14 DAY TRIAL // Rivals of Aether is an indie fighting game coming to PC and Xbox One in 2015, bearing an eerie similarity to the Super Smash Bros games.
If you like Super Smash Bros and you're upset at Nintendo for keeping its mascots on its own systems, then you're in luck. Somebody else is also upset at the big N for not allowing other companies' hardware to touch its darlings, and in this case, the man decided to do something about it.
Dan Fornace's love for Super Smash Bros is well known among the indie video games community, as in 2011 he released Super Smash Land, a sort of Super Smash Bros remake / demake, making the game look and feel as if it were played on an original Nintendo Game Boy.
The game was released for free on PC and has registered over 400k downloads since then, and Fornace has been keeping himself busy working on Killer Instinct, Double Helix's Xbox One exclusive reboot of the classic combo-based fighting series from the good old days of SNES.
Now he's working on a brand new title, a pixelated but good-looking fighting game where a number of anthropomorphic prime element-based creatures duke it out trying to knock each other from the stage.
Xbox One + Super Smash Bros = Win
The game is set in a vast world, seeing a host of characters competing for dominance over their home world. The Rivals represent the classic four elements, fire, water, air and earth, and each one of them possesses a unique array of skills.
From teleportation puddles to wind currents, towering rock pillars and deadly fire pits, each Rival aims to use the entirety of its move arsenal to knock the others off the screen.
In addition to this, the battlefields themselves present a ton of features and hazards, as well as some neat pixel graphics to feast your eyes on.
Rivals of Aether is being designed to offer fun couch multiplayer but at the same time present enough depth to provide fighting game enthusiasts with an exciting competitive 1v1 experience.
The title was first announced this summer, and developer Dan Fornace has so far released two gameplay videos, showing four different brawlers in action on the battlefield.
The retro art style and Pokemon-like characters will no doubt draw many people to the game, but it's in the fighting mechanics department where the game truly shines. The designs seem really solid so far, and while the game might not have the instantly recognizable Nintendo mascots, it's still got the same furious gameplay, which is what matters most.
