While PAX East started with a bang and I got to see a lot of great games, panels and people from the community a game I got to check out early stood out from the crowd. Aether & Iron from Seismic Squirrel caught my attention quickly with it’s premise, art style and game design.

Set in an alternate 1930s New York that has been transformed into a vertical city after the discovery of Aether. This anti-gravity tech fuels a new York that sprawls upwards instead of across the ground and opens up power struggles as the world, and New York’s elite, to fight over control of the technology.

Taking on the role of Gia, a smuggler down on her luck, I was thrust into a film noir version of New York that reminded me of Bioshock Infinite mixed with Chinatown and a sprinkling of the 5th Element. Gia is a wisecracking tough cookie that lives her life and career on the edge of her seat with her car and guts guiding the way.

The demo started with Gia meeting a low level boss who gives her a chance at a job and showcased the games strong narrative format. The game is fully voiced and I was quite impressed with the spoken dialogue as Gia faced off against the mysterious Mr. Blanc.

Much like Disco Elysium and similar games the meat of the experience is in exploration, dialogue and trying to score more information or loot by testing your skills and wits against others. On screen dice rolls pop up leveraging skills that can be grown and enhanced to decide whether you succeed or fail one of these encounters.

What impressed me was that even in failure the story could continue but less perks or information is shared by the game making further decisions trickier. Oftentimes there were multiple avenues to choose from, meet a throng of menacing cabbies? Well I could either intimidate or weet talk them, a bribe was also an option.

These varied choices made the game feel a lot more organic despite it being a pretty linear narrative experience according to the developers on hand. The characters I met were also very interesting and distinct further bringing me into the story.

As the game progressed I got into the combat aspect of the games, which is entirely from the confines of your vehicle as you travel between zones. Battle outside of that is handled via dialogue or skill rolls.

In this combat mode your car is in the skyline and enemies, other cars and obstacles all get in the way as turns occur. Positioning for attacks and to avoid obstacles is key to success and I found the mechanic fairly interesting but hope they don’t overuse it or add a lot of modifiers/new aspects so it does not get tedious.

I am a massive Film Noir fan and loved the Bioshock series so the vibe of Aether & Iron really spoke to me. The developers are really passionate about the game and the art, voice acting, narrative I saw so far and the music all had me hooked as I tried it out.

Aether is one to keep an eye out as it progresses through development. They are shooting for a release later this year and Aether & Iron can be wishlisted on Steam as you wait for the release.