Aether
A grounded near-future shooter. Build your class from ten points and fight at player height across the Veyra coast.
Competitive FPS · Unreal Engine
Screenshots
Every image here is a capture from the current build. Pick one to see it large.
Breakwater, the crane catwalkThe game
About Aether
Aether is a boots-on-the-ground shooter set during a near-future war over infrastructure on the Veyra coast and in the mountains behind it. The fighting happens in working places: freight terminals, rail yards, pump houses, customs halls and embassies. There are no wall-running heroes and no operator abilities. You get a gun, a plan and the map.
It is built around choice. Every class is assembled from a ten-point budget, every weapon has its own name and handling, and nine modes run on the same rules for health and damage. When you want the purest version of it, Barebones switches off the HUD, turns on friendly fire and lets you hear the enemy talking around the corner.
- 120
- named weapons
- 9
- game modes
- 18
- maps, 12 at launch
- 36
- perks
- 10
- wildcards
- 18
- killstreaks
In depth
How it works
The systems that make Aether what it is.
Combat that ends fights fast
Every operator has 100 health. There are no armor plates, no damage reduction and no downed state. Health starts coming back 5 seconds after the last hit, at 25 per second, and any new damage resets that delay.
Fights are meant to be quick and controlled: an automatic weapon at close range takes about 0.18 to 0.32 seconds to finish someone after the first hit. Precision rifles and shotguns can kill in one shot under the right conditions.
- Unlimited sprint at 6.5 m/s, with a short sprint-out delay before you can fire.
- Slides after 0.6 s of sprinting, mantles over ledges from 0.45 to 1.2 m, and prone.
- Fall damage starts beyond 4 m. A 9 m drop kills.
- Recoil follows a fixed, learnable pattern for every weapon.
Pick 10
Every class has ten points to spend. A primary, a secondary, each attachment, each perk, each wildcard and each piece of equipment costs one point. Your melee weapon is always free and never takes the secondary slot. You don't have to carry a primary at all: a pistol-and-knife class is just as legal.
There are 36 perks in three categories of twelve (Field, Arms and Support) and 10 wildcards that bend the rules: Gunfighter, Sidearm Specialist, Overkill, Field Greed, Arms Greed, Support Greed, Flex Doctrine, Grenadier, Tactician and Field Kit.
You keep ten saved classes. The editor always shows points spent and left, explains exactly why a class is invalid, and lets you take any weapon into the firing range before you own it.
Nine modes
Every mode uses the same health and damage. The difference is in the rules around them.
| Mode | Players | To win | Clock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Survivor | 8, free-for-all | Last one alive. Three lives total, no extras | 6 min |
| Attrition | 6 v 6 | 100 enemy kills | 10 min |
| War | 8 v 8 | 500 points from kills and territory | 12 min |
| Plague | 16 | Infected convert everyone, or survivors outlast the clock | 4 to 6 min |
| Gun Game | 8, free-for-all | Clear all 20 weapon stages | 10 min |
| Insurgency | 6 v 6 | First to 6 rounds of plant and defuse | 105 s rounds |
| Stronghold | 6 v 6 | 250 hill points as the hill rotates | 10 min |
| Capture the Flag | 6 v 6 | 5 captures | Two 5 min halves |
| Deathmatch | 8, free-for-all | 30 kills | 10 min |
Barebones
Barebones is Aether with everything between you and the fight stripped away. Health and damage stay exactly the same. What changes is what you know and how you talk:
- No HUD. No minimap, crosshair, ammo counter, kill feed, hit markers or name tags. Optics, iron sights and in-world signs still work.
- Friendly fire is on. Team kills cost your team a point and add to your respawn time. A third one removes you from the match.
- Proximity voice. Everyone alive hears everyone alive within 20 m, friend or enemy. Walls muffle it.
- No killstreaks and no skill-based matchmaking. Matches are made on region and ping only.
- Double XP for a win. Losses and draws pay normal XP.
Eighteen maps
Aether has 18 maps: twelve for launch and six held back for later seasons. They come in four layout families: three-lane maps with readable routes and cross-links, bowl maps around a contested centre, tactical networks of rooms and courtyards, and hybrids.
Breakwater is a storm-repaired freight terminal at dawn. A stranded ship splits the yard into dockside, warehouse and seawall routes, a crane catwalk overlooks the containers, and Customs is a broken midrange corridor through the middle. You meet the enemy 9 to 15 seconds after spawning.
Launch maps include Breakwater, Switchyard, Saffron Grid, Foundry, Spillway, Airbridge, Caldera, The Forum, Embassy Annex, Lantern Quarter, Glasshouse and Blue Hour. Every map has been loaded, walked and tested with bots in the current build.
Seasons and prestige
Each season starts you at level 1. Every level costs the same 2,000 XP, and you prestige automatically at level 100, 200 and every hundred after that, up to Prestige Master at level 1100. Season 01's prestige icons run from Rivet and Bearing to Phoenix, the Aether Sigil and the Master Wreath.
The reset never takes anything away. Every weapon, attachment, perk and wildcard you have ever unlocked stays unlocked and usable when a new season begins.
Make it yours
Earn 31 camos, including animated camos and printed camos that change the shape of the weapon itself. Build your own emblem in a full editor with 96 shapes and 64 layers, masks, groups and text. Pick a reticle from 12 shapes, wear clan tags, and unlock a name colour at level 10.
Everything cosmetic is earned by playing. Cosmetics never change how a weapon performs.
