Aetherium Hearts

Boolmousse Studio

Contains ads

About this game

✦ AETHERIUM HEARTS ✦ — an idle dungeon RPG

You never swing the sword. You choose who goes down, how deep, and what they carry — and then the labyrinth takes its course. Expeditions run on the server in real time, so the descent continues while the app is closed. What comes back is a tale.

■ Everything is decided before they leave
Pick the adventurer, the labyrinth, the depth and the pack. Herbs for wounds, antidote for venom, holy water against the gaze that turns flesh to stone. Send someone unprepared and you will read about it afterwards.

■ It runs whether or not you are watching
The dungeon advances on the server, minute by minute. Open the app and the 3D map shows where they are now; close it and they keep descending. Word reaches you when they are due back.

■ Every journey is written down
The events of each floor are woven into prose — the wolf at the third turn, the herb chewed in the dark, the moment it went wrong. Read it when they return. Share it if it turned out well.

■ Death is not a respawn
The fallen become remains, and the temple's prayer answers only two times in five. Raising them costs gold and hours, and each return takes a level with it, permanently. An adventurer drained by a wraith walks a level below themselves until the rite is paid for — and if they descend before that, the loss is made real.

■ A town that keeps its own hours
Shelves restock every few hours and prices move with them; the guild's bounties turn over through the day; the tavern has work, and rumours, some of them false. Temper a blade at the forge with the parts you cut from monsters. Rest at the inn. Offer an Aetherium Heart at the shrine and the town's lamps stay lit.

■ Roads out of the Ash Marches
Beyond the wall the road runs west through the cedars to a waystation, and past that across a sea of sand to Ashrim, where they fire glass. The whole company walks together — eleven minutes through the wood, seventeen across the sand — and what happens on the road becomes the company's own tale. Nothing on those roads spawns underground: to forge the best of anything, you have to walk.

■ Adventurers other than your own
Keep several. When one goes missing, another can go down after them. The guild's board carries the missing of other players' towns as well — bring one home and the reward is waiting for you.

Japanese and English, switching with your device. Free, with ads; watching one can stand in for gold at the temple.

Go quietly into the labyrinth. Your Aetherium Hearts is waiting.