When you first boot up Rift Rangers, you’ll be greeted with a man singing the title at you. It instantly transported me back to my childhood, watching the intros to cartoons much too close to the television. I’ve even got the game open in the background as I write this to try and – hopelessly – purge the ear worm. I suspect I shall be mentally screaming ‘Rift Rangers’ for some time.
It sets the tone perfectly, as Rift Rangers is a homage to shows like Power Rangers. Though the rangers here seemed to have glued giant pyramids to their masks, which is an odd choice. This sense of style is paired with a nice core gameplay loop too, even if there really isn’t enough of it.
Mighty Stompin Rift Rangers
While the theme reminds me of my childhood, the actual game itself reminds me of being slightly older. Specifically, it reminds me of Newgrounds. No bad thing. The key is simplicity. Rift Rangers plonks you into a map, puts twenty minutes on the clock and opens the gates to a horde of enemies. Your little ranger has to survive long enough for the giant robot to come and squish everything. It very quickly gets overwhelming, because when I say horde I mean horde. After about ten minutes, just walking to the other side of the street requires careful dodging.
What’s more, the twist this time around is that we can’t attack directly, outside of dropping the odd timed bomb. Everything else is done by placing down turrets. It took me a little while to get used to it, I admit. I mashed around for the fire button but just kept dropping a little laser turret. I soon got into a groove though, and using the different turrets to set up killzones became a delight. There’s no getting comfy though, as you constantly have to capture ‘brains’, that will buff enemies if you don’t get rid of them. As the time ticks on, it becomes a challenge to carve a hole through the horde to reach them. There’s quite the pool of turrets too and experimenting with how they play off each other is great. Though that one that just puffs air at the baddies doesn’t really do the trick for me.
Refuse To Die!!
I was genuinely surprised by how addictive Rift Rangers is. Every time I thought I was done and went to quit, I found myself wanting to give it another shot. I think it’s because it presents itself so well. There’s the ‘sentai’ genre elements of course. I had to Google that. The term generally refers to superhero teams, which is where the Power Rangers comparison comes in. But aside from that, the simple, clean artstyle means you get to watch hordes crumble as you place your turrets. Upgrading a turret and watching it cut through the horde is immensely satisfying.
The issue with this genre though is repetition. Ultimately, every attempt is going to go along the same lines and Rift Rangers doesn’t do nearly enough to get away from it. There are only two maps for one thing. Admittedly, they play differently but you’ll have explored them both inside of twenty minutes. Only two bosses, as well. It tries to differentiate things by ramping up the difficulty after each run, but all it does is make enemies soak up more hits. There are Roguelite elements too, but these are just flat stat increases and don’t do anything to change up the next run. The only real changes are the skills of each ranger and what turrets you choose – though I often ended up using the same ones.
Hordes Of Potential
Ultimately, my final feeling towards Rift Rangers is that it’s an excellent baseline. It has that Newgrounds style, where the art is a little janky but still looks good and the gameplay is so simple that it’s impossible not to get sucked in. The issue is that there just isn’t really enough of it. A few new maps would help, for one, and maybe switch up the bosses. Hell, I’d even swap out the roguelite elements for something that functionally changed each run. Maybe a perk system that souped up some turrets while locking you out of others, giving you bonuses for changing up your playstyle.
Still, even as it is, Rift Rangers is good fun to play and at the budget price it’s sitting at, you’ll likely get your money’s worth. I hope that Epic Story Interactive continue to give it some love in the future but if you’re looking for something to kill twenty minutes or so every now and then, you can certainly do worse than Rift Rangers. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here singing ‘Rift Rangers’ loudly to myself. Sigh.
