There are many fighting games out there with different types of styles and their own niches to set themselves apart from the others. Mortal Kombat has its fatalities, Killer instinct has the ultras, but none are like Rivals of Aether and that was exactly what its developer Dan Fornace set out to do. During the process, the "goal has been to make a game kinda like Smash, but to play the way I wanted it to play". After working on Killer Instinct season one back in 2013 for the Xbox One, Dan wanted to make the fighting game he always wanted to play. He set out and began working on Rivals of Aether in April of 2014 with its characters drawing their powers from the elements. Earth, air, fire and water powers will be streaming through the characters as they duke it out to see who's element will reign supreme.
In Rivals of Aether, every Rival "possesses skills which can manipulate the battlefield in their own way, such as Fire Pits, teleportation Puddles, speed-increasing Wind Currents and towering Rock Pillars". It draws inspiration from Super Smash Bros with its damage indicators as well as leap backs to the stage one is knocked off of it. Development just started on the multiplayer aspect of Rivals of Aether, and Dan stated that it's "also going to have matchmaking, which will be like our rank system. Wins you go up, losses you go down and you'll have ranks for that and you'll see where you are on the leaderboard". With the characters being elemental based, each of the four elements will have two characters represented at launch for a total of 8 characters. Six of these will have their own stages and the remaining two will be acquired via unlocks, but it's unknown at this time if they will have their own stage.
If the game does well, "hopefully we can kinda expand the roster from there", says Dan but the current plan is eight launch characters. Now, these won't just be your normal characters either. Our personal favorite so far is Orcane, a water elemental. Orcane the puddle jumper is a four legged dolphin with a lion like tail fully equipped with a flipper at the end.
Of course, if water isn't your thing, you can choose Zetterburn the fire elemental that is able to fully engulf himself in a ball of flame to knock back close enemies or Wraster the wind elemental, a ninja bird that can form a wind tornado around your opponent. You see, it's not just "some other fighting game", Dan drew some inspiration from other games to make HIS fighting game. Although he worked for Microsoft with Killer Instinct prior, we asked him about the process in making his own game through id@xbox and some advice he received in transitioning to an indie studio. "So, a lot of my contacts at Microsoft helped a lot. Chris Charla helped a lot. Best single advice I guess would be, I remember reading early on you have to remember that only you can make the game you're working on. If you're teetering between two different directions, you should go with how you think the game should be. It may not please everybody, but then it's actually your vision right?"
We spoke with Dan at length regarding Rivals of Aether and you can listen to the entire interview below. Currently, the release schedule is looking to be the end of fall, early winter with an early access PC multiplayer build around August. Also, be sure to follow the official news on Rivalsofaether.com as well.
