RIFTROOT

Keep the Heart beating. The rifts are open.

RIFTROOT is a small pixel-art incremental tower defense about a dead tree that refuses to die.

Something tore the air open over the hills, and the creatures just won't stop coming: gaunts, flayed hounds, armored shellbacks, floating watchers, buzzing swarms of rift motes. There's no breather between waves here. The tide never stops, and every 15 seconds a meaner wave lands on top of it.

You're the warden. You've got a few old stone bases, a bit of gold and a lantern.

Build. Upgrade. Call the next wave early when you're feeling greedy. And when the line breaks, click the field and burn a hole through the horde yourself.

When the Heart Tree falls (it will), you keep the amber. Spend it on the Compass Rose, a passive tree with 61 nodes, and go again. Refunds are free, so break it however you like.

WHAT'S IN THE DEMO

✦ 8 levels, from the Quiet Cove to the Eye of the Rift

✦ 2 bosses: the Crab King and the Kraken

✦ Endless Tide, for when 8 levels aren't enough: a boss every 10 waves, and every 10 waves the horde learns to resist whatever hurt it most

✦ 7 towers: Ballista, Mortar, Frost Bell, Brazier, Coil, Prism, and the Coffer, which doesn't shoot at all and just earns gold

✦ 3 levels per tower, and 6 of them split into one of two specializations

✦ 11 creatures, and no single tower beats them all: armor shrugs off bolts and blasts, wards shrug off fire, frost, lightning and light, anemones heal everyone around them (unless they're on fire), and turtle shells crack fastest under lightning

✦ 16 challenges that pay out pearls, the rare currency for new towers, specializations and keystones

HOW TO PLAY

• Left click a stone base to build, or a tower to upgrade or sell it

• Left click the field to fire the lantern

• Right click an enemy to make it every tower's target

• N calls the next wave · Space pauses

• On a phone or tablet: tap to build and fire, tap a tower twice to build it, hold your finger on an enemy to mark it

Runs in your browser, about 15 MB the first time. Your progress lives in the browser too, so don't clear it if you want to keep your amber.

All the pixel art was made for this game, and the music and sound effects were synthesized from scratch in code. Made with Godot.

It's a demo, and it's still growing. If something feels off, too easy or too hard, or you found a build that breaks everything, tell us in the comments. We'd love to hear it.

— DEF4ULT STUDIO