Hey everyone,

Another week, another time to talk about progress on Niravasi

I'm now about 35-40% complete with the game's second level. It took me a little while longer than I thought as I have some IRL developments happening at the moment and Destiny 2: Beyond Light will be releasing today and it's likely I'll be spending some of my time on that.

Fear not, as development will still be happening and I doubt that things will go south. But for today, let's talk more about the setting of the game itself. More specifically, the world of Aetherius.

The World of Niravasi: AETHERIUS

"Our new home."

If you aren't already aware, I mentioned before that the events of NIRAVASI and my other game, AETHERSIDE, are set within the same canonical universe. While the latter will focus more of the exploration of the game's world as a whole, Niravasi will still drop subtle hints about the game's overall setting. Anyway, let's start talking about that.

The Departure

"Shadows beckon"

Many years ago, the humans in our story fled from their home world of AEON. It is not known why or how, but rumours have circulated over the years. Some claim an ancient demon from a primordial era eradicated all life, plunging the planet into darkness. Others claim that there was no demon and that the true reasons remain a mystery to this day. Either way, the humans of AEON soon found themselves at the planet of AETHERIUS.

Yet AETHERIUS was already inhabited by a collective race of anthropomorphic people called The Antherians. Seeing these humans as invaders, conflicts arose and soon a brutal war ravaged the planet, leading to much death and destruction. Eventually, the war reached a boiling point and the planet erupted, sending the tectonic plates into space. Many locations were still tethered to the broken world, but the city of Niravasi was not so lucky and was sent into the planet's outer-perimeter, devoid of sunlight and life.

The Inspiration

"Evil Animals."

So I've spoken a bit about the design of Mura and why I wanted an animal character in a human-like setting, but let's talk more in detail. For the past 3-4 years, I've been continuously building the lore and setting for the story of AETHERSIDE, which is why you'll see certain key aspects of this game being so heavily detailed. This is the result of NIRAVASI being a formerly scrapped side-quest idea for AETHERSIDE, so a lot of details will tend to overlap.

As a result, you're maybe going to see some details that at first glance will be confusing, but I'm hoping with the way that I write this game's story, you won't need to know what happens in one game to understand the context of the other.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for this week. Apologies if this update's not as big as you may have expected, but at this point, I'm cracking on with work on the game. Don't worry though as next Tuesday, I'll talk more about the side-characters you'll be meeting in Niravasi.

Kind regards,
King Sangos