Aether Deliveries

Hello everyone. This is actually the first public announcement anywhere about the game I've been producing for a little more than a month. Here's the game description:

Aether Deliveries is a 2D platformer where you take on the role of a delivery worker, exploring a vibrant and ever-changing world. Complete deliveries efficiently to unlock new power-ups, consumables, and areas of the map. Each delivery challenges you to adapt your strategies and use your skills to save time, balancing risk and reward as you decide whether to take the safest routes or venture into more dangerous zones. With personalized missions and fast travel options, your journey evolves with every step you take.

It is basically a pixel art precision platformer, metroidvania style with no combat set in a fantasy world. In the above picture, you can see concept art for our player.

The core gameplay loop involves taking a delivery from one mail box adjacent to a city to another within a certain amount of time. The quicker you are, the more gold you get once you complete the delivery. While not making deliveries, you are free to explore the world to see if you can find any secrets.

I've hired three freelancers to produce my game: a programmer, a pixel artist and a level designer. I worked solo with the programmer on the first month so things would be much easier to just creatively design later on. Since the 3rd of this month, however, the artist and the level designer have joined.

While we don't have finished levels to show yet, here are some previews of how our first two biomes look like: the dungeon-esque and the forest. Also, our lovely player sprite with which I'm in love.

The latest thing we've developed are the return crystals to which you end up after you die. If you activate them, you jump in and out, leaving a crystalized self behind.

The team's favorite mechanic so far is the grappling hook, which you can only use at specific spots. You swing left and right to gather more momentum and then you can let go, jumping off like Indiana Jones.

Just for fun, here is what the image I gave the programmer to use as a reference looked like:

The plan is to release the game on Steam eventually, but what we're hoping for right now is that we have enough gameplay to show off in a trailer within the next 6 weeks. I hope you get excited about this as much as I am!