RYFT STRIKE: BRIGHTER TOMORROW

"Good evening, Pacific! Tonight's war is brought to you by RYFT FUEL. Because victory is thirsty work!" The seas rose, as everyone said they would, and the world moved onto the water. For forty years, a treaty called the Accord kept everyone polite about whose ocean was whose. Then the Accord broke. The war that followed was expensive, and the ratings were terrible. So they sold the broadcast rights. RYFT STRIKE: Brighter Tomorrow is a bullet-hell shoot 'em up set on day 412 of the most-watched war on Earth. Sponsors pay for the munitions. Battles are scheduled around prime time. You fly as Lt. Vesper, the Concord's newest star. Your fighter jet is Blippy, a small pink creature who turns into one. Dense, readable bullet curtains in vertical and horizontal stages. Every boss fights in phases, and the big ones announce each named spell card, like Directive Sign "Sun-Wheel Salute" or Crowd Sign "Stadium Wave", before filling the sky with it. Capture a card without being hit or bombing and the bonus is yours. - Focus to slow down, narrow your guns and show your hitbox. - Graze bullets for points, and fill your FUEL gauge for a six-second HYPER. - Bomb to clear the screen, with a short last-moment window after a hit. - Point items are worth more the further forward you catch them. No-miss and no-bomb bonuses, and a letter rank from D to S, on every mission. Six missions and a secret extra stage, from a dawn patrol over the Sapphire Atolls to low orbit, by way of: - a storm-lashed sea canyon with a battleship at the end of it; - a sponsored megacity at night, where billboards block your fire and civilian traffic must be threaded, not cleared; - a 1,100 km space elevator climbed from the sea to the stratosphere; - a television studio, including a plywood replica of the war and a commercial break. Each mission has its own bosses, from the drone carrier AEGIS MOTHER to a flying stadium that carries sixty thousand fans and wants all of them to see you lose. - Lt. Vesper // RYFT-01: dry, quick, and loyal to Blippy before any sponsor. - Blippy: well-mannered, and given to checking whether the cameras are off. He says "Bip." - Lt. Mika "VOLT" Sato // RYFT-02: lost the final trial to Vesper by 0.3 seconds. She has been counting. - Sparky: Mika's partner. Cyan, smug, and known to bite. - Lt. Cmdr. Isolde "SERAPH" Kade: the Halcyon Directive's best pilot, Vesper's old wingmate and worse roommate, and the only ace who flies with her camera off. - Adm. Halvard Crane: commanding officer of the carrier Brighter Worlds. Finds most things "splendid", in the tone of a man who does not. The story is fully voiced in English, with subtitles in nine languages, across cutscenes, briefings and in-flight radio. The network wanted a double act. Bring a second pilot to any mission, online or on one screen: - Online co-op through Steam: invite a friend or join a lobby, with drop-in and drop-out mid-mission. - Couch co-op on one keyboard, two gamepads, or one of each, and Remote Play Together to share the couch over the internet. - Each pilot has her own lives, bombs and score. A downed pilot leaves a beacon, and her partner can fly back to revive her, at the cost of one of her own lives. - Mika has her own co-op story lines, and flying together fills a BOND meter that unlocks a hidden scene. - Three pilots, three airframes: Blippy, Sparky, and SERAPH's WRAITH, once she joins you. - Four main loadouts (Vulcan Spread, Homing Swarm, Wave Cannon and HYPER: RYFT FUEL) and four sub-weapons (Side Lasers, Proximity Mines, Orbit Shield and Lock-On Missiles). - A 20-node hangar upgrade tree, paid for in RYFT Credits, and nine liveries. - Four difficulties: CADET, PILOT, ACE and TOP RYFT. TOP RYFT adds named elite aces to every mission. - Practice mode for any section or boss you have reached. - A gallery of cutscene replays, and a cassette player for the 21-track electronic soundtrack. Six cassettes are hidden in the missions. Find them all. - The original soundtrack is included free: all 25 tracks, in MP3 and lossless FLAC, for Steam's soundtrack player or any music player. - Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud saves. - Full controller support through Steam Input, including Xbox and DualSense controllers, alongside remappable keyboard and mouse. "The war is the biggest show on Earth. And like every show, it ends only when people stop watching."