Reception
The game was positively received by gaming blogs, though reviewers held mixed opinions about the controls. The story was compared to The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry's 1943 novella. Aether's graphics were praised by reviewers. Alec Meer of website Rock Paper Shotgun described them as "beautiful to look at", Justin McElroy of Joystiq said the game has a "unique visual style" and described the pastel shades as attractive, and Peter Cohen of Macworld described them as a unique look composed of "cute characters with sometimes grotesque imagery". "StaceyG" of Jay Is Games found the music relaxing and called the game "a truly compelling experience with excellent atmosphere". Meer also enjoyed the game but found the looped piano music irritating. Nate Ralph of Wired found the game "hauntingly beautiful, if short".
Reviewers noted that the solution to some of the puzzles were unclear, further hindered by the planets' inhabitants, whose dialogue does not change when the planet's puzzle is completed. The tongue propulsion physics were said to be clumsy by StaceyG, who stated that, in conjunction with the gravity exerted by planets, it is more difficult to leave planets' surfaces than to navigate through space. Both Meer and StaceyG enjoyed the spacefaring aspect of the game, and Derek Yu of website TIGSource stated the controls "sometimes felt brilliant, at other times felt unresponsive and awkward." Patrick Dugan of Play This Thing saw potential in the tongue-swinging gameplay, noting that Aether appeared to be the first of a series. He suggested that more spatial elements, such as nebulae and black holes, would have made space flight more interesting. McMillen described Aether as "just the prelude to a larger experience", while Yu suggested that a larger game with improved controls "could be something better than great".
Aether received an Honorable Mention at IndieCade in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Aether (video Game)
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