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Good morning everyone!

We have a special announcement to make today as we near our upcoming release. Please join the Rivals team in welcoming George Rogers (@Etalus) as our new Community Manager / Producer!

Hiring George lets us ensure that the community’s needs are met while still keeping the developers on track for the full release. He’ll make sure your feedback is heard and the features that are important to you get full consideration. In addition to sifting through memes all day, George will also be heading up programs that connect Rivals fans both casually and competitively. He’ll be scouring the internet for all Rivals talk to solve your problems and answer your questions (pretty much a genie you can summon with an @ symbol).

“Rivals has a great scene and I’ve been excited about the game ever since I saw the early alpha builds. I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to work with Dan and the rest of the team on one of the best indie fighters around.”

Prior to working on Rivals of Aether, George served as the Digital Experience Lead for Capital BlueCross. He recently made the long trip from the East to West coast to join our team and has plans for tournament support, guides, merchandise, and much more! He will be a big help as we have our eyes set on expanding our community very soon by coming to Xbox One Game Preview. We’ll have news on that extremely soon so stay tuned!

Hey Everyone!

It has been a while since our last post but we have some awesome news for you! Rivals of Aether on Steam is getting a huge update from 0.13 to 0.14! And with this update comes some amazing features! To get a glimpse of everything we have added, check out this video from the Beefy Aether Doods:

Firstly, we have added a Tutorial Mode to Rivals of Aether to help beginners learn all the mechanics. You start off with the basics and move up to advanced concepts like Directional Influence and Wavedashing:

Secondly, we’ve polished up the HUD animations for players to get a bit more oomph out of their attacks:

Thirdly, we have added Ranked Mode to Rivals of Aether! When playing online matches, you can increase your Ranked Score in an Elo style system. You can compete against Rivals players around the world and try to climb the Ranked Leaderboards:

Next, we have added Stat Tracking! You can now track your progress across all your characters and even across different tags that you can add in-game. Create new tags to see how you are improving:

Finally we also have a ton of character balance and engine improvements that you can read here at our 0.14.0 Patch Notes Thread.

Thanks for tuning into this update. We’ll have some more news soon particularly about the Xbox One Game Preview version of Rivals of Aether. Sorry for all the delays on that front. Our 0.13 submission had some issues with multiplayer so we will be updating the Xbox Build to 0.14 then resubmitting. Hopefully we can get all the bugs fixed and both PC and Xbox One players will be playing the latest update in the near future!

The latest Rivals of Aether trailer was released today and shows off the final two Rivals coming to the initial launch roster of 8 characters, Absa and Etalus:

Along with the last two characters in the main lineup, we also have a new kind of stage coming to Rivals of Aether. Watch until the end to catch a glimpse – it’s sure to be a heavenly surprise to many of you 🙂

Etalus is a legendary warrior in his native land, the northern continent known as the Ice Barrens. He is one of the last surviving members of the Harbor Guard, an elite battalion that once defended the peoples of the Ice Barrens. Learn more at his character page.

Etalus is a heavy character who uses his control of ice to overwhelm opponents and even freeze them in their tracks.

When standing on ice, Etalus can use his Neutral Special to absorb the ice and create ice armor around his body.

Etalus can use his Down Special to shatter all nearby ice, instantly freezing any enemies who are standing on it.

I hope you all give Etalus a chance when he arrives on Steam Early Access on March 14th 2016. We will also have news about our Xbox Game Preview version very soon! Don’t worry, Etalus will be headed there too.

I am happy to announce that we will be hosting an Official Rivals of Aether Tournament at GDC 2016.

It takes place on March 16, 2016 at The Foundry in San Francisco. The Tournament begins at 6PM PST and we will be at the Foundry until 12AM PST.

This event is being presented by us in partnership with ShowDown, the Humble Bundle, and ID@Xbox. Showdown will be hosting the stream on their Twitch Channel for all those who want to tune in from home.

We have already secured some of the best west coast Rivals and Smash Bros talent to compete in our Tournament. Here are a few that are confirmed to be attending:

• Ralph – One of the top Rivals of Aether players in the world. He has secured first place in a variety of online tournaments since the game launched on Early Access in September 2015. His signature Forsburn is a combo king and he has recently been developing a Maypul too.
• Tandori – Another top Rivals player who is one of the best if not the best Maypul player in the game right now. Tandori competes both locally and online and has been a threat to take every tournament he has entered.
• Shaky – Shaky is one of the top Smash 4 players in NorCal. He became known during his Brawl days as one of the best Ness players in the world. He also picked up Ness in Smash 4 and competes with FOW as the best Ness player once again. He brings his smash experience to the Foundry as a new competitor in the world of Aether.
• Trevonte – Another top Smash 4 player who also ruled the Brawl scene. After being a Fox main in Brawl, he transitioned over to Sheik in Smash 4 and competes with Shaky for the top spot in the NorCal scene.
• Zex – A top Smash 4 player who has dabbled in Rivals of Aether. He also competes for the top spot in NorCal Smash 4 with his Sheik. He became known in the Smash community for his Metaknight and Marth in Brawl.

The winner will be crowned the Official Rivals of Aether Champion of GDC 2016. We will also be supplying a $500 Prize Pool for the Top 8 courtesy of yours truly.

How can you compete? There are two ways.

Firstly, we are reserving spots for prime Smash and Rivals talent. To apply, please send an email with a subject line of – GDC Tournament Application – *Your Tag* – to [email protected]. Then in the body explain why you have you have it takes to compete. To reserve a spot, you will have to confirm that you will be able to attend in person on March 16th in San Francisco.

Secondly, we will have a few open bracket spots available at the door on Wednesday night. These spots will be first come first serve to those who arrive right at 6PM. We make no guarantees on these spots being available, but if you arrive right at 6PM then you should have a good chance to enter the bracket.

This tournament will be taking place on Xbox One consoles. So practice up on your Xbox controllers if you plan to compete!

Oh… one last thing. This tournament will feature 8 characters…

Hey Rivals Fans!

We are back with another awesome update. Absa, The Storm Architect, arrives today on Steam Early Access!

Absa will be available for all players until Early Access is complete in 2016. She uses her lightning skills to great effect. I hope you all enjoy playing this unique type of zoner as she definitely adds her own wrinkle to the Rivals of Aether roster.

Along with Absa comes Update 0.0.8, which is our biggest update yet! We have updated our Holiday Colors from Halloween to Xmas! Show your holiday cheer in style while playing Rivals of Aether:

We also made some adjustments to every Rival in hopes to bring some more balance and variety to the Rivals of Aether battlefield. Along with balance updates comes an exciting new feature for Early Access players called Developer Mode. With this feature, players can take their own stab at balancing and adjusting the Rivals in both Local Versus and Practice Modes. We wanted to give our fans a chance to experiment and give us feedback in a unique way that really captures the essence of Early Access:

In 0.0.8, we have fixed a few of the major bugs that have been plaguing Early Access. The biggest issue that we addressed was the input lag online when one player was playing the game slightly under 60 FPS. If that player gets slowdown for GPU reasons, then the game will now compensate online allowing both players to have a better experience. We also reworked Directional Influence to streamline the experience and help make it a bit easier to understand. Check out all the 0.0.8 Patch Notes to learn more.

We would love to have a date and update for the Xbox One Game Preview Launch but we are still working on the Xbox One build. We still need to work on Xbox Live Multiplayer as well as make sure we meet Xbox One requirements. We are well underway though and we hope to launch on Game Preview as soon as possible.

Finally we have some sad news to share. Johan Vinet, our wonderful stage artist, must depart from our happy Rivals family. He has done some amazing work and leaves us with a heavy heart. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day! But fret not. We have a new artist who will be picking up where Johan left off:

Kenju is a fantastic pixel artist in his own right. He has worked on many projects including the critically acclaimed indie title, Undertale. He is bringing his amazing skills to Aether now and I can’t wait for you all to see the fruits of his labor!

And that’s it for November 2015. It has been an amazing month for Rivals and we hope you all have a great holiday season!