Page 1 failed to load.
Aether Studios - Inside Aether — November 2026
Up next
AgentRedGirl - [Animation Update] Not So Doe = 48% Completed
About This Title
A monthly report for Insider supporters.
Hey everyone, Matt here.
Thank you for an incredible first month. Workshop 1.0 went live on October 6th, Insider launched on the 8th, and Rivals 2 turned two on the 23rd. If you missed the anniversary, two free anniversary icons are still available on the featured tab of the in-game shop. We also released some fun anniversary stats; check them out below:
In this issue of Inside Aether, we will provide insights into what your support is already doing, check in with Workshop after one month with a sit-down with Joe, updates on Mina's progress, take a peek at what's coming next, your survey results, and answers to a few of your questions from the dev streams.
One Month of Insider
We're incredibly grateful for your support, with almost 1,000 members already contributing to our Patreon in the opening month. Right now the increased funds are being used to secure developer kits for consoles and will help cover developer costs if our sales dip below our baseline. Thank you so much for becoming an Insider and supporting the studio.
Our first Insider Developer Tournament ran on October 16th, with supporters and devs playing together. The next one is planned for November 20th.
Dan is hosting dev streams every Thursday on the Aether Studios YouTube and Twitch accounts. Your questions from the Insider channel get answered on stream, a few at a time.
Workshop, One Month In
Workshop queues are available, so we hope you're enjoying them! Beth built the queue in the final stretch before launch.
New: an "AI-Assisted" tag. We ask creators to use this tag when publishing a mod developed with significant AI help, so players can more easily recognize when mods are using AI.
The Workshop item contest is underway. Creators have until 12/7 to submit their items. Our top 3 favorite items will be added into the game as official items, plus tons of Aether Bucks. More details here.
Joe is looking at sorting Workshop characters in the character select by last used, plus a favorites idea that came from chat in one of our dev streams.
In the future - custom stages and character skins are on our roadmap in the Beyond section.
Interview: Joe on Building Workshop
Joe is one of our Senior Programmers and the main engineer behind Workshop. He has been updating and integrating our partner Skymap’s original Workshop Beta feature since January. I sent him a few questions.
Q: What's your role at Aether, and what does a normal week look like?
I'm an all-arounder on the programming team. From UI and controllers to Workshop and internal tools, if it needs coding, I do it except for gameplay.
Q: How did you end up at Aether, and then on Workshop?
Previously, I was the Programming Lead on Rushdown Revolt, focused on controller support, UI implementation, and building a UGC mod-loading pipeline. When my time at Rushdown came to an end, I interviewed at Aether for Rivals 2, and it just so happened the team needed someone who could handle UI implementation, controller support, and a UGC modding pipeline.
Q: What can creators do with Workshop today, and what can't they do yet?
Can: 2D and 3D characters and items. Can't (yet): stages and skins/palettes for base-game characters.
Q: Who is Workshop for: players who've never opened an editor, or experienced modders?
We've made strides in simplifying mod creation, so someone with modeling and programming experience should find it fairly easy to get their bearings in our editor. That said, there's still a somewhat high barrier to entry because of the 3D nature of Rivals 2, and that's where 2D character support helps out a ton.
Q: Workshop was developed separately for over a year before merging back into the main game. Why is that so hard?
The longer a task runs, the more moving pieces there are, and the more likely it is that you're making changes in parallel with another dev on the team, so source control conflicts are inevitable. Every week I'd have to take inventory of what I'd changed and redo work, like setting up taunts, arcade mode data, or default respawn platforms all over again.
Q: How did Closed Beta testers change what you built?
Closed Beta was instrumental, not only in letting us verify that what we had was a usable base, but also in giving us actionable feedback to bring the editor more in line with what people expected. For a user doing this in their free time, any friction can lead to them giving up on their mod. During this period, we were able to build a better front-end UI and other tools that smoothed out the internal team's pipeline and made it more intuitive for users.
Q: What's your favorite thing someone has made with Workshop so far?
I'm really liking the items that have been coming out recently. It's really cool not only to see people's creativity, but also to see modders make things that feel like they already belong in the base game.
Q: What are your hopes for Workshop?
I hope that we're eventually able to add support for all the other cosmetics in the game (stages, skins, etc.). On top of that, I'm hoping we can make some progress on the types of mods people can make from a programming perspective. I think something people miss from the Rivals 1 Workshop is the depth of what you could change, and having a lot of the same tools would make a lot more people consider trying out the new Workshop.
Mina the Hollower: Progress Check
We hit a major milestone by having our first build where you could play as Mina with blocked-in attack data and gameplay pass animations for all gameplay states required for testing, along with retargeted animations from other characters for non-critical states.
Her special designs are being iterated on through testing, and her ground movement animations are in progress.
The team is reviewing her gameplay together and feeding changes back to Trevor and Diego.
KD is wrapping up work on the December 2026 character and is moving over to help with Mina animations.
We are working towards a first playable for review with Yacht Club Games.
Mina arrives in 2027. Is Mina your most anticipated upcoming character?
An early WIP sculpt of Mina from our weekly review.
The Next Character
Confirmed for Insiders: Our next character lands in the December update, and the final stretch is underway.
Animation is wrapping up, with hurts, items, and knockdowns being finished.
VFX is nearly there, voice work is in, sound effects are being added, and the final model and UI are coming together.
The reveal will premiere at Port Priority on November 15th!
Collabs and the Shop
Our first partner collaboration launched on October 29th: the Aethermancer crossover bundle with a Catzerker skin, palette, and three icons.
More collaborations are in progress. Let us know in the comments which collaborations you would like to see from other games.
The Low Poly bundle arrived with the November 3rd patch: Forsburn and Maypul skins and icons, alongside balance updates from Trevor.
The Platform Fighter Humble Bundle is live now and ends Friday (11/6) at midnight EST.
In the Works for Players
Multi-keyboard support was fixed and pushed in October.
Listen server polish: the hostname will show, and the character select will make clear when Fair Lag is on. We got feedback that players kept assuming it was off by default.
Network settings are being reworked, and they'll show up in bug reports to help us track issues down.
Replay menu and CSS settings menu revamps.
Fixing bugs with the 2D exporter tool from the Workshop full launch.
Map-loading refactor to cut load hitching. It's also groundwork for Workshop stages.
What's Next
December: the next character, a three-month event, and a new ranked season.
Our next Insider Developer Tournament is planned for November 20th.
2027: Mina. Workshop stages and Story Mode Chapter 1 are both still in the design phase. We'll share more as the features firm up.
Gameball Shoutouts
Every week the team hands out a "Gameball" for work that went above and beyond. A few highlights from October:
The programming team, for getting Workshop into the main game alongside the 5.8 engine update
Beth, for building the Workshop queue
Anita, for the Move List menu
Cory, for the Patreon gold skin launch, and for a surprise new stage built for the next character's trailer
Vin, for the Platform Fighter Bundle art and UI, and last-minute anniversary icons
Tom, for the Year 2 anniversary stats
KD and Coconut, for the next character's animation and VFX
Trevor and Diego, for getting Mina playable for the dev tournament
You Voted: October Survey Results
Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey in our first issue. We read every response. Here are the highlights:
Returning character: Sylvanos took the top spot, with the other characters grouped close in second.
Favorite cosmetic theme: Low Poly, picked by more than half of you.
New theme you want most: Medieval, fantasy, and D&D, with knights and wizards. We'll consider this! Other suggested themes were Sci-fi, Streetware, and Superhero.
Most requested features: a co-op or Abyss-style roguelike mode, custom colors, story mode, in-game tournaments, and tetherball/party modes.
These aren't promises, but they help us decide what to chase next. Thank you.
Ask the Devs
A few of your questions from the Insider channel, answered on the dev streams. These are summaries of the answers, so watch the streams for the full versions.
Q: Will you reconsider defaulting delay frames to 2, even at high ping?
Dan (Oct 15 stream): We've considered it. Keeping the default at two frames gives everyone consistent timing, which helps muscle memory, and for a lot of players the base settings are the better choice. We'd rather make the manual network settings easier to use than change the default. Beth has network settings improvements on her list, and nothing is promised yet.
Q: Will there be more offline content?
Dan (Oct 15 stream): Story Mode Chapter 1 is the focus. After that, the team would like to refine Arcade Mode and add more Trials. For co-op, the idea is an online mode built on Snapnet, with local support if it makes sense. That comes after Story Mode, and it's an idea and not a plan.
Q: When will Buddies be implemented?
Dan and Trevor (Oct 22 stream): Rivals 1 Buddies were 2D, so they could roam anywhere. In Rivals 2, a Buddy placed in the background clips into platform supports and vanishes against the training stage wall, and in the foreground it hurts gameplay. So they'd have to work differently. 2D Buddies could be a good Workshop idea though. For Buddies in Rivals 2, we have design documents with all kinds of crazy ideas to expand the feature. It’s listed as beyond 2028 since it would be better for the studio if these design documents never came to fruition.
Q: Which species did you consider for a fighter but didn’t make the cut?
Dan and Trevor (Oct 22 stream): Maypul’s first design had her as a speedster lizard before looking at tree-dwelling mammals. Olympia on the Rivals 1 workshop was a mouse, but because Pomme is also a mouse, we ratconned her to be a rat in Rivals 2. At some point during development, we’ve considered nearly every popular mammal. Especially since we have skins that swap animals now in Rivals 2. Trevor’s original design for Clairen was a Fennec Fox that used a Crystal Sword. But now Crystals have been claimed by Olympia, and Fleet is our resident Fox hero.
That's the wrap for November. Thank you for backing the studio. Is there anything you would like to see added to the monthly report? Let us know in the comments. Until next time.
— Matt Worrell, Lead Producer, Aether Studios
A monthly report for Insider supporters.
Hey everyone, Matt here.
Thank you for an incredible first month. Workshop 1.0 went live on October 6th, Insider launched on the 8th, and Rivals 2 turned two on the 23rd. If you missed the anniversary, two free anniversary icons are still available on the featured tab of the in-game shop. We also released some fun anniversary stats; check them out below:
In this issue of Inside Aether, we will provide insights into what your support is already doing, check in with Workshop after one month with a sit-down with Joe, updates on Mina's progress, take a peek at what's coming next, your survey results, and answers to a few of your questions from the dev streams.
One Month of Insider
We're incredibly grateful for your support, with almost 1,000 members already contributing to our Patreon in the opening month. Right now the increased funds are being used to secure developer kits for consoles and will help cover developer costs if our sales dip below our baseline. Thank you so much for becoming an Insider and supporting the studio.
Our first Insider Developer Tournament ran on October 16th, with supporters and devs playing together. The next one is planned for November 20th.
Dan is hosting dev streams every Thursday on the Aether Studios YouTube and Twitch accounts. Your questions from the Insider channel get answered on stream, a few at a time.
Workshop, One Month In
Workshop queues are available, so we hope you're enjoying them! Beth built the queue in the final stretch before launch.
New: an "AI-Assisted" tag. We ask creators to use this tag when publishing a mod developed with significant AI help, so players can more easily recognize when mods are using AI.
The Workshop item contest is underway. Creators have until 12/7 to submit their items. Our top 3 favorite items will be added into the game as official items, plus tons of Aether Bucks. More details here.
Joe is looking at sorting Workshop characters in the character select by last used, plus a favorites idea that came from chat in one of our dev streams.
In the future - custom stages and character skins are on our roadmap in the Beyond section.
Interview: Joe on Building Workshop
Joe is one of our Senior Programmers and the main engineer behind Workshop. He has been updating and integrating our partner Skymap’s original Workshop Beta feature since January. I sent him a few questions.
Q: What's your role at Aether, and what does a normal week look like?
I'm an all-arounder on the programming team. From UI and controllers to Workshop and internal tools, if it needs coding, I do it except for gameplay.
Q: How did you end up at Aether, and then on Workshop?
Previously, I was the Programming Lead on Rushdown Revolt, focused on controller support, UI implementation, and building a UGC mod-loading pipeline. When my time at Rushdown came to an end, I interviewed at Aether for Rivals 2, and it just so happened the team needed someone who could handle UI implementation, controller support, and a UGC modding pipeline.
Q: What can creators do with Workshop today, and what can't they do yet?
Can: 2D and 3D characters and items. Can't (yet): stages and skins/palettes for base-game characters.
Q: Who is Workshop for: players who've never opened an editor, or experienced modders?
We've made strides in simplifying mod creation, so someone with modeling and programming experience should find it fairly easy to get their bearings in our editor. That said, there's still a somewhat high barrier to entry because of the 3D nature of Rivals 2, and that's where 2D character support helps out a ton.
Q: Workshop was developed separately for over a year before merging back into the main game. Why is that so hard?
The longer a task runs, the more moving pieces there are, and the more likely it is that you're making changes in parallel with another dev on the team, so source control conflicts are inevitable. Every week I'd have to take inventory of what I'd changed and redo work, like setting up taunts, arcade mode data, or default respawn platforms all over again.
Q: How did Closed Beta testers change what you built?
Closed Beta was instrumental, not only in letting us verify that what we had was a usable base, but also in giving us actionable feedback to bring the editor more in line with what people expected. For a user doing this in their free time, any friction can lead to them giving up on their mod. During this period, we were able to build a better front-end UI and other tools that smoothed out the internal team's pipeline and made it more intuitive for users.
Q: What's your favorite thing someone has made with Workshop so far?
I'm really liking the items that have been coming out recently. It's really cool not only to see people's creativity, but also to see modders make things that feel like they already belong in the base game.
Q: What are your hopes for Workshop?
I hope that we're eventually able to add support for all the other cosmetics in the game (stages, skins, etc.). On top of that, I'm hoping we can make some progress on the types of mods people can make from a programming perspective. I think something people miss from the Rivals 1 Workshop is the depth of what you could change, and having a lot of the same tools would make a lot more people consider trying out the new Workshop.
Mina the Hollower: Progress Check
We hit a major milestone by having our first build where you could play as Mina with blocked-in attack data and gameplay pass animations for all gameplay states required for testing, along with retargeted animations from other characters for non-critical states.
Her special designs are being iterated on through testing, and her ground movement animations are in progress.
The team is reviewing her gameplay together and feeding changes back to Trevor and Diego.
KD is wrapping up work on the December 2026 character and is moving over to help with Mina animations.
We are working towards a first playable for review with Yacht Club Games.
Mina arrives in 2027. Is Mina your most anticipated upcoming character?
An early WIP sculpt of Mina from our weekly review.
The Next Character
Confirmed for Insiders: Our next character lands in the December update, and the final stretch is underway.
Animation is wrapping up, with hurts, items, and knockdowns being finished.
VFX is nearly there, voice work is in, sound effects are being added, and the final model and UI are coming together.
The reveal will premiere at Port Priority on November 15th!
Collabs and the Shop
Our first partner collaboration launched on October 29th: the Aethermancer crossover bundle with a Catzerker skin, palette, and three icons.
More collaborations are in progress. Let us know in the comments which collaborations you would like to see from other games.
The Low Poly bundle arrived with the November 3rd patch: Forsburn and Maypul skins and icons, alongside balance updates from Trevor.
The Platform Fighter Humble Bundle is live now and ends Friday (11/6) at midnight EST.
In the Works for Players
Multi-keyboard support was fixed and pushed in October.
Listen server polish: the hostname will show, and the character select will make clear when Fair Lag is on. We got feedback that players kept assuming it was off by default.
Network settings are being reworked, and they'll show up in bug reports to help us track issues down.
Replay menu and CSS settings menu revamps.
Fixing bugs with the 2D exporter tool from the Workshop full launch.
Map-loading refactor to cut load hitching. It's also groundwork for Workshop stages.
What's Next
December: the next character, a three-month event, and a new ranked season.
Our next Insider Developer Tournament is planned for November 20th.
2027: Mina. Workshop stages and Story Mode Chapter 1 are both still in the design phase. We'll share more as the features firm up.
Gameball Shoutouts
Every week the team hands out a "Gameball" for work that went above and beyond. A few highlights from October:
The programming team, for getting Workshop into the main game alongside the 5.8 engine update
Beth, for building the Workshop queue
Anita, for the Move List menu
Cory, for the Patreon gold skin launch, and for a surprise new stage built for the next character's trailer
Vin, for the Platform Fighter Bundle art and UI, and last-minute anniversary icons
Tom, for the Year 2 anniversary stats
KD and Coconut, for the next character's animation and VFX
Trevor and Diego, for getting Mina playable for the dev tournament
You Voted: October Survey Results
Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey in our first issue. We read every response. Here are the highlights:
Returning character: Sylvanos took the top spot, with the other characters grouped close in second.
Favorite cosmetic theme: Low Poly, picked by more than half of you.
New theme you want most: Medieval, fantasy, and D&D, with knights and wizards. We'll consider this! Other suggested themes were Sci-fi, Streetware, and Superhero.
Most requested features: a co-op or Abyss-style roguelike mode, custom colors, story mode, in-game tournaments, and tetherball/party modes.
These aren't promises, but they help us decide what to chase next. Thank you.
Ask the Devs
A few of your questions from the Insider channel, answered on the dev streams. These are summaries of the answers, so watch the streams for the full versions.
Q: Will you reconsider defaulting delay frames to 2, even at high ping?
Dan (Oct 15 stream): We've considered it. Keeping the default at two frames gives everyone consistent timing, which helps muscle memory, and for a lot of players the base settings are the better choice. We'd rather make the manual network settings easier to use than change the default. Beth has network settings improvements on her list, and nothing is promised yet.
Q: Will there be more offline content?
Dan (Oct 15 stream): Story Mode Chapter 1 is the focus. After that, the team would like to refine Arcade Mode and add more Trials. For co-op, the idea is an online mode built on Snapnet, with local support if it makes sense. That comes after Story Mode, and it's an idea and not a plan.
Q: When will Buddies be implemented?
Dan and Trevor (Oct 22 stream): Rivals 1 Buddies were 2D, so they could roam anywhere. In Rivals 2, a Buddy placed in the background clips into platform supports and vanishes against the training stage wall, and in the foreground it hurts gameplay. So they'd have to work differently. 2D Buddies could be a good Workshop idea though. For Buddies in Rivals 2, we have design documents with all kinds of crazy ideas to expand the feature. It’s listed as beyond 2028 since it would be better for the studio if these design documents never came to fruition.
Q: Which species did you consider for a fighter but didn’t make the cut?
Dan and Trevor (Oct 22 stream): Maypul’s first design had her as a speedster lizard before looking at tree-dwelling mammals. Olympia on the Rivals 1 workshop was a mouse, but because Pomme is also a mouse, we ratconned her to be a rat in Rivals 2. At some point during development, we’ve considered nearly every popular mammal. Especially since we have skins that swap animals now in Rivals 2. Trevor’s original design for Clairen was a Fennec Fox that used a Crystal Sword. But now Crystals have been claimed by Olympia, and Fleet is our resident Fox hero.
That's the wrap for November. Thank you for backing the studio. Is there anything you would like to see added to the monthly report? Let us know in the comments. Until next time.
— Matt Worrell, Lead Producer, Aether Studios
Comments (0)