The world broke. You woke up anyway.
Aether Shard is a solo-hero, turn-based pixel RPG in the spirit of the Game Boy Advance greats. The Shattering tore the world into fog-veiled fragments — and you are the one traveler the road remembers. Explore by Aether Sight, fight what the dark left behind, haul timber and ore home, and watch ruined towns stand back up building by building because you carried the beams.
Five acts. Named regions with their own dangers. Living castles that wake when their sister towns are restored. A hidden forge-city ringed by water. Two endings, and an echo of a New Game+ beyond them.
Features
Become someone specific
12 base classes fork into 24 promotions — each with a signature mechanic and an exclusive battle art — then ascend to master classes bearing Legendary Passives with real trade-offs. Secret classes hide behind Echo Shards and stranger conditions.
Practice becomes power
Abilities improve through use: keep favoring a skill and a Glimmer crystallizes it — Backstab, then Improved Backstab, then Master Backstab. Priests can force the spark, for a price in Aether Dust.
Turn-based, menu-first combat
Declare, then the round resolves by speed. Statuses, buffs, flanking the unaware, elemental weaknesses, enemy packs, and boss fights that keep pace with you. Three difficulty roads: Ember, Flame, Shattered.
Rebuild the world
Gathering nodes, mines, and monster trophies feed town restoration. Rebuilt towns change visibly, open new shops, recipes, and dialogue — and fully restored regions wake their living castles.
Gear that lives and dies
Equipment wears down and breaks; blacksmiths repair and temper it with trophies. Twelve legendary weapons wait behind trials, hidden materials, and a forge-city you must uncover to even ask.
First-person delves
Step into grid-crawl mines with levers, riddles, weighted plates, and an auto-map — dungeon-crawler interludes inside the overworld journey.
Twelve roads out of the ash
Every class plays its own way, and every promotion doubles down on a play pattern:
Steel
Warrior → Knight (catch the killing blow) or Berserker (stronger as you bleed). Paladin → Templar (ailments fear you) or Avenger (every hit taken is owed back).
Shadow & String
Rogue → Assassin (the unaware always fall to crits) or Scout (dodging opens the next strike). Archer → Ranger (never surprised) or Sharpshooter (the first shot always lands perfect).
Faith & Fist
Priest → Cleric (clutch mending) or Inquisitor (burn them, then judge them). Monk → Ascetic (flow around blows and heal) or Martial Master (every third strike is perfect).
Song & Spear
Bard → Skald (the war-poet, whose meter is iron) or Loresinger (keeper of the songs that hold towns together). Lancer → Dragoon (half the fight happens above their heads) or Halberdier (everything inside the arc is spoken for).
Weave & Wild
Mage, Druid, Shaman, Spellblade — overchannel, thorn-coat, ride the war drums, or weave steel and spell so the swap itself cuts deeper.
Media
Devlog
v0.99.72 — Spells With Real Bite
- Every spell and strike in battle lands with a new effect: fire blooms into a plasma burst, ice scatters into crisp snowflakes, shadow collapses into a dark star, nature whips up a storm of leaves, and a holy strike bursts into feathers of light.
- Your spells fly now, too - cast fire and a fireball streaks across to the enemy, cast ice and a spear of frost flashes over, cast arcane and a glowing orb crosses the field, each bursting the moment it lands.
v0.99.71 — Every Place Looks Like Itself
- The overworld wears its regions now: the ash wastes are ash with charred fields, the high peaks drift with cold mist, the Heartlands are golden meadows, and the Rift is grey ash and black void-tangle instead of a purple haze.
- Valehaven has grown into the town it was always meant to be: a cobbled church plaza, the mill's wheel turning over a mill race, the fisher's dock on the river, a back lane of homes you can step into, an orchard, a hay field and flower meadows.
- The three castles have real gates in their walls, with banners and lamps or braziers lighting the way in; Dawnhold drills in its yard under the ivy and Cinderhold hides behind palisade outworks.
v0.99.70 — The Folding Phone
- On the iPhone Duo, the game keeps its HUD and buttons clear of the front camera.
Platforms
- STEAM WIN / MAC / LINUX
- iOS FREE TO START
- ANDROID FREE TO START
Pay once on Steam and the whole road is yours. On mobile, begin free with three classes and unlock the rest with a single purchase — no ads, no consumables, no accounts. Full controller support and pixel-perfect scaling everywhere.