Two months after RIVE's release, we're pushing out a major update featuring Challenges, Battle Arenas and a new Normal campaign difficulty level. The update is released on Steam today and will be available for PS4 later this year. Also, as we've previously said, RIVE is Two Tribes' last game, and we felt that this would be a good time to give you a status update.

RIVE came out a little over two months ago, and it's been a wild ride. Players loved it, which is reflected in the amazing 95% "very positive" Steam user review score. Reviewers dug it too, calling it “A heart attack inducing crazy nostalgia rollercoaster”[gamerlaughs.com] featuring “Some of the most memorable moments in a shoot-em-up in years”[www.gamespot.com]. It was “The perfect combination of bullet hell and platformer”[www.gameblast.com.br] and “An awesome game from start to finish”[3rd-strike.com]. All in all, “A very serious candidate for the title Surprise Game of 2016”!

We got totally addicted to watching people play RIVE on YouTube and Twitch, often late at night due to differing time zones. We saw people set unbelievable Speedrun times and even complete the entire Single-Credit Mode (without ever dying), something we didn't really think was possible!


People are having a ton of fun with our final game, so it's no surprise that the feedback we get most often is: it should go on longer! We totally understand, especially as the existing extra modes (Speedrun and Single-Credit) focus on hardcore players who want to refine their RIVE skills.

For this update we wanted to add more real content, but new levels with the production value of the main campaign just weren't an option (more on that at the end of this post). Ultimately we found a great way to extend RIVE and provide more variety with the new Challenges and Battle Arenas.

Challenges has something new for you every day, in bronze, silver and gold variations. We challenge you to complete special tasks in familiar backdrops, with a cumulative difficulty level. Essentially, there will be something to do every time you return to RIVE.

Battle Arenas, on the other hand, offers endless fighting, begging the question just how long you could possibly survive. We've taken three popular scenes from the game and extended them forever… or until you inevitably crash and burn. (Active Steam players were able to playtest this idea in the temporary Skywhale Survivor special mission.)


There's another oft-heard piece of feedback. While RIVE met our goal of making a hardcore game for fans of classic shooters and platformers, some people just find it too difficult. A few even called us “sadistic”! Although, to be fair, we also had a guy complaining the game was “too easy”…

Many people told us RIVE is "the hardest game of the year", often as a compliment, but sometimes as a complaint too. Well, it's impossible to please everyone, and trying to do so will often result in something shapeless and bland. But let's just say that now that we've reached the hardcore, we want to make RIVE a bit more fun for all of you less hardcore players too.

We already tweaked the game's difficulty in earlier updates, but for v1.1 we've really gone in to polish some of the tougher parts. The in-game statistics helped us a lot as we could see where people died the most. On top of that, we added a Normal difficulty level to the campaign and separate missions.

We still feel Hard is the way RIVE is meant to be played, but for those who need it, Normal comes with stronger bullets, less damage from enemies and stronger health pick-ups.


If you're curious, here's the full changelist for RIVE v1.1:

• CHG: Lots of difficulty tweaks in earlier missions, including increased field of view in some difficult areas
• CHG: Mission 1 extended
• ADD: Replaced the in-game Soft Mode with a Normal difficulty level, which is directly selectable from the main menu. (The teddy bear icon has left the building. Instead, you now get a star when you play on Hard. Because you're a star to us, geddit?)
• ADD: Daily Challenges (descriptions only in English for now), including new Shield pick-up, low-gravity condition and auto-rotating fire
• ADD: 3 endless Battle Arenas
• FIX: Secret pick-ups can be picked up again (sorry about that)
• DEL: Norris achievement (we replaced it with three Challenges achievements)
• CHG: Lots of small fixes

So what else is going on at Two Tribes? We said last summer that RIVE would be our last game[www.twotribes.com], and that we'd support it as well as we could.

Today, Two Tribes is a bare-bones version of what it once was. Co-founder Collin just left for Vietnam, the first stop on his world trip, and artist Meinte has been working at MediaMonks for a while… So we're just co-founder Martijn and writer Niels now.

However, the above is still true. We're not working on any new projects, and we hope this new update shows that we're committed to making RIVE the best possible version of itself. If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to get in touch!

In case you're wondering about ports: yes, other versions of RIVE are still in the cards, but we're not ready to announce any details, and they won't happen this year. If you want to enjoy RIVE now like many others are, your best chance is playing it on PS4 or Steam!

So this is it, RIVE is out!

http://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/278100/

Our final game, and it's the best one we've ever made! And that's all due to your continued support these last years!

Thanks for being a Two Tribes fan and we hope you enjoy RIVE as much as we enjoyed making it!

Greetings from Collin, Martijn and Meinte!

Our last game ever will see the light of day, just four days from now! High time for a roundup of the latest information, don't you think?

http://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/278100/

- PC / Mac / Linux
- Launch price $12.75 / €12.75 (normally $14.99 / €14.99)
- Six hour campaign
- Voiced by Mark Dodson (Star Wars and Gremlins)
- Speedrun and Single Credit modes
- Dozens of leaderboards

Stay tuned for the launch trailer, which will be released on Tuesday.

Exciting times!!

Hi Toki Tori player! Checking in to see if you've put RIVE in your wishlist already.

http://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/278100/

With so many games on Steam, it's difficult to reach you when our new game launches. Putting it in your Wishlist allows us to communicate directly with you, so if you're interested, please help us out!

Thanks in advance,

The guys from Two Tribes!

Hi all! Here's some news!

Two Tribes is retiring, RIVE will be our last game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQyPIHAOd98

After more than 15 years of hard work and gallons of blood, sweat and tears, we have decided that RIVE will be Two Tribes’ final game. For this occasion we've created a brand new trailer, which you can see below. Feel free to share it with your readers, friends and family.

We're committed to making RIVE the best game we've ever made, and will support it as we've always supported our games, but we won't make a new one after that.

See you in September when RIVE launches, feel free to add it to your wishlist!

Collin and Martijn.

Hiya!

RIVE's got a brand new trailer that clearly shows the hacking in action and has a ton of new content created after the PAX demo. We call it the SHMUPSTRAVAGANZA trailer, check it out below:

http://youtu.be/DRYcWhhKVLc

Let me know what you think!

Thanks for your time!

Collin

Hi! During last month's PAX East in Boston we got to present a playable RIVE demo that clearly showed our vision for the game.

People loved it, we were psyched, but we also know many gamers (including you?) didn't make it to PAX, so we wrote a recap of what happened.

http://twotribes.com/message/rive-demo-reception/

Thanks!

Collin

Hi gamers!

We've pressed the button to get RIVE's steam page online. Feel free to check it out, add it to your wishlist or ask a question in the new community hub!


Community HUB: http://gtm.you1.cn/app/278100/discussions/0/618456760278031744/
Game Page: http://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/278100/

Thanks!

Collin

We've been making great progress with our next game guys! Feel free to check out our new trailer that shows you we're making something quite different this time around!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0bl3HWvzzU

Thanks!

Collin