Riftswarm

Build your spells. Don't level them.

Riftswarm is an online co-op bullet heaven for 1-4 players. Gates are opening across the mainland, ranked E to S, and every one of them leaks monsters into the world. Engrave runes into your weapon and close every gate you can before the thirty-minute Apocalypse.

One weapon, rewritten mid-fight. Every rune you add changes the shot on the next cast.ENGRAVE YOUR RUNES
A weapon is a row of slots, and it fires them left to right. Every rune changes the runes to its right, so the order is the build.

Fireball on its own throws a fireball. Put Fan and Size in front of it and it leaves as a wall.

Multicast grabs the runes to its right and casts them together as one group.

Trigger hangs a payload on a carrier rune. The payload goes off on impact, on expiry, or on a timer.

Every cast spends mana from the weapon's own pool. Overload the row and the weapon falls silent until you fix it.

36 runes: projectiles, beams, pulses, multicasts, triggers and boosts. 5 weapon forms. The dagger has five slots and the fastest cast rate; the grimoire has ten slots and the deepest mana pool. Four tiers, and three copies of a rune merge into one of the next tier at a Forge.

Nothing is picked from a card and locked in. Everything you find drops into your backpack, and the row is yours to take apart and rebuild mid-fight.

Same arena, same clock, same character, same eight seconds. The only difference between those two is the row.1-4 PLAYER ONLINE CO-OP
Play solo, or bring up to three friends in over Steam. XP and gold pay into shared pools, so nobody is left behind by somebody else's good expedition. Solo is not a cut-down mode: it is the same map with fewer hands on it.

The party starts each expedition with three Revive Tokens. A downed player stays where they fell. There is no bleed-out timer and no respawn, so a teammate has to walk over and pick them up. When the last one is spent, there are no more.SPLIT THE PARTY
The mainland is 560 tiles of forest, swamp, farmland and ruined civilisation, with six gates standing on it and a clock running on every one.

Hold to enter a gate and you drop into a map of its own. The clear condition is only revealed once you are inside: a swarm to break, a boss to hunt, a ritual to channel, a node to hold.

Clear it and EXTRACTION opens for thirty seconds. The spawning does not stop while that window is open, and nobody is revived for free on the way out.

Leave a gate ticking too long and it erupts. Its wave pours onto the mainland and the Danger Meter climbs.

One gate in six is a Red Gate. It looks exactly like a Legendary one. It is one-way, and the only ways out are to clear it or to have a teammate walk in after you.

Biomes, across the mainland and the gate maps: Forest, Grassland, Swamp, Civilization, Crypt and Volcanic.

Hold the gate, get swallowed by it, and land in a Crypt with a ritual to channel and a crowd that wants to stop you.

Last pillar charged. The objective flips to EXTRACTION and the gate pays out.

And the one in six that does not let you walk back out.

Two players can dive a gate while the other two hold the field. That is what the map is for.THIRTY MINUTES
The Danger Meter drags the world from Calm through Dusk and Dread into Ruin. Every crossing sends a Herald, and each Herald has one telegraphed, dodgeable attack pattern: a slam, a ring, a dash. You learn one in a single death, and it kills you on the second.

At thirty minutes the Apocalypse fires. Every gate still standing erupts at once and a world boss arrives. You either kill it or the expedition ends there.BETWEEN EXPEDITIONS
You walk around a shared hub, not a menu. Spend the last expedition's gold at the merchant on power-ups and rune packs, pick one of 3 characters at the mirror, take a weapon apart on a training dummy, invite friends at the party board, and hold the gate open when the party is ready.

A Legendary rune pack, bought with the gold the last expedition paid out.

Unlocks are earned by playing: clear gates, kill bosses, survive the world ender. An expedition you cannot finish tonight can be suspended and resumed with the same party later.JOIN THE DISCORD
Riftswarm is built in the open with the people playing it. Bug reports, build screenshots and balance arguments all land in the same place: