The Aether: Life as a God Reviews

The game is pretty interesting with a fun story. While the game isn't the longest, and is entirely text based with no graphics involved in the story which means that you need to have enough focus to read through all the dialog and options, it was still a pleasant experience with multiple possible endings and I do recommend it. The price isn't too bad either, and the game is often on sale. Definitely worth buying!

You start as a newly created god with very little power. You create your own planet and race. You MAY use your power to aid your creations and influence their development. Over time your creations will restore your power. The more people who worship you the more power they will restore. Many other ways to gain power, see below. Pros: -Longer than I expected. -Less complicated than other CYOA games. Only one stat, power. -Gain power by accomplishing certain tasks, including trickery. -You can hunt lesser beings called daemons, battle them and steal their power. The hunts are really well done and intriguing to a god. -You can battle, kill gods, and steal their power. Fucking awesome! -There are 7 'court gods'. They are powerful beings who have established a sort of neutral sanctuary for gods and daemons. BUT they each have their own secrets and ambitions. It's up to you to try to keep the peace or fuck shit up. So many options how this plays out and it's really the meat of the story in my opinion. -Mysteries: Why were you created, who created you, what lies beyond the court of the gods??? Cons: -Disappointed with the create your own race options. -It does feel rushed at times. -The ending is a little abrupt. -The lore is really interesting and I would have liked more. Final Verdict: -Yep, felt like a god. The reaction when you kill a god and take it's power is intoxicating. I highly recommend this at full price. You will play it more than once to try the different options.

Good story, become god however you want to be. Work with other gods, wipe them out, rule a planet of sycophants, or do something else. Choose your own adventure, God mode.

So... 'yes but'. For its price point it is fun enough and I don't regret it. The idea is fantastic and I wish there were more of these. The writing is decent. But it feels like more could've been done with this. There are essentially two stories happening - the world you're a god of and your life as a god among the gods. And it feels like the two should relate somehow, that they'll come together... but aside from the power (essentially money) values you get and spend between them... they never really do. For that matter a lot of things feel like they should matter but never do. You get to come up with a physical form for yourself.. never comes up again after you pick it. The body you gave your followers? Yup, doesn't really matter and never gets mentioned. In general nothing you ever do ever gets mentioned again, making you feel kinda cheated afterward. You sit there, try to think through choices and.. aside from a few numbers moving left or right? Eh. And the story of yourself as a god among gods? Meh. I could've easily skipped all that to hear more about the place where you're actually a god. 'cause the other stuff you're basically a person among peers dealing with what essentially feels like mundane stuff. Hunting feels even less meaningful. If all the effort spent on hunting / god among gods had been spent on actually being a god, and some of the choices gotten really reflected back, this would've been a great game. As it is? Mmmm.. given a choice I'd rather play Fermi paradox, it feels more meaningful. But if I was looking for a quick cheap experience for half the price of an overpriced coffee? Yea, may as well.

I don't feel like my decisions have any impact on the overall plot of the story. I can literally click every option randomly, and the outcome will be essentially the same. Sure, various options will or will not be possible if you don't have the essence, but the outcome of your choices does not feel like it carries over. The only thing that matters is power. Making the 'interactive' part of the story suck, and the rest of the story simply isn't engaging enough to hold your interest after you realize that. It's disappointing. Games like Choice of Robots and Choice of Magics were actually really good, and I enjoyed replaying them both myriad of times, but most of the other games in that format simply haven't lived up to their standard. If you are thinking of buying it, I'm not going to tell you not to, because it costs $3, which is the price of a comic book. But it was a disappointment nonetheless.

Great game! I truly enjoyed the abilty to create a race that really made me feel like it was mine. The ending though was by far the best part. The satisfaction I got from completing this game was immense. Sometimes when I play a choose your own adventure game such as this one I find myself sad and never wanting to return to it just because of the ending I got. But this game even if the ending I got was lonley or sad felt like it had a purpose. 100% a great game to check out if you have an hour or two to spare. Worth the price! :)

[b]Pros:[/b] + Easy to get 100% achievements + Good amount of choices + Inexpensive + Customizable game settings (i.e. page animation, dark theme) [b]Cons:[/b] - Typos and grammar errors - Choices don't really matter - Whatever race you create doesn't matter - Average writing - No backtracking I mainly played this game since I got it in a bundle and it looked easy to get 100% achievements, which I did. I'd recommend it for other achievement players, but otherwise this game isn't anything special.

Choices don't really seem to matter. Plays like a visual novel (edit: there are no visuals, I should say) more than a real choose-your-own adventure. The quality of the writing leaves something to be desired and does little to make you feel like you have control. At least it only cost me $2. I still wouldn't recomend this.

The story is interesting, fairly short and linear, and the choices don't seem to matter much (not surprising for a 60k words novel). I still enjoyed the time spent reading this. I did two playthrough and the path and finality were similar. It's a bit sad because so many things could be done in this game. I have the feeling the author got bored and wanted to release what he had done so far. I would love an improved version with a lot more forks in the story. One complaint about the scripting : it feels very "technical"; instead of a fluent story, you loop through buckets of choices which you can totally empty. I'm sure that could have been done better. Also some options seems to do nothing, as if they were not finished. I still recommend because I liked the setting a lot, and it's well written.

This game is pretty fun, but I wish it was longer and gave you more opportunities to shape your chosen species. It does give you a few options but they're limited. Like, one early scenario will have you side between two neighbors having a dispute over theft. You can choose who to side with but the other becomes a slave and you're not given the option to discourage slavery. Also, your god needs to rest for millennia at a time in between interventions so the race does a lot of development without your input at all, which kind of defeats the point. It's a game that really needed to be longer than its 60k words but for $2 it's alright for what it is.