Let's Play Play Next on Steam: Lovers of Aether

I’ve been using Steam for a while (nine years as of the 20th of August, according to my “Years of Service” badge), but there are a few features that I’ve hardly used. One of these is Steam Play Next, a little, supposedly-helpful tool that recommends unplayed titles in a given user’s library which the service believes that user will “love”. Given that I am one Steam user with… shall we say a teensy bit of a backlog, I thought using this service could be a good way to cut back on my ever-growing supply of unplayed games. And by writing up a series of each of these new experiences, we can start to test this system and see how well it knows me! Will these games be sleeper hits or overblown snoozers? Come and let’s play Play Next!

Lovers of Aether

First on my list of new experiences is a little free-to-play visual novel and dating simulator by the title of Lovers of Aether, from lead developer Dan Fornace. Before we go any further, I should mention that the game’s name might sound familiar to fighting game enthusiasts, April Fools' Joke experts, and even long-time readers of GameGrin. See, Lovers of Aether was released three years ago on the 1st of April as a joke reimagining of the popular fighting game Rivals of Aether from the same developers. This might sound like a strange direction for a fighting game, but to be honest, a group of distinct and well-defined characters with unique designs works just as well for a dating sim. Plus, given that Tyler Schurwan gave the original release of Rivals of Aether a score of 10/10, there’s a decent chance that Lovers will turn out pretty okay.

For the purposes of this article, I gave the game one run-through and decided that I should bring some friends along for the experience. A few nights ago, I was hanging out with those friends online and we decided to play through a visual novel, so it was the perfect opportunity to try out Lovers of Aether. What seemed to pique my friends’ interest first was the fact that the entire cast was made up of anthropomorphic creatures, with some members of our group wanting us to pursue the character Orcane, an orca with paws, because his design reminded them of the DC character King Shark. His fantastic appearance — as well as all the other characters' — was brought to life by character illustrator El Ranno.

Friends at hand, I opened the game and was immediately impressed by the soundtrack from composer flashygoodness. With a good array of synth and chiptune tracks, every moment in Lovers of Aether is underscored with the perfect music for the occasion. Thankfully, the full soundtrack is available to be listened to right there on the main menu, so I was quickly able to find my favourite tracks, like the PC-98 Remix of “Fight and Flight”.

With the power of music behind us, we were ready to start a new playthrough! Curiously, a little pop-up came forward warning us that starting a new game would override a previous checkpoint, even though I had never played before. Theoretically, this is just a general warning, but it was still slightly surprising. Once in the game proper, we were introduced to Aether High — a classic choice of setting for dating sims — and the new, more dateable versions of Rival’s fighters, reimagined as our classmates. The story began with us talking to our good friend Zetterburn, a lion with a burning mane whose name we kept forgetting. He seemed very likeable, but also quite attached to the school itself, so we decided not to get in the way of his burgeoning romance. Soon after that, we learned of our ultimate goal: Asking one of these fine students out to the Homecoming Dance.

We started out trying to get to know three of our potential partners: Orcane (because we liked his design), Maypul (a ferret–raccoon hybrid and my personal choice, because she had just declared herself Class President For Life and I was interested in learning more), and Forsburn (because we were intrigued that our good friend Zetterburn had a brother). Orcane wound up being a bit of a trickster, popping a water bubble over Forsburn’s head, but he didn’t really hold our interest for very long. Maypul was more interesting, a strangely over-competent class president that took everything way too seriously. I knew I wanted to learn more, but my friends weren’t terribly keen on actually dating her, so we moved on. But Forsburn was just right. Or, should I say, write. Instead of chatting with us, the emo-styled, fire-maned hyena read us a series of his own poems. They started out somewhat short and poorly-written, but slowly became longer and somewhat more thought out, though often retaining an edgy and hilariously simple bent. We had found the one!

Throughout the remainder of the game, we got to know Forsburn and the rest of the cast a little bit more, chatting everyone up between classes and while waiting for lectures to begin. We learned that Forsburn had a poor relationship with his father — exemplified by one line in a later poem, “Dads just don’t get it”, — and that he thought of his brother as a bit of a dumb jock. Throughout these moments, we were consistently impressed by the character writing (penned by Eric Shumaker), as each of our dating prospects felt uniquely interesting and often hilarious.

As a brief side note that will become somewhat important later, one thing that my friends and I like to do when playing dating sims like this is to voice some of the characters ourselves and, wouldn’t you know it, I wound up voicing Forsburn! I went with this Christian Bale Batman-esque tone that was probably a poor choice for my vocal chords, as I found myself really needing a couple of drinks of water before the end of the game — though my favourite voice there was a kinda nasally "cool-guy" style I did for this birdlike person named Wrastor.

In between all of these conversations, we actually had to do some schoolwork as well. There was a test on basic facts about the game world (which we only got half right, an impressive feat for three people that hadn’t even heard of the original game before now), a presentation on a book that we hadn’t read (which we got an A+ on… somehow?), and a videogame where you have to break various falling objects à la Breakout. Probably my favourite part of Lovers of Aether came from that brief minigame, as my failed attempts at making it through all three levels coincided with a long monologue from Forsburn. I can honestly say that I’ve never tried to beat a minigame like that while also delivering a funny monologue in a Batman voice about why school sucks. I know that the whole “voicing the characters” bit was just our own invention, but I still fell in love with the game anyway.

Thankfully, Forsburn fell in love with us in the end too, in a deliciously awkward moment where he was asking us out to the dance at the same time as we were asking him the same. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a scene at the actual dance with Forsburn, but seeing the big “CONGRATULATIONS” screen was enough for us.

Was Steam Play Next Correct?

So was Lovers of Aether a good pick on Steam Play Next’s part? Yes. Absolutely, yes! It wasn’t a terribly long experience, with our leisurely playthrough clocking out at roughly an hour and a half, and every second was a joy to experience. There are a handful of quality-of-life features that are absent, such as a skip text option, but the game is funny enough to make up for that.

That’s one point for Steam Play Next, but will they be able to keep up the pace? What is your Steam account suggesting you play and how accurate has it been to your tastes? Please tell us in the comments below!

Running Tally

We're just starting, but this gives Steam Play Next a score of 1:0 (Win:Loss)!

I'll be playing Seduce Me the Otome next time, another free dating sim. You'll have to get used to that, as these sorts of games make up the majority of my Play Next catalogue, but perhaps someone else will beat me to the punch and start to clear out their own Steam Library?