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Hey Guys!

We are back for another developer update. And this time you can be a part of it – today we have submitted Rivals of Aether to Steam Greenlight!

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To get on Steam, we need your vote! Please let your friends know about Rivals of Aether and our Greenlight page. The more votes we get, the sooner we can get approved and work out how feasible Early Access will be so everyone can get their hands on the game faster.

And in case you missed it, Rivals of Aether was shown off at E3 2015 earlier this month! The convention was amazing and it was an incredible feeling to be there in person to show off our game.

We had a kiosk in the official Xbox booth as we were one of the ID@Xbox games on the show floor. We had a fantastic reception, with tons of attendees eagerly picking up the game and enthusiastic gamers coming back for more matches.

We also went live on the official Xbox Daily stream and broadcasted the game in front of thousands of viewers. Talking with Rukari, Xbox’s Community specialist, I gave an in-depth demonstration of Zetterburn and Orcane to the stream audience.

We are incredibly grateful to the ID@Xbox team for inviting us along and helping us promote our game at the biggest gaming convention of the year.

We had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow developers working on wonderful games like Shovel Knight, Cuphead, Below, Salt and Sanctuary, Fl337, and other indie hits. We even talked to some of the press and had some great coverage come from E3!

We had an article featured on Polygon and we were featured in the top 5 Games of E3 by XBLAfans. The guys at That One Videogamer also talked about the game on their E3 recap podcast.

Overall, we’re super excited about all the attention this game is getting now, and we know with your support that Rivals of Aether is only going to get better from here!

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!

Hey Guys,

I hope you all enjoyed our April Fools post. No, Rivals of Aether has not been redesigned. We did hear all the feedback that people are interested in a “Tetherball Mode” for the game. We find it intriguing as well. Currently, we have no plans to introduce it as an official mode, but if time allows then we will explore getting it in there as a fun, alternative way to play.

For now though, we are back with another developer update! The month of April has been very important to Rivals development, particularly to features behind the scenes.

We have begun development on Online Multiplayer. There are many parts of the engine that need to be updated and tweaked to support playing online so we are working through those changes now. We are aiming to have our first tests with the feature in June.

In March we implemented Profiles so players could add names and save their settings. In April, we increased the settings for a player to customize by adding Custom Controls! On the character select screen, all four players can customize their controls. If they are using a profile then their options will be automatically saved to that profile for future use. Players even customize the right stick to trigger something other than a strong, such as an attack, special, jump or dodge.

For custom controls, you can easily see if a player has them set by seeing a yellow icon next to their character name or profile name. If you are swapping players constantly, then you can press the back button to set all options to default and unassign your profile. This is a quick way to pass controllers around without having people mess up your own profile by changing the controls. Custom Controls currently only support XInput controllers. That means this feature is for Xbox360 or Xbox One Controllers only. We have plans to support DInput as well but we have not decided if those will be customizable inside or outside of the game.

During April, Ellian has been hard at work on sprites and animations. We have actually completed the sixth character and have moved onto character seven. We are not ready to tease our sixth character just yet, but expect to see it in our next trailer. The next character is a ton of fun to play and Ellian did a fantastic job with animation. We look forward to seeing your reactions to the reveal.

Also during April, Johan has been putting in hours of work on updating one of our first stages – the Treetop Lodge. Some of you may remember seeing the stage in early trailers and promotion. While the stage keeps the same layout, Johan has overhauled the atmosphere and created a location that truly represents the Aetherian Forest. The stage is dark and mysterious and shows off the pride and prosperity of those who dwell high in the trees.

The Treetop Lodge will also have its own unique interactions, but we aren’t quite ready to show them off. You may be asking, what character calls this locale home? We will be happy to show you in our next trailer!

Ryan Sicat has been working on some great new promotional pieces and frozen moments for our next trailer. They are coming along really well!

Flashygoodness has been working on the next song for the game which will be played on the Treetop Lodge. This song will capture the culture and atmosphere of the forest while also being wonderfully catchy like the other tunes in the game. You can look forward to hearing it soon in our next trailer!

Rafael Langoni Smith is currently working on sound effects for our latest character. Most of the special moves will have their own effects to match the character’s unique abilities.

And that’s all for April. May will be another month with a lot of work behind the scenes but it will all be worth it to show off the new characters and features.