Long Review :: Aether’s Maw｜The Leviathans Trail ｜ Spookality 2023

I think Aether’s Maw is worth playing, but you have to know what you’re getting into.

First and foremost, this game is basically like Moby-Dick, but in space. You and a crew (your teammates) are on a search for a monster to avenge the rest of the small fleet. You will encounter dangers along the way, and these must be dealt with in a timely manner by either plotting a new course or taking up the ship’s defenses to destroy the threats. In order to complete your hunt, you must accomplish the larger, distinct mission through interaction of probes spread all around the in-game universe. Your crewmates should play distinct functional roles to make the mission a success, but they are not selectable classes that the game forces you to choose from. One or more persons should be the navigator(s), one person the pilot, and the rest should be support crew. As in the Fate of the Irrbloss, the game works out best if there is good coordination between players. Thankfully there aren’t things such as fires, or oxygen, or immediate emergencies that require acute or chronic attention.

There are some complexities that make this game a little artificially challenging, such as the operation of the player controls and the ships assets. Because the game is in space, with artificial gravity, moving around and turning is implemented in an atypical way from the player’s perspective (the world specifically tells the player this). Having good ‘VR Legs’ will let you get the most out of this experience. However, if you get motion sickness easily, I highly recommend you volunteer to be a role in which there is not a lot of moving and turning, such as ship’s pilot or navigator. Disembarking off ship into space can be incredibly disorienting.

Taking up ship’s defense is implemented like an arcade game, with several gun stations that can be manned. The guns shoot satisfactorily but unfortunately have a limited range of fire so you may have to move from station to station in order to defeat the threats without taking too much damage. The ship also has spotlight stations, but I found the range and intensity of the spotlights to be a little lacking and they make observing the environment from the pilot’s point of view challenging. When you are steering and have to avoid obstacles, there is a some guesswork involved unless your crew is giving you good feedback. The 6 axis direction indicator can be useful to observe if you accidentally end up like the Titanic and scrape your hull against an asteroid or other obstacle, and there is a sound to indicate that it’s happening.

A mechanic that can be difficult to master is the hook-shot or grapple. By default the game gives you grappling hooks with both hands that can be resummoned by gripping the sides of your head. The hooks are extremely useful for short distance space travel as they have limited range, but also necessary for when your ship is rammed and you need to return to your station on deck after having been tossed around. This was a cool feature but it can be a overplayed if you get rammed often. A small pro-tip: if you want to avoid being ejected, make sure to pre-emptively hook the ship deck.

The navigation station is useful because it provides a radar-like view, keeping the ship’s orientation static. It is wise to establish dialogue for how to navigate by using consistent terms: “Positive Z” or “Negative Z”, “Ascending” or “Descending” for relaying movement along the Z axis. The controls are also fine enough to specify some estimated number of degrees in turning: 30, 45, 90 degrees are precise enough to navigate. Both the Z control lever and steering wheel have automatic return-to-zero positioning.

Aside from the nuances of the controls and the challenges of navigating deep, black, unforgiving space, I highly recommend playing this world. There is fun in coordinating your crew and navigating uncharted voids. The combat is decent but is a little bit frustrating. The only downside to big implementations like this is once you play through to completion, there’s really no need to do it a second time (except if you want to do it faster/speed run it.) This is not a short game. The description advertises a one to two hour playtime, so expect to be here for a while. It can run much much longer if you don’t have a solid crew to play with, who also can improvise their strategies on the spot.

(Rating: 8)

I’m not sure I can follow that last review… but here goes!

I enjoyed this world quite a bit, even with the slight bit of jank it had. We went in with four people which I think helped a lot. Any less and I think it might have been a bit too difficult for what it tries to do. The theme is essentially a mish-mash of pirates/cowboys in space… kinda. The aesthetic works well here, and I always liked the space cowboy genre, and this one adds massive ocean-type ships that sail through the stars. You’re given a pair of hookshots that you can use to swing around on asteroids which was a nice touch. Your first task is to get to your ship that’s in the repair bay, and that’s where a novel quirk makes itself known: the gravity keeps you on the ground as you make your way up an O-shaped asteroid, which was a neat touch. Once you get your ship repaired and learn the ropes, it’s off to battle a giant space whale tentacle thing.

I didn’t fly the ship and instead opted to help navigate, fight off monsters with the cannons, and do recon for the lost beacons hidden around the map. It was very fast paced and our group developed a sort of nautical lingo more adequate for space that worked fairly well. It was difficult to see though, even with the lights and I think it would be nice if they were slightly larger and brighter.

The enemies seemed to take forever to kill and were hard to pinpoint (the bat-insect things in particular) but we were able to balance getting the ship repaired with whatever damage they could inflict on us. The giant space whale tentacle thing would confront us now and again which caused some pretty hectic moments of trying to flee or fight him off, as well as trying to get back to the ship. I definitely used the Respawn On Ship feature a bit too frequently, but I’m glad it was there.

I enjoyed that there were different biomes in this massive space map – mushrooms, crystals, etc. There were even some cute axolotl-like creatures that seem friendly at first… until they start gnashing their teeth at you. I tried to fight them off with the blunderbuss guns but it didn’t work very well.

Once we completed the objective of searching the stars for beacons, we were told to destroy the eggs at the whale’s (at least I think it was the whale’s) nest. It was easy enough, and then we were on to slay the beast once and for all. It was a bit tricky to kill him, especially since the guns don’t have the best radius, and to be honest I think it would have taken a lot longer if the boss didn’t bug out and get stuck on an asteroid, where we just wailed (no pun intended) on him until he turned into bones.

Overall, I loved it! Especially for a jam piece, this is incredibly well thought out and designed. I think it has some rough spots that I’d love to see get polished, and I’d especially like to maybe see some more objectives after the whale is killed so you can enjoy the world for a bit longer. I would have also liked to see more guns and tools to use, because there is an inventory system, but I never had to use it once, but that could be because we just never found any special items.

You could say I had a giant space whale tentacle thing of a time with this one.

(Rating: 8)