Lost Rift Drops Players Into a Brutal FPS Survival Race—Will You Last the Night?

Lost Rift has just landed on Steam Early Access, and it’s not interested in hand-holding. The first-person survival adventure hurls you onto your own island, where every day is a battle to gather resources, build a base, and just keep breathing. You can play alone or squad up with as many as five friends, but don’t expect things to stay peaceful for long.

The game wastes no time before reminding you who’s boss. Out here, supplies dwindle fast. You’ll spend your first chunk of playtime scrambling to set up a base camp, crafting, and even scouring the sand for any hint of fellow survivors. If you want to make it through the night, you can’t sleep on resource management, or you’ll be the one getting picked off.

Solo, Co-op, and That Sudden, Sharp PvP Twist

The backbone of Lost Rift is flexibility. Sure, you can run it solo, immersing yourself in a kind of tense, sand-blasted isolation. But things get interesting when friends join in. Up to five players can collaborate, working together to turn a deserted heap of rock into a livable haven. This isn’t a social club, though. Every move counts, and the environment has zero patience for weak links.

Then comes the hook that sets Lost Rift apart. Eventually, you’ll hit a wall: crafting recipes or objectives require rare resources you just can’t find on your own island. That’s when you launch expeditions. These trips send you (and your co-op partners, if they’re brave enough) to new islands. Sometimes these are uncharted. Sometimes, they’re crawling with other players, each balancing that thin line between alliance and rivalry.

Suddenly, the game switches from pure PvE survival to a tension-soaked dance of avoidance, strategy, or outright PvP brawling. This is where extraction shooter mechanics kick in. Get in, grab what you need, try not to get hunted, and get out. The threat level spikes. Every decision matters: take too many risks and your team could lose everything they’ve scavenged so far.

First Steps: Making Friends, Finding Enemies, and Avoiding Disaster

In Lost Rift’s opening stretch—a 35-minute hands-on that moved from hopeful base building to slightly desperate scavenging. Character creation is straightforward (don’t expect a fashion show; you’re here to survive). Once you claim a patch of sand for your base camp, it’s all about hustling for resources and watching for signs of past or present human life. Sometimes, that means exploring beyond your comfort zone. Sometimes, it means overestimating your cardio and ending up as a cautionary tale before you’ve even finished your first search.

Swimming, apparently, is not to be taken lightly in Lost Rift. The dip taken in the ocean in the embedded video ended in defeat. Not a forgiving tutorial, but a reminder that every system, from hydration to stamina, is working against you from the jump. Each mishap costs you, and every lesson is learned the hard way. If you want to see how the initial base held up, or just enjoy the spectacle of things going south in a hurry, you can catch the full play session on YouTube or just stick to the embedded video.

Lost Rift is available now on Steam Early Access. Whether you survive alone or with friends, just remember: the island doesn’t care who you are.