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- Seen Aug 10, 2022
Hello dear Pokéfriends,
I am Philipp and I am working on a game which is highly
inspired by Pokémon and the Pokémon TCG.
The game is called AETHERNIA and is a strategy card game in 3D where up to 4 players compete on a grid-based battlefield.
Aethernia has been worked on since 2021 and is still in development phase. Currently I am the only person to work on
the game and I plan to release playable test versions very soon.
Aethernia is a round-based strategy card game where up to 4 players compete against each other on a battlefield consisting of hexagonal tiles with different terrains. Each player has a deck of cards which they can play to summon monsters and / or cast spells to eliminate the enemy hero in order to win, while defending their own hero to prevent losing the game.
In order to defeat the enemies, a player needs to create a synergizing deck of monsters and spells aswell as make use of the different terrains which strengthen your monsters.
Each hero, monster and spell card comes with its own unique strengths, abilities and effects, which used combined lets you create your very own playstyle.
In the waters far beyond our worlds there lays a small group of islands. These islands form a region called Atlas and are home to some small communities of fisher people that live a quiet and peaceful life.
Since the beginning of the days, and probably even longer, many people started questioning whether there is more behind the seas. While never another mass of land outside of Atlas has ever been sighted, there has been one story that is getting told among the people to this day - A legend says, one day, a Captain and his crew have been to an unknown place, another island. But after he returned back from his journey and telling the people about this place, many started calling him crazy. Although after some days curiosity started to spread among some few fishermen and sailors. What, if he is right? More and more people started travelling the oceans and seas as far as possible, even for weeks and months, but never again has anyone witnessed the mysterious island by themselves.
The years passed by and people were starting to forget about it and accepting the fact that Atlas is all there is ... or is it?
One special night, that one Captain got awakened by a strange bright light far along the horizon of the ocean. The stars were clear and there were no clouds that night, so he was sure that this must be what he was searching for all these years. He immediately assembled his crew and together they went for the ship to sail towards the light. Behind him he left his small son waving goodbye, who also seemed to have noticed the light in the distance.
The Captain would never return and the next day no one else except his son seems to have witnessed these strange lights over the seas.
Many more years have passed and ordinary life was back among the people, until several hundreds of messages in bottles were found at the shores of the islands. They contained weird sketches and descriptions of unknown creatures and landscapes and for the next weeks there was not a day on which no message has arrived the shore of Atlas. This foreign place seemed like a paradise full of various life forms and environments. Nobody seems to have an idea about the origin of those messages as well as their content, but they sparked an interest that turned into excitement and later into obsession.
Children started drawing their own creatures and monsters and shared them with their friends. Scientists and academics started to gain interest in the detailed descriptions of flora and fauna of said island and it did not take long until people found a new way to spend their time - All those messages in bottles were used to create a trading card game and everyone in Atlas loved and played it. The people called it Aethernia. According to the messages, this was the place they originated from. As more time passed, the game got bigger and more popular and people started defining the game rules and organizing matches, leagues and championships which would fill several big stadiums that got build all over the islands of Atlas. Today, everyone is after the best and rarest cards and tries to compete in the Aethernia League to become the best card player.
Still, no one exactly knows where those sketches and messages came from and many refuse to believe that the mysterious island would be the reason ... The son of the Captain however is sure that his father must have been right and must be still alive somewhere out there in the unknown lands of Aethernia.
Aethernia is a turn-based card game in 3D which features a grid-based board that you can summon your monster cards on. A game consists of up to 4 players, whose goal is to defeat the enemy hero and protect their own. Players can utilize different cards to outplay their enemies and win the match. Different card elements, skills, effects and several terrains on the board mix up the game and allow various different play styles.
The game starts with 3 out of 6 points of a resource called Mana for each player. Those Mana points are required to spend them in order to play monster and spell cards onto the field and are gained at the beginning of a turn. Each turn a player can then move their units along the grid-based battlefield or use them to attack and eliminate the units from the enemy. The match is won when the enemy hero unit got destroyed.
Each hero, monster and spell card features a set of different strengths and abilities. There is its Element (Base, Plant, Water, Earth and Wind), HP (health points), ATK (attack points), AP (action points) and mana cost, that you need to spend in order to play that card. Usually a hero or monster card has up to 2 abilities that can either be a passive one, which gets triggered through a certain event, or an active one which is fired by the player manually.
For the game itself are several modes planned, which would be classic quickplay, a story mode, a career mode, several challenges and the possibility to create custom games and maps (using a built-in map editor). Besides a full single player experience there will be the possibility to play with a friend in local multiplayer modes aswell as basic online functionality.
The story mode features the journey of a young boy with no memories that is found in the seas of Atlas by a Captain and his crew. The boy, which is controlled by the player, will be introduced to the people and the card game while looking for his origins and his lost memories. Throughout his journey, he participates in several card game competitions and gets to know more and more about the legend of the mysterious island and the Captain that once left Atlas to find it. The narrative of the story mode will cause the player to follow the trails of Aethernia and find the cause for the missing of the legendary Captain which will be supported by his son he once left behind.
The career mode focuses more on the competitive side of the game lets you play a non-story driven journey in the Aethernia League. The player can choose between solo or team-based league system and will start in the lowest of several leagues where his goal is to win against the other league members in order to money to spend for booster packs and specific cards on the transfer market. Just like in regular sports, the 1st place at the end of a season will then rank up into a higher league while placing last will cause you to get to a lower league in the next season. A player can earn money by several methods, like winning games and having a good stadium with many fans being the biggest, aswell as trading not needed cards on the transfer market.
Notable Features are ...
- Several game modes (Quick Match, Story Mode, Career Mode, Challenges, Custom Match, Local and Online Multiplayer)
- A built-in map editor
- A Grid-based battlefield with 16x16 hexagonal tiles and several different terrains (Grass, Forest, Hills, Water, Deep Water and Mountain)
- Several different hero, monster and spell cards with different strengths and unique abilities
- Card elements such as Base, Plant, Water, Earth and Wind
- Completely original work such as music, artworks, assets, graphics, story, design and concept
- No micro transactions and no extra paywalled content. Everything the game has to offer will be unlocked by playing the game.
Active development for the game has begun in December 2021 but has accelarated a lot since then. Currently the game features a basic version of the quick match mode, meaning there is around 10 cards finished with all their abilities and effects and their functionality aswell as all the functionality for playing a match itself (Monster cards, hero and monster units, mana, player turns, passive and active abilities and its corresponding UIs). Also the functionality for the graphics and 3D side of things (assets, models, shaders) are mostly finished for the parts that are in the game already. Units currently are all represented by the same 3D model and animations but this will of course at a later stage of development.
Playable versions will also be released soon for everyone to play and test.
First of all, thanks for reading so far. That means a lot to me. :) - I am currently still in development of basic game features but the game itself starts to take shape very fast already. Since I do everything by myself, which includes the whole concept, aswell as all the cards and creatures, their effects and the actual development including the artworks, designs and 3D assets, it can sometimes feel like I am not working on the game constantly due to not posting development updates on a regular basis. I want to apologize in advance if that will be the case, but I guarantee you that all my energy is flowing into this project and I work on finishing the game everyday. Soon I will also upload more in-depth videos about the game and its development. Also, I know this is not Pokémon content, but I think this game could be interesting for people who love Pokémon aswell, just like me.
Nevertheless I hope you're having a great day and thanks for checking out my project. I hope to see you soon as part of the Aethernia Community. :)
* Little side note - the shown artwork of the cards is not made by me and is a placeholder for upcoming card artworks. The artwork you see there is made by volinfer (deviantart.com/volinfer) and won't be in the game later on. And sorry for the long post. :)
I am planning to release test versions for everyone to play in the near future in which you can check out the current development progress completely by yourself and help me shape the game the way you want. If you want to support me and the project or just stay in touch with recent updates and discuss topics about the game, join the Aethernia Discord server.
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