Hey Guys!
We are back with another exciting Developer Update for Rivals of Aether. If you have been following us at our twitter or our subreddit, you may have already seen some of our updates this month. But fret not, because we have even more awesomeness in store for you.
First, we have yet another new member to announce. Trevor Youngblood is joining our team as our Development Intern! We met Trevor at GDC and he expressed great interest in getting on board. After looking over his experience and his Game Maker Studio skills, we felt he would be a great fit to help expedite some of our development tasks. Trevor will be working on Rivals from June through August!
We’ve been hard at work polishing multiple aspects of the game, including our menus. Thanks to the efforts of flashy and Trevor, our local multiplayer menus now have buttery-smooth animated transitions between screens:
We have also redesigned our Pause Menu to match the rest of our UI. We added the angular blade designs that are found throughout the rest of the game:
We have been polishing some of our in-game effects too. There is now a visual indicator when a powerful blow is dealt so you can see the strength in attacks that are likely to KO your opponent:
Today we are also revealing the Aether version of the Treetop Lodge! When playing on the Aether stage, you will likely encounter the Sylvan Beast, wonderfully animated by Johan Vinet. The creature lurks beneath the lodge and only reveals itself when opponents are flung over the ledge.
If you are caught by the beast, you are instantly swallowed up and dragged down to your doom. Quite the grizzly death. Fortunately, there is a warning to alert the fighters of this horrible fate. You’ll notice that there are wisps floating upward from the forest below, and it’s not just for show. When the wisps are calm and emanating a green color, that means the beast is nowhere in sight and the area is safe. When the wisps flash red and move frantically, that means the beast is lurking down below and hungry for its next meal. Launch an opponent toward the red wisps to feed the beast:
The Sylvan Beast lunges viciously at players from below. But all is not lost: if you can quickly move or air dodge right as the beast clamps its powerful jaws, you can narrowly escape death. However, if your opponent combos you into the frantic wisps, then avoiding this fate is unlikely:
The Aether version of the Treetop Lodge is a great stage for setting up awesome combos that end in instant death, or having fun with a group of players while trying to work around the beast. If you want a barebones fight, then take it to the Basic version where the wisps are always peaceful and the beast is absent:
Finally, we would like to feature some of the great work that is being done by our playtesters and our community.
- Zetterburn / Bones – The aptly named Zetterburn has become the early top player for the character. He has been compiling bugs for Rivals at smashboards, showing the game off at large smash tournaments and is even working on a combo video featuring all the characters thus far!
- Relax Alax – Alax is a youtuber who was accepted into our playtester group. He put his video skills to the test and created an introduction to Rivals on his channel and reviewed the first five characters.
- Cirby – Cirby has been a playtester for a few months now and has been active on our subreddit and smashboards. He also keeps a youtube channel where he releases a variety of videos all relating to Rivals of Aether!
June is going to be pretty huge for Rivals. We plan to reveal our 6th character about halfway through the month. With that reveal comes another trailer and some great art and music to experience! We can’t wait to show you what else we have brewing behind the scenes!