The Aether: Life as a God

Hosted Games
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At long last, the game has been released! I am so glad to see people finally playing it and enjoying themselves. Please let me know your thoughts and feel free to discuss any questions about the game. No spoilers obviously!

This was my first released project and I loved writing it. The full game is only $2.99 so I hope people decide to pick it up and give it a try!

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Haven’t tried the full game yet, bit I enjoy the demo greatly. I wish you luck in your endeavors, and congratulate you on being the first HG release of the new year!

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It is a fun little game - worth the buy IMO.

I noticed seeming continuity issues towards the end though. What’s the best way to get those reported and fixed?

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Not sure yet. I am playing through the game again myself and I’ve found a couple minor bugs here and there. I will continue coordinating with CoG and hopefully be able to roll out a few hotfixes in the coming weeks. For now just pm me and let me know what you’ve found.

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PM sent.

(20 chars to make forum happy)

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“Playing god” has always interested me ever since I played Populous as a tiny Johnny. I’m enormously glad to see this concept translated to HG in such a fashion and would absolutely love if THAT SCENE near the end turned into a sequel hook somewhere down the line.

One and done is good too though.

Though I believe I probably encountered the same continuity issues as Lord did, everything else was spot on. From the world building down to isolated individual choices, I loved practically everything and knocked out a full run in one sitting. I dunno about everyone else, but that’s pretty rare for me unless a game really grabs and holds me, which this one did by building well on a strong initial concept. Well worth the cash of you ask me.

…I do want more though, Your Omnipotent Magnificence xD

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The end of the story is extremely unsatisfactory, linear, not dependent on the reader’s previous actions. Whether you are a good god or not, all your efforts at once become equal to zero and the author forces the reader to accept the ending that he intended for himself alone.

Except for the whole last chapter, the story is very exciting and interesting, I want to continue to read and change the way I’m doing things through the plot.

P.S If the author added an opportunity to vanquish out of existence all other gods and to become one, so supreme that it would be possible to evolve and challenge the super-being that manipulated the protagonist all this time, the game would be beyond praise.

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I think that’s a bug you’re seeing there - reported it via a PM myself to avoid spoilers.

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It’s certainly a fun little game, and well worth the £1.99 I paid for it.

That said, and without wishing to be too critical, there are a few areas where I suspect that it could be improved:

  1. There are a lot of bugs towards the end of the game, and a few continuity errors where dead characters made reappearances without any explanation.
  2. The development of the main character’s mortal race seems a bit weird. For example, I taught my mortals how to master electricity - but when I next visited them I was told the last time I’d seen them they were still a bunch of primitives “gluing rocks together”.
  3. The choices you make also don’t really seem to have much of an impact on the society your mortals form, which seemed a bit of a missed opportunity (e.g. whether it’s going to be authoritarian, egalitarian, matriarchal, patriarchal etc). The conclusion that a scientific race will come to view gods as a myth also seems strange when you’ve been giving them indisputable proof of your existence throughout the game. I wonder whether a more interesting conflict would have been between forcing your mortals to work out how to resolve problems on their own (which could well lead them towards religious scepticism), and risking their stagnation by constantly interfering with miracles?
  4. The author also has a bit of a tendency to use words in ways that suggest they don’t understand what they mean. For example, “you’ve peaked my interest” when it should clearly be “piqued”. Similarly, in the opening scene your angelic follower immediately goes from talking about “your weak state” to addressing you as “your omnipotence”. Which is it - does our follower think we’re weak or all-powerful?
  5. As @quixi_dixie has mentioned, the game would also benefit from a bit more work on the endings.
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This is a potentially awkward question, but did something happen to get this title reclassified out of the RPG genre or something? It was like #9 on the App Store a day or two ago for paid RPGs, and I don’t see it in the top 200 now. I do not believe it could ever fall off that fast, especially since it is still on sale for $1.99. Or maybe my tired eyes are just failing to catch it after the last couple nights of sick kids not sleeping and it is there all along? Not sure.

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It looks ok to me via app annie. Is it possible you checked download and then grossing ranks? (Grossing ranking is lower for your game than the download one.)
(Nice game by the way, started reading it :slight_smile: )

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Thanks for the info, although this is not my game. I was just watching it as it tracked upward, then vanished. No idea if it is an iOS issue or what. And I do not think we can change whether it displays by downloads or total gross on the iOS store, can we?

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That info was for this game. Sorry typo with the “your”, rather tired at the moment.
I don’t have an iOS store account so can’t see what’s going on there or how it displays, only what app annie records which should be what the rankings are I would think even if they’re not showing up.

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Is it not showing today because it hadn’t finished yet? Your chart is set to show up through the 13th, but after the 12th it seems like everything disappears.

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I actually have no idea how the “days” are set on the stores. They could be on GMT or on a US timer, no idea. I’d imagine the rankings would be a day behind though wouldn’t they to reflect downloads/sales from the previous day? (Or at least they would be on programs like app annie.)

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Steam is actually based on American Pacific Standard Time (because they are based in this area of the world). Apple and Google both localize their data based on the region of the ISP accessing the data. In @Jacic’s case, since she is a wonderful and enchanting Aussie, she gets the data “before” North America and Europe.

Edit - this is how I understand these data dump activities of the platform sellers.

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Whatever happened has un-happened; it is back on the RPG list at #13, which seems about right for this point in its release cycle.

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Is there a bug near the end?

I killed every god before I destroyed the titan, then when I emerged from the titan all those gods I just killed were standing there acting like I didn’t do anything to them???

So is that a bug or did I miss something?

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Yes, I am looking into it now. Unfortunately, I finished writing this so long ago that I am having to re-familiarize myself with my coding/variables and CoG hasn’t been the best at responding to my inquiries. However, I should have a patch out soon!

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Thanks for the quick response. I would assume this is also affecting some of the achievements as well???