For those unfamiliar with this style of play, players get in the ship of their choosing and fly around trying to take each other out. People play solo, on teams, in squads, etc. and it's the player interactivity that really sets this game apart. Each ship has a fairly specific advantage and disadvantage; i.e., one ship may be immune to a specific type of bomb, but its own arsenal is limited to short range or less powerful weaponry. Another ship may have the ability to fly very fast, but its maneuverability could be limited. In addition, it's also possible to have flags, powerballs and other collectibles flying around the zone, and the team in control of those gains more points. Many have likened the game to Asteroids because of the control and Newtonian physics, but that's the only relation to that classic. Cosmic Rift should appeal to anyone with arcade-action sensibilities and a mind for strategy.

New to CR are weapons, ships and graphical flair. There are too many new weapons to list (and because of the game's structure, new weapons can be added at any time), but standouts were the Ripper Field and the MIRV Missile. The Ripper Field drops what looks to be a big clump of shrapnel, which works much like a mine. The Missile launches from the ship slowly and then separates into five missiles that increase speed throughout their lifetime. The ships are now 48x48 (SubSpace ships are 36x36) and are much more detailed. In addition to their inherent advantages and disadvantages, specials scattered around the zone will vary depending on the ship being flown. For example, one ship may receive a Super Burst, while another may get a Repulsor by running over the same prize.

For fans of SubSpace, here are some of the major differences. In addition to the ships being slightly larger, they are also much more accurate. Where the SS ships had 40 degrees of rotation, those in CR have 240. Most of the commands available in SS are still there, and all are now available through both the familiar ?[command] syntax and easy-to-navigate menus. Ping and packetloss information is now available on all ships at any point in the game. Team frequencies can now be password protected. Information such as individual score, team score, kills, deaths, etc. is all available quickly through menus, and the information can be exported to a file with one click of the mouse. The chat system spans both Infantry and Cosmic Rift, meaning players can speak between zones and between games. Finding an individual, all squad members, a particular team, etc. is as easy as entering the player, team or squad name. Private messaging can be handled with up to six players at once -- pressing :: (double-colon) will reference the last private message just like in SS, but continuously pressing colon will cycle through the last six people that private messaged. Radar size, chat box size, and pretty much everything else that's in a little window on the screen is all scalable by using the mouse and dragging the window edges around. Radar range is much more accurate, especially at long distances. Banners, now at 18x12 with 16-bit color, can be edited, traded, created and completely managed all within the game. There are many more changes, but we don't have the room (or time) to cover everything.

As for the game, we were shown the parameter files that control every game element. This is why it's so easy for the developers to simply drop in new ships and weapons at will. The game is only in beta, and already there's a ton of new ideas being added and tested all the time. For example, Jeff (the Lead Programmer) showed us a weapon that's not yet implemented -- its function was to attack someone on the other side of a wall. When fired, it circled out from the player and after a little distance, it sped up and began to return like a boomerang. Another weapon we were shown was a mine that first exploded into a respectable radius and then imploded on itself, causing massive damage to pretty much anyone that hit it. Although they are not in the game yet (which is why we don't have screenshots of them), we were told that these ideas only took a few hours to implement -- and they're always coming up with new ideas.

The maps are much more colorful than the SubSpace maps, and can also be up to four times the size of the current maps. They support true diagonals and can be of any shape -- they don't have to be rectangular. It's also possible to have line-of-sight vision, meaning that if an enemy flies behind a wall and the player's on the other side of that wall, the enemy will not be seen on the screen, only on radar. Additionally, gaseous fields can hide players, alter the player's control (make the ship slower, limit maneuverability, etc.) or have any number of other effects. These effects can also be programmed to effect only a few ships or every ship, making some of the Warzone-style maps much more strategic. And, like all the parameters, these effects can simply be dropped in or pulled out of a map with a moment's notice.