Rivals of Aether

About

Rivals of Aether is a platform-based fighting game developed and published by Dan Fornace. Similar to the Super Smash Bros. line of games, the player's goal is to build damage on and opponent in order to knock them off the stage, utilizing characters that represent the natural elements of the Earth. The game has been seen as an indie game answer to Super Smash Bros.

History

Rvials of Aether is a spiritual successor to Dan Fornace's fan-game Super Smash Land, a game boy-inspired "demake" of the Super Smash Bros. formula. The game began development in April 2014 and was announced in July of the same year, with the first two characters being that of Zetterburn, a fiery lion with a rush-down playstyle, and Orcane, a whale-like creature that can zone opponents' teleport using puddles. Over the course of its early access development on Steam, multiple characters were added over time, including guest characters of Ori from Ori and the Blind Forest and Shovel Knight from Shovel Knight.

Rivals of Aether was officially released on March 28th, 2017 and August 22, 2017 for Xbox One. A Nintendo Switch port is planned for release in the near future. On August 9th, 2019, the official Twitter account for the game announced the addition of a Steam workshop where users could create their own characters and stages to be put into the game.^[1]

Reception

Rivals of Aether released to positive reception among critics. Game review outlet gave Rivals of Aether a 9/10, praising the mechanics and pixel art of the game.^[5] IGN Italia reviewer, Stefano "Stef" Castelli, commented that despite the game lacking characters and originality, praised the game overall for re-implementing the mechanics of Super Smash Bros.^[6] The game holds a weighted review score of 8.3 from 18 users on Metacritic.^[7]

Fandom

Rivals of Aether sports a dedicated wiki and subreddit where fans congregate to discuss the game.^[2][3] The fandom also sports a multitude of fanart on sites such as DeviantArt.^[4]

Various Examples

Related Memes

Kragg

Kragg is a playable character in Rivals of Aether representing the element of earth. Kragg's powerful attacks and popularity as a character has led to massive ire from newcomers to the game as early as the game's inception with newcomers calling the character cheap/broken, much to the entertainment of seasoned players, who recognize the volatility of each character in the game. Head developer Dan Fornace went on record recognizing the memetic nature of Kragg's backlash from newcomers.^[8]

Various Examples

External Links