Dev Blog

This year is already a quarter of the way through, wild how fast this year has gone so far. So many exciting things have happened this year and we have even more exciting things planned for the rest of the year.

Quarter 1, 2021: Recap

Let's start off by recapping what has already happened in the first quarter of 2021.

The year started off with freelance work and a bit of a step away from Aether Story, acquiring funding to keep us going through the rest of the year. While I may need to continue to find additional freelance work later in the year, this huge contract really did help out massively. Thank you everyone for being patient while I didn't stream much in the first two months of the year.

In the midst of my client work I did release a minor patch: "The Beach Update".  This patch served as the pre-release of Alpha 4. It updated the game's Alpha Goals with new goals, and provided a new location for players to explore, new monsters to fight, the main story preview, and introduced the main character Ravril.

By March the client work was finished and to return to streaming I started a personal challenge: stream every day for 30 days. I didn't need to stream solid for 30 days, just once a day for 30 days. I also decided to spend the weekend days playing games on stream instead of working solid. This was an interesting challenge as I wanted to see how the community, stream and game changed by not only getting more exposure, but also applying myself working 5 days a week. Over 200 hours were streamed doing work on Aether Story and lots of progress was done. I was able to meet a lot of awesome new people.

At the end of the quarter, after all that work put into Aether Story, I was able to release a big juicy patch. I added the Easter and Equipment update. This patch introduced Equipment to the game, along with gems, a boss, and new goals for the players to do together! The game has never felt more alive!  I will outline more about this patch in another blog post. Look for it here.

Quarter 2, 2021: Goals

Quarter 2 will conclude by the start of summer (end of June) and the goals I would like to achieve by then include:

• The Easter Event will be ending at the end of April and will be replaced with a minor patch that will introduce:
  • An existing map will be reworked as a dungeon with a boss or two contained within.
  • Allowing players to continue to get the gear that Todd drops with maybe a few new pieces introduced.
• Repackage the game to fully use the Itch.io Release pipelines so it can be downloaded and played from the Itch.io Launcher.
• Fully add monsters to the game, no more incomplete zones missing monsters.
• Rework the quests for the zones to account for the addition of monsters by adding kill quests , rebalancing the exp gained, and adding equipment as rewards.
• Expand the main story preview with another stage. Spoiler: you will finally be able to go into the left half of the Meadows to the ruins you can barely see on the minimap.
• Add the foundation to skills and spells to the game and give the players a small selection of abilities they can use in battle.
• Add the foundation to monster's A.I. to allow them to use their own skills and spells.
• Finally release the Master Realm so patreon pledges of $20 or more will have exclusive access to this in-game location.
• Rework the telepad menu to be map based.
• Continue to add quality of life improvements to the game's menus and fix bugs.
• Launch the game's steam page so everyone can start wish listing it!

Quarter 3, 2021: Goals

Quarter 3 will conclude by fall (end of September) and the goals include:

• Expand the game's leveling experience by adding two new zones between levels 5 and 10.
• Increase the level cap to level 10.
• Continue to flesh out the skills and spells that players may use in battle.
• Continue to flesh out the monster's A.I. and introduce 2-3 new instance dungeons and bosses.
• Introduce social features including guilds and friend lists.
• Introduce the in-game purchases and cash shop.
• Introduce click to move, controller support and full keyboard support to all menus.

Quarter 4, 2021: Goals

Quarter 4 will be the last 3 months of the year and the goals include:

• Release the game as "Early Access" on Steam. With this release the game will be running on a new set of servers and only cosemetics and Alpha Tokens will transfer.
• The Alpha Servers will continue to be online as a seperate service, but will be reserved for Patreon patrons of $10 tier or higher. These servers will allow you to test the game and see things while they are still in development. No progress will transfer over to the Early Acess version of the game except cosmetics.
• Introduce more professions to the game.
• Introduce optional PvP.
• Expand the game world with a new set of leveling zones and increase the level cap to 15.

2022 and Beyond:

2022 and beyond holds many more updates and plans for Aether Story. Think of the following as a wishlist. Some things to look forward to may include:

• We will be expanding the game's world to the level cap of 20 as soon as we can. And introduce several end-game patches with new dungeons, bosses and possibly larger party size "raids".
• Support of the game on more platforms including native Linux, and possibly HTML5 and the Nintendo Switch.
• Player shops, Auction Hall, and expanded economy features.
• Player housing and farming.
• Guild Halls.
• Randomly generated dungeons.
• And so much more! Your ideas and suggestions drive the game's direction.

 

For now be sure to download the game and check out the game's current Alpha. And join us in Discord.gg/phanxgames to share your suggestions , find other players to play with, and hang out.

 

You may download the early Alpha access easily through itch.io:

We are really enthusiastic to have you play our game! Being a small indie game
dev company, we depend on your support to keep us going.
Please consider making a small donation to help us fund the continuous
development of Aether Story! It will really help us out.

If you already have Alpha Access, head on over to the Game Downloads page and download the new Launcher Setup Installer!

 

Let me know in the comment section below what you are looking forward to the most!