Aether

When purchasing an indie game, anticipation and anxiety always coexist. I may not always be satisfied with the game, but I think this game is worth purchasing. The way it works is unique and special.

Came here from reddit and was not disappointed thus far, the game is an extremely fun bullet hell roguelike and I love it excited to see what's to come with future updates

It's not a bullet heaven, not a roguelike exactly, it's somewhere in the spectrum of heaven-like-ARPG-ish something. I appreciate the choice you have in your builds, and the game is clearly very indie but the dev is active to discussions and the game has strictly improved every patch so far which is a nice thing. Partially giving it a review to help get more eyes on it, but I absolutely think it's worth the fiver to muck around with elemental skills for a while at the very least, but it's fun enough for me to keep coming back to periodically too.

Honestly, this game needs a lot of hitbox work, and the dodge should make you invincible or at least ethereal. Obstacles are obnoxious and hard to move around and the enemies can pin you in with no way out whatsoever. I really like this game a lot and I think everyone should give it a try.

This is a nice foundation for what will hopefully soon be an excellent indie game, with a great core gameplay mechanic set around building up elements to form your build. The important parts of the gameplay, the skill selection and upgrading over the course of a run are done well. It gets to be very fast paced and requiring sharp reflexes after just a short time into a run, leading to that great feeling of fighting on a knife's edge but making it out without getting hit. The parts that are not quite done yet are the fuller gameplay loop, more maps or end bosses, the UI is fairly awkward and clunky, and i would like a invulnerability on the dash and better telegraphs for enemy abilities. So perhaps by the end of an early access time period it will be quite polished in those areas. There aren't too many games that specifically do the elemental abilities and their possible combinations as a core feature but i like the ones that do, this takes inspiration from Wizard of Legend and it does it well. The main difference being that of larger open maps versus narrow corridors in WoL, changes how you approach enemies. So at the moment perhaps not for everyone unless you're looking for that gameplay experience, with some polishing updates i feel many people will enjoy this title.

In my incredibly-too-early first look at it, Aether definitely has some promise! The gameplay was pretty smooth (nice hit detection, responsive controls, etc) but the menus are a bit clunky, both visually (i.e. misaligned options) and their navigation (via controller). That said though, that is something that can definitely be refined throughout Early Access and I look forward to checking this out further as the updates, and eventual 1.0, roll out!

[h1]Aether[/h1] [h2]Hits the fence, but doesn't knock it out of the park.[/h2] Aether has the potential to be a fun game. In its current state, it isn't a fun game. It has a mix of elements from Wizard of Legend and Risk of Rain but severely lacks in the concepts that made both of those games worth while. [h2]Spell-Based Combat[/h2] Your character, who we know nothing about, seems to obtain elemental based magic from a fox. You start with a basic projectile spell for whatever element you choose, and use experience to upgrade an element and possibly get a new spell. For me, this offers nothing special. Each starting spell seems to be the same with a small variation of damage over time or area damage. The rest of the spells I encountered were lackluster as well. For a game like this to be worth anything nowadays, it needs to offer more than simple projectiles. I will admit, I didn't reach into the far depths of the game to experience everything it had, but nothing hooked me with the combat. [h2]Storyline[/h2] It seemed as if the game wants to have a story somewhere. This is in the form of a random fox giving you a little bit of backstory. I learned nothing about this world or even my character. [h2]Bugs & Issues[/h2] The deciding factor for me to not recommend this game is the amount of issues I encountered. $5 isn't a very steep price to pay, but the principle applies, that if you're going to ask $5 for a game it should be somewhat presentable. I encountered the following in only 45 minutes of game time: [list] [*]Text size is unreadable on some resolutions. [*]UI covers up important text (skill selection) and takes up far more screen space than necessary. [*]Radial wheel is difficult to control using the D-pad, it's best assigned to a stick. [*]Failure to clarify how to heal. [*]Can't scroll relic descriptions. [*]Current stat readout in game is miserable to attempt to read. [*]Various misspellings and formatting inconsistencies. [*]Enemy spells seemingly appear from thin air. [/list] [h2]Last Thoughts[/h2] The developer has put a clear amount of effort into this game. It's not terrible, but it's a long way from that $5 price tag that it currently has. I will be checking back in a few months, but for now I plan on requesting a refund.

My first run was so much fun! I was able to beat it, but I was super squishy playing as carefully as I could. Toward the end I did jolt and sprint into a mess of enemies which nearly killed me a few times. I think more monster variations and items will continue to make this game stand out from a bloated genre! Looking forward to the remote play co-op and hopefully see squads added later. Maybe a party finder, or game room code for friend to join in the future? The game has a great foundation to build upon, and again I just started so I imagine it will get harder with more waves of enemies! Careful when starting a new level you are immediately thrown right into the action. Thanks for the fun and if the right channel picks up on this game I think it will blow up in a good way. Oh yea one last thing! I love that the game does not pause on level ups! I am so tired of these types of games pausing when you level or grab item choices so nice job there.

Good game, I very much recommend for the pricepoint. Dev please look at text scaling at 4K in the options, very difficult for me to read on my 4K TV. Will give more pros and cons and expand this review as I get deeper in the game. Just want to give it the thumbs up so you get reviews you deserve for this fantastic game.

As it is now, in it's current early state, I think there's a lot to be desired still. I'll give it a chance and hold it in my library, but I am hoping this game gets more support so the developers can actually start working on making the game much better with better content. Even with just 10 minutes of gameplay, I can already see and feel a few issues that might disrupt others who have higher expectations from games like these. I am happy that this is a multiplayer game though, so that's a plus. To the devs, y'all gotta add some more things that players will find attractive and fix that tutorial. It is straight horrible to interact with the fox and there are things that don't feel intuitive when interacted with like there's a lack of feedback to know if anything is happening. I'd also recommend more playable characters that may be relative to the story you're trying to tell, not just reskins and recolored versions of the same dude. As for the combat, it still needs some polish with how some attacks work, especially with the ones that have knockback and really send your character flying sometimes. The wheel for the leveling is actually somewhat cool, I just wish there was a "tell" for if you're actually doing something with it. So much potential here to be a good co-op roguelike which makes me excited for the future of this game. I'll probably edit more reviews as I play more and discover things to talk about. All the best and good luck.

such an epic game