Rivals of Aether: 2021 Developer Recap — 2022 Developer Preview
Hi everyone! It’s been a year since our last developer recap and preview. Can you believe that there is still a pandemic going on? It feels like 2019 will permanently be “last year” in our collective minds. But somehow it’s 2022 now so let’s recap 2021 and highlight some Aether goodness that is around the corner in 2022.
Developer Recap 2021
Rivals Direct 3
In April of 2021, we blew the doors open on what we have been working on with Rivals Direct 3. In our most ambitious direct yet, we once again partnered with Adam Carra as well as a handful of talented voice actors to create an insane Twitch Plays version of the Rivals Direct.
We created a visual novel that acts as a pseudo-sequel to Lovers of Aether that took place between the Aether-related reveals. But rather than downloading the game for free on Steam, which you can still do with the first Lovers, we had all our fans play the game live on Twitch! Players were presented with dialogue choices and could send a number into chat to vote on the option. We even showed the community their voting choices live. Our community manager, George Rogers, was behind the curtain queuing up the correct video based on how the votes went.
On top of the Lovers visual novel, we also designed multiple Twitch Plays sections of the Direct where viewers were able to interact through chat. They played Rivals of Aether, Creatures of Aether and even drew a picture together! Putting on this type of show ending up being a massive feat that required many people on our team to work together. In the end, it was like putting on a play and I’m super proud of what we were abled to pull off. You can still watch the first stream of the Direct with Twitch reactions to see how it all went down.
Tales of Aether
The Aether universe made the jump to a new medium in 2021. We released our first comic series called Future Imperfect which is a four issue series focused on the backstory for Clairen.
This comic series was written by Ian Flynn with pencils and inks by Jack Lawrence, colors by Matt Herms, lettering by Jack Morelli, two covers by Ryan Jampole and characters designed by Marc Knelsen.
We assembled this team because we wanted to tell more stories in the Aether universe in a way that we couldn’t in our games. We were aiming to get picked up by a publisher to help us create a physical run, but unfortunately we were turned down by the comic book publishers that we contacted.
Not to be deterred, we released the comic digitally to fans in 2021. We released the issues one by one on Comixology over the summer for $2.99 each. The series was a hit among our fans with all 4 issues sitting at 5 star reviews. Grab the whole series on Comixology here. We also added the digital versions to the Kindle store later in 2021 and you can pick up the series for Kindle.
We’re still looking to do a physical run of this first series so fans can get their actual hands on the comic. We also have ideas for other character-based series but none are actively in development right now. We hope to use Tales of Aether as a vehicle for more storytelling in the future.
Creatures of Aether
Our card game, Creatures of Aether, had a massive 2021. We continued releasing a new Rival every month from January through September with 9 new Rival cards being added during the year. We also released new abilities, emotes, skins and even game modes.
The biggest development for Creatures of Aether was that it launched on Steam in August. The game is free to play and features cross-play and cross-progression with iOS and Android. You can play your same account and progress on whatever device you prefer!
For the release of Creatures of Aether, we also collaborated with fespadea and BatitThePlant from the Steam Workshop community to bring a Creatures stage skin to Rivals of Aether. You can play with it on the Steam version of Rivals by downloading Creatures of Aether on Steam. It’s also available for free to all Rivals of Aether players on Switch.
The other big release was a Dungeoneers Mode designed by Tom from Tako Boy Studios. In this roguelike experience you build up an insanely powerful deck and upgrade it in the Dungeon Mart between each match. There are all kinds of insane combinations and card powers to discover. We also released tutorial challenges designed by Bruno that teach you all the abilities and Rivals cards in the game and even reward you with a copy of the card!
Creatures of Aether is a collaboration between Tako Boy Studios, Dan Fornace LLC and RESOFORCE. The goal was to expand our universe to mobile platforms and create a free-to-play experience with the same pixel art charm and surprisingly deep gameplay that Rivals is known for. In these regards, Creatures of Aether was an astounding success as the presentation and the gameplay are top-notch.
Unfortunately, both Tako Boy and our teams have other projects to work on and we don’t have the resources to keep updating a free-to-play game especially at our player counts. We have made the difficult decision to no longer continue active development into 2022. We will still support the game with fixes and keep the servers up as long as possible but we have no plans to add any additional content to Creatures of Aether.
The game’s monthly Battle Passes will loop through the existing Rivals in the order that they were released. The game is now considered content complete, but you can still pick up the game and discuss it with new friends on the Creatures of Aether Discord. Thank you to all the amazing fans who played Creatures of Aether. It was a pleasure seeing many of you in masters matches on the ladder. If you are looking to play more amazing Tako Boy Studios games then make sure you wishlist their upcoming Cross Blitz on Steam right now!
Rollback Open Netcode
In April 2021, we announced that we had not given up the dream of Rollback Netcode in Rivals of Aether. For those who have been following the development of the game, you’ll know that this feature was a very long time coming and we ran into many hurdles along the way. Rivals of Aether is built in Game Maker Studio 2 and has a ton of individual objects that were not created in a way for rollback to be viable.
After starting on rollback in 2018, we ended up needing to pause it in 2019 so we could focus on finishing the Definitive Edition. Trying to overhaul the gameplay engine while adding features and testing on Switch was too much for our small team to do. But after launching the Definitive Edition on both Switch and Steam in fall of 2020, we decided to pick back up the development of rollback netcode in early 2021.
Our path to beta would not have been possible without our netcode lead, YellowAfterlife and two new additions to the team for 2021. First Zach Reedy joined the team and optimized our save and load structure so the game could actually perform the necessary functions and still run at 60 fps. Then later in the year, Yosi joined the team and his impact was felt immediately. He got to work on fixing desyncs and crashes to make a push to beta.
After launching an Open Netcode Beta in September, Yosi and Yellow have been working diligently to fix our bugs and add features. We now have updated clock sync logic and player adjustable delay values. We’re still hard at work polishing up the beta as we work to move it over the main Steam branch in early 2022.
Our goal for rollback support is to make sure it works where it will have the biggest impact — 1v1 competitive matches on Steam. We are investigating rollback support on consoles, 4 player matches, and alternative modes like Abyss Mode, but all of those are lower priority than getting functional 1v1 rollback that doesn’t crash and can be used in online tournaments.
RCS Season 6
RCS Season 6 was our second season during the pandemic. This year was even more difficult than 2020 in terms of planning because at some points in 2021, it seemed like we were through the woods and could safely run events while at other points, local events were still a risk.
We ended up going with a hybrid online-offline schedule with 4 online majors and 2 local majors. The online majors ran one each month from September through December. Each one themed after one of the upcoming characters being added in 2022. We ran online events in NA, EU and Oceania with competitors earning points in the RCS Season 6 Series Standings. By the end of December, Penguin secured the most points in North America, Jet earned the highest total in Oceania and Fireicey continued his dominance in Europe.
Our first local major of 2021 was Riptide in September in Sandusky, Ohio. Our community was able to come together and mask up for the largest local Rivals of Aether event to date with 245 entrants in the singles bracket! The event was a massive success with Singles, Doubles and Workshop competitions. Riptide ended up making waves around the internet thanks to CakeAssault, Penguin and turndownforwalt. After winning an intense Grand Finals set, CakeAssault dislocated his shoulder during his celebration on stage. The video above was shared across the internet and even made it to television on TSN.
Our second local major of 2021 was Heat Wave 4 ran by our Esports Manager, SBS. This event took place in November in Phoenix, Arizona. Heat Wave entered its 4th iteration with more games on the docket but remained the biggest Rivals first tournament with the 105-entrant Rivals singles being the main event of the weekend. The big surprise of the weekend was the return to form of long-time competitor Windows as he won the Workshop singles bracket and placed 3rd in the singles bracket. CakeAssault went through the gauntlet in losers side of top 8 requiring game 5 sets against Penguin, Xaro and Windows in order to earn a rematch against ZeeBee in grand finals. CakeAssault was able to reset the bracket and win the next set to secure his second local major victory of 2021.
Developer Preview 2022
Genesis 8
Like in years past, competitive Rivals is set to open 2022 with a bang. The finals to RCS Season 6 are taking place at Genesis 8 in San Jose, California from January 28th through the 30th. This event is shaping up to be a massive conclusion to Season 6 as we already have over 230 entrants registered and could break our local entrant record once again. Genesis 8 is also taking the necessary steps to keep the event safe requiring proof of vaccination and masks for all attendees. We are looking forward to Genesis 8 kicking off the 2022 year as we hope to have more local events as the year progresses as long as they can be run safely.
Workshop Character Pack
Back in April, we announced that 4 characters from the Rivals Workshop are officially joining the Rivals roster. We announced them for late 2021, but ended up delaying them into 2022 for two reasons. The first is that the development of features particularly the auxiliary features like Abyss Runes and cosmetics took longer than we expected. The second is that we did not want to release 4 new characters in the middle of an RCS Season so we wanted to delay their release until after Genesis 8. We don’t have a release date yet but are targeting February 2022.
The Workshop Pack is a free update that is coming to both Steam and Switch. Soon after the launch of Steam Workshop support, our development team looked through all the original creations and picked one character for each element that we felt fit best into the Rivals of Aether roster both in terms of gameplay and lore. The four characters that our team chose were Mollo by Giik for Fire, Pomme by RubyNights for Air, Olympia by Sprite Star for Earth and Hodan by Rare and ravyn for Water.
After contacting the creators and securing the rights to the characters, we reviewed all 4 of them internally to see if we wanted to make any changes before bringing them into the rest of the roster. We worked with the original creators, our artists, and Giik on our team to make some updates as we put the characters into the game’s engine itself. We also needed to update all the menus for the four new characters and add character specific features like Abyss Runes, Milestone Stage Skins, Tutorials, Ranked Rewards and more.
Dungeons of Aether
Dungeons of Aether is an upcoming single player dungeon crawler set in the Aether universe. The game is designed and programmed by Ampersandbear with pixel art led by Ellian, story by Ian Flynn, concepts by Andy Ayala and Marc Knelsen and music and sounds by RESO FORCE. We are working hard to release Dungeons of Aether to players on Steam sometime in 2022.
Dungeons of Aether will expand upon the lore of the series which fans have already come to love. The strategic, turn-based battle system will offer a whole new way to experience the world of Aether, standing in stark contrast to the intense competition of its predecessor, Rivals of Aether.
The game brings four new protagonists to the world of Aether. One of the mighty new characters players will have access to is the hammer-hefting Hamir. This large, intimidating powerhouse grew up in the Crystal Oasis. But that towering frame hosts a timid heart. After a series of disappointments, he left his home to join the Wall Runners in protecting the Rock Wall. He found structure and inspiration in both his duties and his partner Mattock.
Hamir flourished on the Rock Wall. He felt his confidence had grown to match his strength. But one fateful day the Rock Wall was besieged by a twisted, purple rot. In a pivotal moment, Hamir fell back into his old ways and abandoned his trusted partner, who lost his life fighting the scourge.
Now estranged from both the Rock Wall and the Crystal Oasis, Hamir finds himself in the tavern of Julesvale trying to make sense of his fractured life. He is searching for direction and the courage to move forward, but all he can seem to do is focus on the mistakes of his past. You’ll decide the course of Hamir’s destiny, as well as three other exciting heroes, when Dungeons of Aether releases later this year.
Aether Studios
In 2021, we announced the formation of Aether Studios. Up until now, all the games in the Aether universe have been released by my company Dan Fornace LLC. Aether Studios is a new company based in Washington state that I created around building the sequel to Rivals of Aether.
The biggest change is that Aether Studios is expanding and looking for resources to compete against larger game studios this time around. In many ways, Rivals of Aether was a proof of concept - a proof that another platform fighting game with a new IP could succeed. Because of the success that we had on Early Access and the community that formed around the game, we were able to keep expanding Rivals of Aether to become the game it is today. But as an esport, Rivals is limited by its initial design from all those years ago.
Aether Studios as a company is meant to take the foundation that we have been building over the years. Taking not just Rivals, but from all our games and world building— Tales of Aether, Lovers of Aether, Creatures of Aether, Dungeons of Aether, the Directs, the character reveal trailers and more. We believe that we have a powerful up-and-coming gaming IP and our goal now is work toward its potential.
Any 3D Updates?
If you are a hardcore Aether fan then you have been itching for 3D news. We first teased glimpses of a 3D project in 2020 with our Rivals 2 Expanding Aether montage. Then in 2021, we released a 3D Project Teaser showing off Zetterburn to cap of Rivals Direct 3.
For those paying attention, this trailer confirmed two pretty big gameplay departures from Rivals of Aether as we revealed both Shields and Grabs. The lack of these two features has become an identifier for the aggressive style of Rivals of Aether. But some would be surprised to know that the lack of both of these were for scoping reasons in Rivals. With pixel art and myself being the only developer early into Rivals, I wanted to limit the amount of animations and interactions per character in order to release a game at all.
Now all these years later, we are going another direction with our design goals. We want to pump each character with as much individuality and depth as possible. We want to expand characters’ movesets and cram as many options in while still keeping the amount of buttons low. Shields and Grabs fit into this paradigm because they allow us to create more depth and opportunities for expression with only adding a single new input for Grab. (or no new input if you prefer the Shield+Attack shortcut)
Our team hasn’t been resting on our laurels since April. We’ve been building content and designing features for our ideal platform fighter. We’ve been expanding our team to fill out critical roles and exploring partnerships that can help us build the best game possible. We’re still in the early stages so don’t expect a release date or playables any time soon. But if you can’t wait for more updates, I would mark your calendar for this April.
And that’s it for this Recap and Preview. 2022 is going to be a massive year of development for our studio and our games. We have so many talented developers working on both 2D and 3D projects now. We plan to feature more of the team and updates on our Aether Studios twitter account as the year goes on, so make sure you follow it if you want to stay up to date on the Aether Universe!