Another long day of development ends in the twilight hours. The team has been working all day, incorporating the feedback from the Alpha testers. As day surrenders to night and the wind outside starts howling, one after another steps away from their workstations and seeks rest in their rooms in the old manor in the woods that moi rai games has rented for this Halloween work-vacation. As they say their goodbyes, Sersch shouts that he will quickly push the update live before going to bed. The hours pass, Sersch works and works, the cold white glare of his PC screen illuminating the dark room. Finally - Sersch pushes the update live at precisely midnight. Satisfied he makes his way to his room, clomping along the old wooden corridor. Not much time has passed when Sersch is abruptly torn away from his dreams. He wakes up to the persistent sound of Discord notifications. As he gets up to take a look at his PC, he sees the rest of the team, already up, standing around the big workstation table. He looks around and sees tired and noticeably nervous eyes. We get flooded with the weirdest bug reports, Aques Levaro says. Ntonisthier who is looking at his PC shakes his head in confusion. Something seems to be very wrong with this update Outside the manor, the fog covers the landscape with a heaviness you could almost cut with a knife. This is going to be a long night

"THE MONSTER BEHIND THE MONITOR"

"THE GLITCH THAT CALLS"

"QA STANDS FOR QUESTIONABLE ADVENTURES"

We hope you enjoyed this absolutely realistic stories about game development and wish you all a happy Halloween!

Welcome to a new devlog!

I hope you enjoyed this little sneak-peek into the lore and story in Aethermancer! Thanks for reading and see you next time!

Hello and welcome to this devlog, were so glad you could make it!!

Choose your Path

Retraining the NPCs

It's shiny - it's new - we want it!

More events to explore

Hopefully this gives you a good update on how the alpha is going so far. Thanks for reading and see you next time!

How time flies by! After the years spent making Monster Sanctuary, we are happy to be at one of the best parts again: sharing a new game with testers for the first time! Our studio has been working on Aethermancer since mid 2021, and today, we announce the start of our upcoming Alpha. Im sure you all can imagine that this is an exciting, but also a little nervous time for us at moi rai games, since this will be the first time people get to interact with our newest game, Aethermancer. [previewyoutube=LLacC7_hjk4;full][/previewyoutube]

Become a Tester

What is an Alpha?

Why have an Alpha?

Ive never participated in an Alpha before, what is it like?

Where Can I See Alpha Content Streamed?

Why Cant Everyone Join In Yet?

Hey and welcome to another devlog!

I hope I could inspire some excitement for bugs and otherworldly shenanigans with this Devlog, and I can't wait to see how everyone will experience this wild adventure alongside me!

Hey and welcome to this new devlog that is full of T I L E M A G I C !
I'm Malika and this devlog is all about the tile magic in Aethermancer! First off, there are two reasons why we use tiles in Aethermancer. For one, the level generation requires a flexible tool box to put together the environment, and tiles work as the basic Lego bricks to set the foundation. On the other hand, it saves time. Even if I were to draw the entire environment by hand, I would copy-paste certain unimportant and repetitive segments to save time. Tiles do just that.
Broadly speaking, tiles can be described as images that are arranged in a grid. Most commonly they are rectangular, but in fact they can come in many varying shapes. There's even 3D variants placed in a three-dimensional grid.
The above is a classic example of dungeon tiles from the old Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky But we're getting off track. The tiles used in Aethermancer are 2D sprites and placed on a square shaped grid and can be separated into three types:

• Borders - they include fences and similar objects that are used as a separator
• Terrain - it defines the ground texture
• Walls - the walls are basically the separator to indicate higher elevated terrain

I hope you had fun reading about tile magic despite it getting a bit technical! Maybe you're even ready to create your own satisfying auto tiling set?

Hey and welcome to this new devlog where we will go on a secret mission to sneak into the map generator and see how it works.
In Aethermancer we use procedually generated maps for our overworld, that are based on different biomes. If you want to learn more about what our maps in general look like before we get started, feel free to check out this tour of Terastae we did earlier this year. I will keep this non-programmer-friendly since we'll mostly be talking about the logic and system behind all of our maps - so let's get going!
Depending on how you want to generate the map, there are multiple routes you can go. In general there are two types I would distinguish: You can use noise as the base (Minecraft does this) or you can use rooms (most roguelike/roguelites use this). Since we need quite a bit of control over what we generate and how much space we need, we're using a room-based system. However room-based does not mean that you will be trapped in one section of the map, its more used as a base for the generation and will still allow you to roam around the map and explore.
So the first thing we need is a general layout for our map that is based on rooms. Depending on what exactly you want those can look quite different. Below is what one of our maps would look like, which we will use as an example for now. All of our areas have four points at which they can connect: North, East, South, West. Depending on which points are connected, we end up with different shapes for our areas: O-area (1 connection), I-area (2 connections, which are counterparts), L-area (2 connections, which are not counterparts), T-area (3 connections) and X-area (4 connections).
Okay, now we have the basic structure for our maps but if you run across that map, the shapes are a bit ... meh. So instead of using the basic shape of each room, we use something called area prefabs. These contain predefined shapes (and a bunch of other things) which we use to define which part of our room is accessible and inaccessible. We are using a mix of these area prefabs that are then procedurally filled as well as completely hand-crafted, premade areas. For the sake of this devlog we are ignoring premade areas.
But there's one thing about these prefabs that is restricting them. If we have a room that connects North & South we can't use a prefab that connects East & West right? So we would need two different ones. If we now look at O-, L- and T-areas, we would also need 4 different ones just to cover every direction once. That seems like a lot of work so why don't we use a trick and do some sneaky magic to get rid of our problem? The solution we're looking for is rotation. By turning our area prefab we can make it fit for all rooms of the according type. Now we (in theory) only need one are prefab per room type, but if we use more than that it adds even more variety to our map. We use quite a few currently and there's always the option to add more. Now we have a map that has a defined accessible area. Which is cool but ... we actually need to decide what goes where and how we want to fill the whole map? If we just filled it with tiles depending on if it's accessible/inaccessible that would be really boring ... and we don't do boring at this company so let's make this map pretty! For that we're using subbiomes which define how a room gets filled in terms of terrain and props. So depending on what subbiome and what area prefab we use, we end up with different rooms, which is pretty neat. Now that the accessible part looks cool, let's get to work on the inaccessible part!
So the first thing we'll need to do is determine how much of the inaccessible part of the map we actually need. There's little use in generating a bunch of things on the other side of the map if no one is ever going to see it, because they can't get there. So we're simply going to extend our current outer border depending on how much space you can usually see on the camera. Let's figure out what cool stuff to place and where we want to put it. We could come up with a general structure of what we want the inaccessible area to look like and place that everywhere but again ... that's kinda lame. So let's divide the outer area into chunks, we're using the lazy flood fill for that. The nerds that want to learn more about how it's done can check out this video, for everyone else: We now simply have multiple smaller areas we can work with instead of one large one.
Previously I mentioned that the subbiomes have more information stored in them, among other things they also store what type of inaccessible subbiome can be placed next to them. This enables us to place inaccessible subbiomes with more intent so that things feel well placed instead of misplaced. Each biome can have its own type of border (e.g. water or fences) as well as a collection of different props that get placed in the area.
Okay now our map look quite nice and like a charming place to fight monsters. Now that's all, right? Well you know, it's a pretty good map but ... isn't it ... kind of ... boring ... in some places? Don't burn me just yet because we have more exciting stuff to add to the map! What if we wanted to aim higher and ... add heights? For that we'll use a simplified version of the Wave Function Collapse. You can use Wave Function Collapse for a bunch of things but we will mostly use it to determine what kind of height we need where, which is a lot simpler than other cases where you can use it. In our case we have the following basic rules:

• Each area has four sides (North, East, South, West)
• Each side can either be connected or not connected to another area
• Each side can either be a height or not a height
• If two areas are connected, the connecting sides have the same properties (since they are kind of one thing)

I hope this devlog gave you a glimpse of what is going on behind the map generation of Aethermancer! We do have a bunch of other things that are going on in the map generation, but this devlog is already quite full with information so we'll keep that for another time.

In today's devlog, we're pulling back the curtain once again to unveil one of our most versatile tools for making Aethermancer: Gradients. These unsung heroes in our toolkit are the secret sauce that breathes life into our visuals. Now, I know we're delving into the technical nitty-gritty, but fear not! We'll kick things off gently, gradually wading into the intricacies that make Aethermancer tick. There's a bit of something for everyone on this journey. Are you ready to witness the alchemy behind the scenes? Let's dive in! Let's lay the groundwork: What even is a gradient? A gradient is a smooth transition between two or more colors. We can use it on a texture to avoid harsh edges, or we can use it to visualize the change of a color over time (called "Location" in the screenshot), which is ideal to take our animations to the next level.
Let's take a look at the fire in the game for example. Without a change in color the fire would look monotonous, static and, well, not really like fire.
Now if we use a gradient, we can breath some life into the inferno. We start with vibrant yellows and whites, converging at the heart of the fire to create a scorching, radiant core. Then we seamlessly transition to fiery reds and further to deepening hues of dark, red-ish brown. This allows us to mimic the nuances of actual fire.
Gradients don't always have to be linear though. We can also adjust them to take on any form we want. We could bend them into the shape of our monsters, or in this case the shape of the Aethermancer themselves (well, actually the dash if you want to be nit-picky):
Here's where it gets interesting. We're not transitioning between colors anymore. Instead this gradient describes how bright or dark parts of the image should be. With this brightness gradient we can make different parts of the Aethermancer glow. Now let's dim the lights and step into the game so we can take a look:
Now that we've established that we can use gradients to not only hold colors, but also other information, here's another example, that you might already have seen in action if you've followed the development of Aethermancer for a while.
Gradients like this allow us to mark different parts of our monsters for different effects by overlaying this gradient on top of the monster. Each hue holding an encoded information. This example comes into play when a monster meets their fate in combat. The dark tones mark the parts of the monster that disappear first, while the bright parts are the last ones to disappear.
I know it is hard to imagine, but the power of gradients doesn't end there. We can do more cool stuff, when we don't limit ourselves to the exact shape of a monster when we make gradients for them. A while ago I shared this blobby looking image on our Discord:
To the untrained eye it might not be immediately apparent, but Dark Elder is hidden in this texture. Each pixel in this gradient texture contains the information how far away it is from the outline of Dark Elder. A white pixel is 32 pixels away on the outside of the monster, a black pixel is 32 pixels away on the inside of the monster and a medium grey is exactly on the outline of the monster. (For the more technically inclined, this is called a signed distance field or SDF).
With this gradient we can create outlines of an (almost) arbitrary width, without having any issues.
For comparison, before we had that possibility we used to make outlines by displaying the monster multiple times with a slight offset. That works reasonably well for thin outlines (1-2 pixels), but breaks apart once you want thicker outlines or when you have a lot of pointy elements like Naga's spear
We're also using gradients and gradient textures in a lot of other places, like the Aether crystals, the wind simulation, our fake 3D, our lighting and more. But this devlog is already pretty long, so I won't cover them here. If you are interested in hearing about any of those topics or want more information on any of the topics in this devlog, let us know!

Hope you guys enjoyed this look into some technical details of Aethermancer. If you want to directly ask our Tech Artist Basti about VFX topics, head on over to Reddit to a little live q&a:

Another long day of development ends in the twilight hours. The air in the old cabin we rented for a work-vacation is still thick from all the discussions. I almost did not hear the faint knocking on the door with the rain thudding on the roof. I open the squealing door to see nothing. Nothing except a small package. I raise my head but cannot see a person in this dark, stormy night. I call upon my colleagues, curious about the contents of the mysterious package. We open it slowly, tensely and see what seems to be a monkeys paw. Almost missing the handwritten note, I pick up the ragged tag lying next to the gruesome object. This magical paw will grant you three wishes. I look around and see shock and confusion in my colleagues eyes but also temptation. Before anyone can raise their voice, Anton shouts: Wait!, grabbing the paw. I recognize this! This is a cursed object Ive read about. This is not a joke, this is dark magic. We should put this far far away and absolutely, under no circumstance, use it! Being the only reasonable thing to do, we follow Antons suggestion and store the paw away, into a dusty old cupboard in the basement. Shaken and agitated, but still so very tired, we decide to leave this situation for today and go to bed. The night outside is stormy and dark and my eyes become heavy while I watch the rain pour down the window.

"A NEVERENDING ODYSSEY"

"THE INVASION OF BUGS"

"CREEPY CRAWLY SIZES"

We hope you enjoyed this absolutely realistic stories about game development and wish you all a happy Halloween!

Welcome to a new devlog! This is our first devlog diving into the combat mechanics of Aethermancer. Thats right! It took a long time (lots and lots of iterations and internal prototypes) to get the combat feel just right, but now we are comfortable with sharing some specifics of the combat design. We are starting out with some key Monster attributes - the stuff that makes every single Monster unique, special, and worthwhile.

NAGA

• Elements: Fire / Water
• Types: Attacker, Tank, Shielder, Power
• Signature Trait: Counter Attack: Physical Retaliation: This Monster launches an immediate basic attack against that enemy.

WOLPERTINGER

• Elements: Water / Wind
• Types: Attacker, Spellcaster, Debuffer, Critical, Armor Break
• Signature Trait: Eagle Eyes: This Monster can copy and use the last 2 enemy actions. On Copied Action: Apply Armor Break on target enemy.

ORTHRUS

• Elements: Fire / Wind
• Types: Attacker, Critical, Sidekick, Power
• Signature Trait: Shared Fury: Whenever this Monster gains Sidekick or Power, that buff is shared with another random party member.

• Do something unique, which other Monsters cant do. Each Monster should stand out.
• Have strong potential to play or build around. Each Monster should make the player interested to try out new strategies.

STAR SPAWN

• Elements: Fire / Water
• Types: Spellcaster, Shielder, Aether, Power
• Signature Trait: Wrath of the Void: On Spell Action: If you have 1 or more Wild Aether, consume up to 4 of them to cast a random damage spell in the game with equal cost.

• Have the potential to make each combat and each run of Aethermancer feel different. Each combat and each run should stand out.

Hope you guys know more about our monsters now. If you want to directly ask our Game Designer Anton about the monsters in Aethermancer, head on over to Reddit to a little live q&a:

I am so happy I finally have time to write to you! Last week kept me pretty busy, but was super special! The team finally got together for our very first real company trip in Cologne! We rented this charming old house for all of us for a whole week to spend time with each other and of course go to Gamescom. But the reason it was so special was that it was the very first time most of us met in real life! Ive been looking forward to this for months!
Oh, I forgot, I need to give you some background! (Note to myself, I should write more about work in my diary...) Oh, I forgot, I need to give you some background! (Note to myself, I should write more about work in my diary...) So, moi rai games was started by Sersch some years ago, when he was working on Monster Sanctuary. He was working mostly alone but later with help from his brother and his wife and at some point our first Community Manager from the US. Most of the team gradually joined after Monster Sanctuarys release (you are my diary, so you should remember, I joined around April 2021) from all over Germany, US, the Netherlands and Brazil! As we are all spread around the world, we never had an actual office. Working together remotely works great. We can choose our hours, don't have to commute somewhere and we still manage to spend quality time as a team playing stuff together online or having virtual coffee dates. But still meeting in real life is different and thats why this trip was so so so sooo exciting for all of us!!! And maaaaan it was so cool to meet everyone! We taught each other our native languages (I can say so much cool stuff in BR Portuguese now huehuehue), had a huge snack pile and one of us (no name dropping) did a ranking of who seemed the most different from their online-version.
One of the first things we did was a hike! I guess thats what you do at teambuilding events. We went up Drachenfels and Drachenburg (Dragon Fort). I felt like that was a bit dangerous since there were dragons living in that forest, but well, the others are badasses, what can I do
The view we got was pretty nice! All the way down and into all the little castle windows... Ooooooh... so many d e t a i l s I would have missed, if I didn't look c l o s e e n o u g h.
The next day, we mostly enjoyed spending time together! We played a lot of cool boardgames (cant believe I forgot to take a pic of our boardgame pile!), for example Dune. Even though its a game of betrayal, our programmer Manoah never betrayed me in our alliance. Team building works! Yeahi! We also tried some [strike]black magic potion[/strike] cachaa that our pixel artist Jorge brought from Brazil with a fruit named Jambu, that makes your tongue numb for a couple of minutes. Crazy! And I got a new game idea! Monster charades with Monster Sanctuary and Aethermancer monsters! Man, diary, try doing an Ooze, that was hard... Oh!!! And I forgot to mention the great food we had in Cologne! Yummyyyyy ~
Wednesday was Gamescom day, woohoo! As expected, most of the time was spent in the Indie arena (since indie games are way cooler than AAA anyway, duh) playing all sorts of cool demos.
We actually also met a new colleague who will join us very soon! Gamescom was a really cool experience and I also took a lot of notes in case we ever get to have a booth there for Aethermancer...
We didnt do that much work on Aethermancer this week (except capturing videos for social media! Are you proud of me diary?), but you know what? It was the right thing to do. All the great moments we had together made us only stronger as a team and I really believe that this will make Aethermancer an even better game!
Our trip came to an end at some point, which left a bittersweet taste and I do feel a little sad, but then again I am sure well meet again and until then, I will just have to destroy the others online playing Overcooked! Talk to you later, Diary. Galina

Hope you enjoyed this page of our Community Manager's diary (and maybe found what's hidden in this devlog)! Now it's time to head back to work on Aethermancer! This fall will definitely be exciting...

We are happy you signed up for today's tour through Terastae! Your guide Anni will show you what's there to explore with some hints on how level generation for Aethermancer works.
Meowdy partners, Im Anni and your guide for this exclusive tour showing off our exploration! Since youve been battling so many monsters, you might want to sit back for a while and enjoy this small walk through this absolutely-definitely-no-monster-danger zone. Though weve had people wander off during tours and they definitely just started a new life somewhere far away [strike]and didnt get lost or anything![/strike]
Also if this isnt your first time on this tour, please keep in mind that some of the paths might have changed since you came here last time. No tours will ever be the same, even if they give you a similar feeling. So you will need to stay close and not wander too much, even though it might seem tempting to branch off and go exploring. Who knows what you might find out there[strike] or what might find you[/strike]. But now that weve established some ground rules, we can start our walk through **NAME REDACTED BY PR** in Terastae! Lets start at the beginning!
Notably: One of the first things that might catch your eye about our surroundings here is that we do like to do a bit of landscaping to enhance natures true beauty. While we appreciate everything flourishing, we do want to keep things somewhat contained so that everything is nice and easily traversable. Otherwise you might sprint and break something, you know? On the other hand its always fun to see how well we can mix and match our handcrafted creations with natures wild beauty. Sometimes we even adjust the near environment to really make things stand out or better integrate them into the overall look and feel we are going for. Oh but thats not the only reason!
Did you know, that not all plants can grow everywhere? Some can only grow on certain terrain, so we need to keep that in mind whenever were planting them, so we sometimes need to adjust the soil to match it to whatever we wanna put there. We really do care about the beautiful flora in **NAME REDACTED BY PR** but some plants are even more finicky than what I just told you. There are a number of plants that will require additional environmental factors to be juuust right for them to thrive in this fast-paced world. You could even go as far as to say they can only grow in their specific biome or area because they are so picky. But lets move on, we dont have all day to stand here and watch grass grow! Right now, we are working on making traveling as easy as possible so were making sure to preserve these well-traveled paths wherever possible, so nobody needs to ask Do you know the way?. You know, that could get annoying after a while. We are currently also discussing plans of getting some printed flyers in case somebody doesnt re-meme-ber where they are. Were actively trying to avoid any Hnsel & Gretel situations, where people feel like throwing bread on the floor is anything other than a waste of food. But we also dont want people to feel frustrated and smash the next best thing they find [strike]and have additional employees for cleaning up only.[/strike]
Ah damn I might have been mistaken and this isnt the super-peaceful-relax-trip I thought it was going to be with those monsters hanging out over there. Hm, but it seems like they are guarding something, so they might not pay too much attention to us if we stay further away. Our best chance would probably be to slowly move away, so we dont disturb them in whatever they are doing. Good thing, that worked so well! We should have paid more attention to where we were walking. But it does really make you wonder what they are defending. Could be something useful or powerful but I didnt get a good glimpse of it. But I might also just be making stuff up at this point. You know, doing a lot of tours really changed me for the better. Theres so much to learn and explore. For example if you turn around
Over there, can you see those cliffs? I didnt pay too much attention earlier but they look different than the ones we saw earlier, not as high for sure. Did you notice that those high cliffs also werent everywhere? Since all of this is its own ecosystem a lot of things are connected and influence each other. Thats probably why some patches seem to spread that far. But to be honest, thats more of a wild guess, than an actual fact. You know, one should always make sure that they arent just making up wild speculations and interpretations about things somebody said. You also shouldnt just jump into things, youre usually better off starting at the beginning.
Right, were back in good old Pilgrims Rest. So sorry we had to cancel the tour and you didnt get the full experience, but who knows, maybe somebody else can take you along next time theyre going. I gotta go now, somebody really tested the limits over there and got himself stuck. No idea why he keeps trying to break stuff but I should probably try and help him fix it! All the best on your travels, Aethermancer!

Hope you guys enjoyed this little trip. If you want to directly ask Anni about level generation or overworld in Aethermancer, head on over to Reddit to a little live q&a:

This devlog focuses on monster animations in Aethermancer! It consists of the written devlog by one of our Pixel Artist Adam as well as a video about specific monster animation at the end.
"Just for some background on my involvement with moi rai, I worked on Monster Sanctuary towards the end of its development creating monsters 51 through 111, then later remastering some of the earlier monsters. I worked on MS as a freelancer and since a style was already established, my main goal was just to match the style and tone already in the game. After a grueling year of drawing loveable pixel art monsters, Monster Sanctuary was released. I looked at our main developer Sersch and he looked at me. I gave him the Pixel Artists Salute and rode off into the sunset. Wacom tablet in hand, never to be seen again. Then I came back! My dramatic reappearance to the moi rai team came pretty much right at the start of their new project, Aethermancer. Unlike Monster Sanctuary, Aethermancers art style was still undecided and moldable, so I wanted to take that opportunity to push the art direction into a position that would be best suited for our team's strengths. Most of my professional work has been drawing characters looking cool while punching, looking cool while shooting, looking cool while slashing, and just looking cool while doing all sorts of destructive things. Its really one of the only things I know how to do. So when designing the visual structure of our new game, all I could think about was will the monsters look cool drawn like this? This goal affected a lot of the artistic decisions within the game. For example, the choice to cut away to a battle screen instead of fighting in the overworld was made in part because we knew we could make more detailed sprites and animations if we went with a side view perspective, as that would only require animating the sprite from one view. While I love the idea of battling in the overworld like Chrono Trigger, what I dont love is animating a giant toad with a pipe doing a body slam facing down, then a body slam facing right, then facing up, then facing up and to the right you get the point. With the current design, each monster has one detailed battle sprite and we can take a lot of time and effort to make the actions super fluid and unique." Some initial concepts for a more complex Naga overworld sprite, and also a monster in an isometric-style that will probably never reappear ever again ever:
"Another concept I had in mind is something that I call 'animation space'. I loved working on Monster Sanctuary, but one issue I kept running into while animating is that I had no space! Each monster had to stand still (well, hop forward), pretend to swing at the air or do a little dance, then jump back into place. There are only so many ways that you can animate an attack like this, and I think I animated all of them. Apparently monsters in Monster Sanctuary use the Shouting technique quite often..."
"That aint the case with Aethermancer folks. We tried it out at the beginning and said 'Nah, this is GARBAGE!'"
"The monsters in Aethermancer have the whole canvas to move around in. Some monsters jump to their enemies and slice em up (Naga), other monsters dash straight towards them and punch em in the face (Gargoyle), some go underground, pop back up and then whack the opponent (Mandragora). This style gives us a ton of space for unique and creative animations. You want a monster that teleports behind the enemy like Goku and blasts him with a Kamehameha? We can do that. A monster that jumps so high that he goes off the screen then comes down smashing the enemy with an aerial strike? We can do that too! A monster that punches so hard that he causes the enemies to fly through the background, opening up a NEW SECRET BACKGROUND!?! Well actually no, we cant do that. Thats too much work. This is probably my favorite part about working on Aethermancer, there are just so many opportunities for creativity in the battle animations and I think it makes the monsters stand out from other games and feel unique."
"We as a team are quite proud of the new style of monsters in Aethermancer, and its always exciting to come up with new ideas and share them with all of you! Were looking forward to creating a cast of loveable (or in some cases, weird and creepy) new monsters that you can smash your opponents into oblivion with in all sorts of new and interesting ways!" Hope you guys enjoyed reading about our monster animations. If you want to get more insight into monster pixel art animations, you can also check out this video Adam made where he goes deeper into thought processes when animating pixel art monsters: [previewyoutube=vckQK94-PMU;full][/previewyoutube]

Stay tuned for the next dev log and feel free to leave comments!

Seeing you guys react to our monsters in such a positive way over the last few months got our pixel artist Jorge in the mood to talk a bit about them. More specifically, in today's devlog we'll talk about Monster Design - Our goal and process, plus some of the guidelines that glue everything together.

Goals

Guidelines

Process

Step 1: The monster list!

Step 2: Just a whole bunch of sketches

Step 3: Polishing that one good idea

Hope you guys enjoyed getting a feel for how our design process goes as much as I did writing about it. Stay tuned for the next dev log and feel free to leave comments!

For our second devlog our Tech Artist Basti will take you behind the scenes of our announcement trailer and show you some of the things we did to take our pixel art from merely imitating the past to something that resembles your romanticised memories of it - a guide on taking pixel art "to the next level" if you will: Now first, what is the problem when we "just" imitate the past? When we take a look at screenshots from our childhood games, most of what we like about it is the memory of playing that game as a child. If we had no connection to those games already, we probably wouldn't find them appealing today. To prove my point, here is what Aethermancer looks like without any of the effects. Not very exciting, right? (Even though the pixel art itself is still amazing!)
To make it more exciting we first add some more movement to the scene. Now I'm no pixel artist, so I can't animate anything in the environment. What I can do however is add some particles. That's a good start, but I think we can do better.
The next steps are a bit more technical, but I hope it's entertaining for you none the less. One thing modern games really like to brag about is how good their lighting is, and we wanted to do that as well. There's just the problem, that lighting in 2D doesn't look as convincing as it does in 3D... at least by default.
As you can see we have some problems with the lighting. For example the player light shouldn't light up the top of the cliffs. To make the lighting a bit more "natural", we need some additional information about each object in the scene. Mostly that is "Is this object horizontal or vertical" and "How far above the ground is this pixel". When we visualize that information, we get a colorful image like this one:
Now with that additional information we can tell the lights to only light up objects that are facing the light and are not too far above or below it. This helps us create an illusion of depth so the player has a better feeling for the space they are moving through. That's already pretty good and conveys the mood of the scene a lot better than before.
Still, there is not a lot of movement going on. So next we're going to add some wind to blow through the trees and the grass. Our goal here is that the scene never really stands still. Right now the "wind" consists out of two parts. The first part is this randomly generated texture that represents the wind in the environment:
The second part is caused by the movement of the player. When you walk around, the Aethermancer leaves an invisible trail that affects the wind around themselves. With this trail we can fly through the fields and push the wheat aside. They also wobble back into place once we're gone.
Lastly every game with a gloomy mood needs fog, so we're also going to add that. Now for the fog to be convincing, we need to take the rest of the effects into account. First we need to make sure the fog only covers things up to a certain height, so we keep the illusion of a three-dimensional space. Also the wind needs to interact with the fog. If you look closely, you will see the pattern of the wind texture in the fog.
Now with all those little tricks we managed to make the scene look a lot more lively and gloomy at the same time. And that's the final result we arrive at:
Hope you enjoyed these behind the scenes insights into our game! Also, for better comparison here's the before and after in one video:

To start off: Why we chose to work on Aethermancer as our next project, instead of Monster Sanctuary 2. Working on a direct sequel to Monster Sanctuary would have been the more safe route and was definitely something we considered. But ultimately, working on Monster Sanctuary for over 5 years, we'd like to work on something new. We wanted to keep the monster taming aspect though and mix it with something different this time: A Roguelike/Roguelite game. In what way Aethermancer and Monster Sanctuary will be similar

• Youre still fighting 3 vs 3 Monster battles, The battles being more challenging and engaging than usual monster taming games.
  
• Your monsters will have access to a lot of different attacks and passive skills, similarly like in Monster Sanctuary, encouraging players to come up with synergetic builds for monsters and team compositions. Players will recognize a lot of skills which will be in some way similar to the ones in Monster Sanctuary. Youll also have other options to enhance and customise your monsters, like equipment.
  
• Buffs and Debuffs will play a big role again in monster & combat strategies.
• Every Monster is supposed to be viable and interesting on its own. There should be no monsters which are clearly inferior to others in all use cases.

• First of all, in addition to being a monster taming game, it will be a Rogulike, a Roguelite to be more precise. It is designed to have shorter playthrough time, being more difficult, with the idea players to try to beat the game multiple times. You will lose your monsters and most of their progress, but you will keep their souls and they will be slightly stronger when in your team next time. Also you will have a meta progression for the Aethermancer (the player character) and with the natural experience of players getting better at the game, it will make consecutive runs easier. While differently skilled players will require different amounts of attempts, the goal is to have a game that eventually most players will be able to beat on normal difficulty.
• Skills this time wont be acquired through skill trees, but well offer the player a choice out of 3 skills on every level up. Those skills will be picked randomly from the monsters skill pool. This is very common in Roguelike games and the idea is to have every run feel and play differently, even when using the same monsters. Also it will make every individual monster of the same kind feel a bit unique.
• Using Skills will require 4 different Elements of Aether, instead of the classical Mana Points. Your monsters will have a shared pool of Aether which replenishes to a certain degree every turn.
  
• Additionally, your monsters will have skills and equipment which helps you to generate and manage Aether
  
• The environments will be randomly generated this time, to also make different runs not feel too repetitive. Also the exploration will be top-down now, no longer side-view.
  
• There will be a hub location that will evolve over time, using meta currency you get from your run attempts. Youll help the residents build new houses and it will grow over time, becoming more and more prosperous.

We will share development insights here in a blog-format from time to time. If you want fresh out-of-the-oven showcases of new monsters, features and areas, follow the development on our Discord! We actually talk there! Other places to follow Aethermancer: Twitter Reddit Instagram Facebook TikTok