Aether

Aether is a space adventure game with washed-out pastel colors and a varying soundtrack consisting of a piano, synthesizer, guitar, and percussion piece. There are four monochrome planets to explore, which have subdued hues. Players control a lonely boy from Earth and an octopus-like monster he befriends. The monster's tongue is used to propel itself and the boy through space and onto other planets.

Each planet has a unique soundtrack that gets louder as you approach it. Each moon or planet exerts gravity over the player character, requiring momentum to escape from the planet's orbit. To escape a planet, the tongue must first be latched onto a cloud floating above the planet's surface, which can then be used to swing the player around. By propelling themselves from the initial cloud using swinging momentum, players can latch onto the next and repeat the process to leave the planet's orbit.

Aether was created by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, McMillen was a member of independent development studio Cryptic Sea and co-creator of the award-winning Gish. Glaiel runs his own independent studio, Glaiel Games, and develops Flash games for game and animation website Newgrounds. The game's graphics and story were created by McMillen, while Glaiel wrote the game's music and code. The game was developed in 14 days; McMillen found he could "ride off" Glaiel's inspiration and allowed the project to be completed quickly. "People being creative and taking risks with their work always is inspiring to me, honesty in art is also very inspiring," he stated.

McMillen's childhood experiences and fears were used for the game's themes of loneliness, nervousness, and fear of abandonment or rejection. The boy's journeys through space represent inward-thinking and imagination, planets represent fears and the inhabitants personify McMillen's childhood "inner demons". He was initially unsure as to whether or not he wished to release Aether, since it was based on personal experiences and made him feel vulnerable. Glaiel created the game's planets and gameplay, designing the layout of the planets to convey the emotions involved in the game, but he did not know which planets would ultimately be used to relate to each emotion.

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".

Meer also enjoyed the game but found the looped piano music irritating. Nate Ralph of Wired found the game "hauntingly beautiful, if short".