roadmap Reveal: Confiction Labs' own launch announcement and Early Access roadmap
• Confiction Labs on X: the studio's official account for updates and community posts
• RIFTSTORM on X: the game's dedicated account