Month: March 2017

As the mainstream Smash games were duking it out on the main stage at Genesis 4, the side streams bustled with activity from other communities. Catherine, Street Fighter V and Towerfall all had their place in the sun, with an entire row on the left side of the convention hall dedicated to these side games. Here you could find the Rivals of Aether community, playing together in the largest single gathering of fans that the platform fighter has ever seen. Players from all over the USA and a few contenders from Europe had made the journey to San Jose to share the love of Rivals and battle it out for the Rivals Championship Series crown.

It is a community of mixed heritage, with veteran Smashers, multi-game competitors and players whose first platform fighter was Rivals of Aether. They wielded tools of all descriptions, from battle scared Gamecube controllers, to light up Xbox 360 pads and pristine Xbox One controllers. The tournament organizers even commissioned special Gamecube to Xbox controller adapters so all fans were welcome to play. From just watching friendlies, the Rivals community seems like quite the melting pot of players, with all attendees just enjoying their chance to play the game that they love with fellow competitors.

As someone who dabbled with Rivals upon its initial Early Access launch, the speed at which players were fighting was a marvel to watch. With dedicated players mastering each character’s kit, as well as now integrating wavelands and wavedashes into their general movement, matches are like a furious ballet as players weave in and out of neutral. Speaking to Tandori, a top Maypul player, Rivals is a game with the “tech of something like Melee with the punishing combos of 64”, meaning that a single hit in neutral can lead into death. If there was anything that players should learn going into Rivals, “movement, movement and movement” was Tandori’s mantra.

The combination of speed and raw power makes Rivals an explosive game to watch. With every character having this burst damage capability, it ensures that almost every character gets a look in at the competitive level. “I really love that every character can win honestly,” said Fullstream, one of the top contenders going into the event. “There’s always something else you can do and I love how you’re almost expected to learn to play more than one character,” meaning that character diversity is actively encouraged at the higher levels of play.

Having said that, Rivals creator Dan Fornace still believes that there is more work to be done to bring out each character’s true potential. Forsburn is one such fighter, a character who can kick up clouds of smoke to hide in, as well as summon a clone of himself to confuse his enemies. For a character based on deception, Fornace believes that there is still room to bring out the best of his kit.  He said that the team “experimented with turning his moveset into something like Cloud’s from Smash 4, where each special can be powered up”. While “they liked the variety it was meant to bring”, what happened was that “none of the powered up specials (with the exception of Down Special) felt cool enough to match the rest of his design.” As such, the team are currently in the process of refining the character to make him a viable threat in competitive play, while also keeping true to the initial design idea of this deceptive assassin.

Etalus is an example of a character that took a typical Smash archetype and made it work for high level play. While grapplers and big bodies like Bowser and DK seldom make it past mid-tier, the burly polar bear Etalus goes toe to toe with the faster fighters in Rivals. The success of Etalus main Arcanine at Genesis–who was able to beat one of the titans of Rivals Ralph–is a testament to how the Rivals design team was able to make a heavy character be a viable threat in a platform fighter.

As for Genesis itself, the tournament was the final event of the RCS and saw all the major contenders in Rivals finally collected in one place. The three titans of the game, Ralph, MrLz and Fullstream were there, alongside Europe’s best player Khaos and other major threats like Arcanine and CakeAssault. According to Tandori and Dan, these three are like the pillars of high level Rivals. For Tandori, you can see Ralph as “the veteran” who cut his teeth on Melee, MrLz is “the prodigy” who is trying to make his mark like he did in Project M, while Fullstream is “the worker” with Rivals being his first competitive game. Speaking to Fullstream, his love but lack of access to Melee actually spurred him to play Rivals, as the tech skill and speed looked so similar.

Dan likened Ralph and Fullstream to “ZeRo and MKLeo”, with Ralph “dominating the Rivals scene during Early Access and not dropping a set (even in small online events) for months.” Fullstream on the other hand came out of nowhere, winning the Rivals tournament at SXSW 2016 before going onto win almost every other event he entered and racking up the most amount of points in the US branch of the RCS. Fullstream was certainly prepared to win, stating that he was going to “beat everybody” when I talked to him before the tournament began.

Luckily for him, he kept up his promise. Unfortunately, the fated Ralph and Fullstream set didn’t materialise as Fullstream made it all the way to Winners’ Finals without dropping a game. It was actually Arcanine’s Etalus that drew first blood against Fullstream, taking him all the way to game 5. Having already upset the bracket by defeating Ralph, Fullstream had to not only deal with a high level Etalus, but work out Arcanine’s ferocious playstyle. According to Dan, there had just recently been a change to Etalus’ ice armour mechanic just before Genesis 4, adding yet another hurdle for Fullstream to deal with. While on the verge of a reverse 3-0 from the polar bear from the frozen north, Fullstream held his nerve and won the set 3-2. Arcanine would eventually get third, losing to MrLz’s Maypul in yet another five game set, come losers finals.

Ralph did not go quietly however, as his match against CakeAssault in Losers’ was, by Dan’s admission, “as one of the craziest Rivals sets of all time.”. Ralph was set to take the match quite comfortably, taking a quick 2-0 lead with his battle-hardened Orcane. In a stroke of either desperation or pure genius, CakeAssault switched off of Wrastor and picked Zetterburn. As Rivals’ most straight forward character, CakeAssault’s Zetterburn switch would mean he would have to beat Ralph with pure fundamentals, rather than with gimmicks. The switch did pay off, with the flaming lion beating the four legged seal in games 3 and 4. The crowd started to then rally behind CakeAssault going into game five, chanting his name as he was primed to take out the number one seed for the event. However, disaster struck as CakeAssault threw away a stock lead after purposely killing himself after he thought he’d taken Ralph’s final stock. Ralph was able to recover, racking up a quick 50% and making CakeAssault the potential recipient of the infamous “taunt to get bodied” combo. However, fate sided with the plucky Zetterburn with CakeAssault securing the win with a super-powered uppercut.

If Genesis 4 is anything to go by, Rivals of Aether has a bright competitive future ahead of it. But, you may ask, what is in the pipeline following the game’s full release? A special guest character is planned for release in the spring, with a pack of four new DLC characters and another guest fighter before the end of the year. This will finish off the cast with a grand total of 14 fighters. “I now know how Sakurai and his team felt in some ways,” said Dan when discussing the guest character selection process. If all else fails, the design team will just “not show the results though and add Bayonetta.”

As for future tournaments, RCS Season two is planned to start shortly after launch, with Dan, community manager George Rogers and several Rivals TOs already planning out events for the future. The first main event to watch out for will be CEO Dreamland in April, which even has its own special DLC which reskins a stage to look like the famous CEO wrestling ring. The Rivals team are great for cool community features like skins and taunts, with special event and holiday skins coming out at regular intervals. My bright pink Valentine’s Day Zetterburn has been my favourite, I have to say. Dan calls the RCS “baby esports”, with the team trying to work within a relatively limited budget to hold quality events. Events like Genesis and CEO, as well as online events run with the help of smash.gg have been “a huge benefit” but it has meant leveraging development time to attend tournaments. With the main bulk of development wrapping up with the game’s release, expect the second season of the RCS to be bigger and better than the last.

Dan’s main advice for platform fighter designers to “experiment and iterate” on Smash in order to create something fresh. Rivals embraces the competitive nature of platform fighters results in much needed concessions like tutorials and an extensive training mode, but it comes at the cost of losing the instant accessibility of Smash. However, Dan hopes that by focusing on fluid movement and teaching new players about the basics of movement, both casual and traditional fighting game players will take to Rivals much quicker than something like Melee.

From both the community and mechanical side of the equation, Rivals of Aether sets a hopeful precedent for the future of platform fighters. With their popularity only growing, now is the time to join in on the fun.

Rivals of Aether launches tomorrow on Steam.

Source: 2GGaming

Special thanks to Tandori, Fullstream and Dan Fornace for contributing their thoughts for this article.