There are four types of battles in Aethermon: Adventure. Let’s find out about them.

Unlike the set-collection strategy of Aethermon: Collect, our next game Aethermon: Adventure invites you to head out on an adventure with your friends – and your own Aethermon, of course! Prepare yourself for quests, dangers, and critically – for battles!

So what do Aethermon battles look like? There are four types of battles you will encounter in Aethermon: Adventure:

• Standard battles;
• Miniboss and Boss battles;
• Player battles; and
• Team battles.

Standard battles are encountered on the road, and are great training opportunities to improve your strength and skills. There are four regions on the game map, and each region will challenge you with successively stronger standard opponents for these battles. Standard opponents fight with simple attack, health, defense, and speed stats to track their prowess.

 

Mini-bosses are encountered when you fight a ‘rival’ – a new idea we’re currently working on which is less frequent than standard battles. Mini-bosses have their own limited battle moves which can be found on their battle card.

 

Bosses are encountered when you visit a dojo, and similar to mini-bosses, they have their own battle moves which can be found on their battle card. There are six dojos to explore. They represent a particularly challenging battle for your level, with multiple levels available at each dojo, and offer greater rewards for a win.

 

Player battles occur when one player challenges another. Player opponents don’t use a single battle card like mini-bosses or bosses, but have access to their full deck, just like you. Additionally, you or your friends may initiate a player battle without warning, making these some of the most unpredictable of battles! Best be on your toes!

 

Team battles are an opportunity to team up with one or more of your friends and fight especially powerful opponents together!  These are a rarity in Adventure, and mark the ultimate test – allowing both of you to strategise together, and even play your own battle moves for each other’s benefit!

 

Team battles have the additional advantage of allowing players to leverage their strengths for greater synergy – because each Aethermon element has access to slightly different strategies.

 

As to what those different strategies are – tune into the blog over the next few weeks as we profile each element to discover what makes them unique!

 

Stay ready, AetherRen!

← Announcing Aethermon: Adventure! Aethermon 101 - Welcome to your Adventure! →

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Aside from some convention apperances this year, we are hard at work on two future Aethermon games, which share one very important feature – the Aethermon Battle and Progression System! Let’s talk about it!

Unlike Collect, which has fairly abstract gameplay where players can discover the Aethermon creatures but not really interact with them, the Battle and Progression System is designed to provide a consistent interaction with your Aethermon of choice throughout your gameplay experience.

 

Think of it somewhat like a streamlined interpretation of old-school JRPGs: at the beginning of the game, you choose your Aethermon companion, and that one creature stays with you throughout the entire game, as you fight, quest, level up, gain strength and skill – and eventually, evolve.

 

At each new level you may choose a new battle card – representing your options when you enter a fight. Weaker battle cards are balanced out by an additional health bonus to your Aethermon – which means that you choose the particular style of play you prefer with any Aethermon regardless of type. Raivalp the Thunderstruck dog Aethermon might be designed to have lots of quick moves, and you can lean into that – or you can choose differently and end up with a particularly tanky little puppy that game.

 

Although emulating the JRPGs which inspired it, the entire system is designed to reduce player overhead, providing a smoother gameplay experience to players, rather than a maths challenge. Moreover, this system is compatible with multiple future Aethermon games, including both that we are currently working on, Aethermon: Ascent (co-operative 2-5 player roguelike boardgame) and Aethermon: Adventure (competitive 2-8 player adventure boardgame).

 

Look out for more information about these two games in upcoming blog posts and newsletters!

Stay awesome, AetherRen!

← 2023 SXSW Sydney analysis Announcing Aethermon: Adventure! →

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A key feature of Aethermon: Collect’s gameplay arc is the closing possibility space over time. This means that early in the game players have many options to choose from, but as the game continues the number of moves available diminishes. Since on each turn the first player is acting slightly before each other player, they (on average) are benefiting from a slightly more expansive set of choices.

• This advantage is subtle, and often invisible. We award the end of game tiebreaks to the player who acted last in the turn order. 

If this was the only form of First Player Advantage in Collect this perhaps would be all we needed to do. However, the second form presented a different challenge.

It is very difficult to predict the exact number of turns in a game of Aethermon: Collect. As a result we’ll often see some players get additional turns relative to other players (therefore giving them more chances to accumulate points), and this advantage always favours players earlier in the turn order.

• Very roughly in a 2-player game, there is a 50% chance the first player will have an extra turn.
• In a 4-player game there is a 25% chance the first player will have a 1-turn advantage on 3 players; a 25% chance the first and second player will have a 1-turn advantage on 2 players; a 25% chance the first, second and third players will have a 1-turn advantage on 1 player; and only a 25% chance no players will have a turn advantage.

This is huge! And in our early playtests it was very uncommon to see the last player win a game in 3- or 4-player games. 

Our instinct was to redress this advantage with artefacts. By creating artefacts worth a fraction of a turn, we could give more artefacts to players later in the turn order to balance this disadvantage. However this created new problems:

1. It reversed the problem where, depending on where the game ended, one player might be advantaged. Consider a 4-player game where no player ended with a turn advantage: the last player got multiple artefacts, and did not face a turn disadvantage.
2. Furthermore, the game didn’t feel as fair. Even if over the long run this would even out the win % between the 1st player and the 4th player, this didn’t help in a single game.
3. Perhaps most significantly, this didn’t feel as fun. It felt like the players were playing a different game. The first player with a single artefact just didn’t have as many options available as the 4th player looking at four artefacts. 

We quickly moved on from this idea; and after MANY iterations settled on an artefact draft where the last player to act gets first choice to offset the disadvantage of turn order. To make this work the draft had to have several unique features:

1. Artefacts need to offer asymmetric value.
   • If all artefacts presented the same value, then acting last wouldn’t be a significant counter-balance to First Player Advantage; as the first player would get less choice, but still a valuable artefact.
2. Artefacts are separated into random pairs that are drafted together.
   • This is important, because once players ascertain which artefacts are the most powerful, it would be very easy to create a quick lookup table where players would always select the most powerful artefact available, making each game look very same-ish.
   • Instead, we have 12 artefacts of varying strengths, divided into pairs (of which only 2 per player are included in the draft). While it is still possible to rank the 66 possible combinations of artefacts, this becomes much more difficult once considering interactions between not only artefacts, but the other artefact combinations in the draft.

While it is possible that this system would create pairs of artefacts balanced in a way that the first player drafting and the last player drafting receive artefact pairs of similar value, it is also possible that a game will conclude with no players receiving a turn advantage.

Overall this system has created games that not only produce a similar win-rate for all players in the turn order, but also feels fair.

Stay balanced, AetherRen!

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While Aethermon: Collect is not complicated, the below information does still need to be shared: 

• What Aethermon is on the card?
• What other Aethermon are in its family?
• How many points does this Aethermon grant?
• What elemental force does this Aethermon share?

This translates to the following visual features: the main image; the name; the points digit; the one, two or three family portraits; the elemental coloured ribbon; and the elemental glyphs.

You may notice that the element is represented twice in the above list. It isn’t more gameplay-important than anything else – in fact, aside from sorting cards before a two- or three-player game, strictly speaking you can play without it. So what gives?

Let’s say you’re a first-time player of Aethermon: Collect. In fact, let’s say you’re a first-time visitor to the Aethersphere. A large part of the gameplay is collecting entire family lines in order to substantially increase your score – but the cards are in a grid on the table, oriented in all directions, and you don’t know which ones share the same families. You need to be able to tell at a glance where to find your target. The coloured ribbon makes for a quick shortcut to which of the many cards you should check.

But what if you are colour blind? Estimates suggest that as many as 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of colourblindness. This is where the glyphs come in. Placed on the ribbon, they offer players additional information to ensure that mistakes are harder to make.

We want Aethermon to be for everyone who wants it, which means that as well as the obvious aesthetic concerns we have for our product, inclusive design is an important feature. It’s true the phrase ‘you can’t please everybody’ – we don’t have a solution for totally blind players, for instance – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to be accessible with inclusive design features where we CAN put them.

And if I may, our cards are looking pretty good.

What do you think? Does it matter to you to play games that prioritise inclusivity in their design?

Stay welcoming, AetherRen

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In this post we highlight the changes we’ve made to Aethermon over the last 6 months, every one of which has improved the experience beyond comprehension.

Opponent Intent

Previously players would choose a Battle Card, then they would see their opponent’s move. This was chosen to better emulate a PvP experience.

Unfortunately, this would rarely (but still too frequently) lead to some really “feel bad” experiences where an NPC opponent’s card would completely negate a player’s Battle Card.

By allowing players first to see their opponents intent and make decisions accordingly, the battles become much more puzzle-like. This is particularly fun in group battles.

(R)eact update

With the above change, (r)eacts have been simplified.

Previously (r)eacts were played separately after opponent intent. With the player making all their choices after seeing opponent intent, (r)eact cards are played with the player’s main Battle Card.

(r)eact rules are now simple: Each round, players must play 1 regular Battle Card; they may also play 1 (r)eact. (r)eacts are resolved before regular Battle Cards.

Decks -> Dice

The original intention was to eschew the use of dice as much as possible. This often meant using decks as a randomiser – such as in Boss battles. This provided many advantages, such as being able to plan that in a 6-turn battle, we could comfortably expect that players would see all six cards in a 6-card deck.

It did have the downside of needing extra cards per boss. This not only was a significant $$$ cost to the game, but created extra player overhead as they would need to find the relevant deck for each boss.

We’ve instead shifted to larger cards for bosses with Moves on the cards (6 Moves and 2 cards for Final Bosses, 1 card with 3 Moves for regular Bosses). Players simply roll a dice and read the corresponding Move.

This has an added benefit that players can see all the possible moves an opponent might use and plan their actions accordingly.

Furthermore, the ‘card savings’ has allowed us to include more Final Bosses!!!

Six New Final Bosses

Woot woot! We are currently balancing out six new bosses, each of which provide a unique end-of-game experience!!!

Friendship (helping others in combat)

Players can now help each other in battle.

Throughout a player’s journey, each Player can now gain “Friendship” with their Allies. 

If you have a “Friendship Token” of another player OR they have a “Friendship Token” of your colour, you may discard the “Friendship Token” then intercede in one of these Battles at any time, playing ONE Battle Card into the battle.

If you are in the same Battle as your ally AND you each have the other’s Friendship Token, you may discard BOTH tokens and each of you may play 1 additional Battle Card in a single round of that battle. 

Team Battles

On each floor of the randomly generated Tower, players will face one of 4 kinds of encounters: (1) Regular Battle, (2) Quest/Heal, (3) Boss Battle (tier 2 Aethermon with unique moves or (4) Team battles.

These Team battles pit two players against a single Boss. Victory here not only earns the players an Artefact (as defeating Bosses always does), but gains each player “Friendship” as described in the previous section. 

Artefact Scaling

Artefacts previously scaled linearly, i.e. a Tier 2 artefact was worth two Tier 1 Artefacts, a Tier 3 Artefact was worth a Tier 1 Artefact and a Tier 2 Artefact.

They now scale so that Tier 2 Artefacts are worth THREE Tier 1 Artefacts, and a Tier 3 Artefact is worth TWO Tier 2 Artefacts (or six Tier 1’s).

(This is the triangular number progression 1,3,6,10…)

This better addresses the situations where players would rather hold on to a lower Tier artefact (more in next section) than gain a ‘stronger’ artefact that actually made them weaker due to loss of synergy.

Artefact Progression

Players are no longer forced to get rid of their artefact when getting a new artefact.

When getting a new Artefact, players can now choose from 3 options:

1. Get a new Tier 1 Artefact
2. Exchange a current Artefact for a random Artefact 1 Tier higher
3. Exchange a current Artefact for a chosen Artefact of the same Tier

Character Tweaks

Lots of balance changes.

The most significant rework was the Fire element (Sparkitty line). Sparkitty used to boost abilities by discarding cards. This had the unintended consequence of Sparkitty becoming the tankiest character in the game as players would choose lower power High HP  moves so they could discard them easily. Bonuses for discarding cards are now tied to the value of the moves discarded.

Star/Heart-value

Purely a quality-of-life improvement. It is now easier for players to know how much HP to gain per level.

When levelling up, players used to need to look at the “value” of a battle card, subtract that value from 5, and gain that much HP.

Cards now have a Heart and Star value that always add to 5 between them. Higher Star-value moves are stronger; players gain HP equal to the Heart-value.

3 New Playable Elements

We’ll reveal the Aethermon later, but here are their mechanics:

Ice – Slows opponents, gets a bonus if opponent slows too much

Metal – Hurts self in battle, but has powerful abilities

Heart – Increased player accessibility (reduced language dependency, doesn’t require as much game literacy, slightly overpowered)

Each Element now has a playable Alternate

By popular demand, opponent characters are now playable!! They maintain the same moveset, but have 2 unique abilities, to be unlocked on crowdfunding, with stretch goals.

Quests -> Team Quests & Solo Quests

Quests used only to be activated by a player landing on a quest square; now each floor activates 1 Team Quest. Solo quests are still activated by a player landing on them.

Team quests involve the entire team.

Solo quests affect the player landing on the square, and at most 1 more player.

New Keyword (C)leanse

Another quality-of-life improvement. Too many cards had the language “remove 1 debuff from self, and one buff from your opponent”. 

Hence, many cards now have the Keywork (c)leanse to replace that text.

Simplified Levelling

When levelling up, players simply choose one of two (three with upgrades) available moves, then shuffle the unchosen move back into their unlearned movepool.

Previously players could choose from all previously available moves.

We’re getting better everyday! Keep growing with us AetherRen.

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