Aethermancer

Aethermancer is a roguelite game for single players that combines elements of monster taming, turn-based tactical combat and exploration of a procedurally generated world. Players take on the role of an Aethermancer, collecting mythical creatures and summoning their spirits to create an effective team, before competing in 3-on-3 battles against wild monsters and bosses.

In order to win the turn-based 3v3 battles, players have to harness and manage the four elements of Aether in order to unleash powerful spells. Depending on the attack or skill, monsters generate different forms of Aether, which in turn consume different actions. Players must consider synergies, plan monster actions, purge enemy Aether and protect allies with shields. They must also focus on attacking with the right Elements - this is also necessary to break the monster's defence and capture it or its spirit. Each monster has upgradable elemental abilities. With every level up, players get to decide which direction their monsters will grow in. The semi-random skill pool offers different skills at each level-up, reacting to previous choices and other monsters in the team. This enables players to build powerful teams and adds to the game's replayability.

Aethermancer; moi rai games / offbrand games

According to the developers, there will be more than 50 monsters, each offering different ways to build and providing "equal viability". If a monster dies in combat, it's gone permanently. However, players can resurrect them and summon them at shrines. But all is not lost! Although the level system focuses on temporary improvements within a single run, there is meta-progression for permanent progress across multiple runs. Creatures improve in the long term via an additional experience system (Worthiness). For each level, they get a new perk. This is how progress made in the current run is carried over to subsequent runs, even if the creatures' abilities change after its resurrection.

The runs also feature a corruption system that permanently reduces the health points of monsters as soon as they take damage that is not blocked by a shield. However, corruption does not reduce a monster's maximum health; it only reduces the amount of health they begin combat with. Although corruption can be reset at certain points, it forces players to change their monster team, which can be annoying, especially if your team is already well-established. Hopefully, the developers will come up with a slightly less restrictive version on an optional lower difficulty level.

Between battles, the Aethermancer moves through procedurally generated maps, collecting items and encountering non-player characters (NPCs). They can also surprise enemies with a quick dash and select where to go next. Meanwhile, the story progresses in the city hub, where players return when they fail a run. There, they can also invest the materials they have collected for the Aethermancer in permanent upgrades.

moi rai is an independent game developer based in Hamburg, Germany. Led by Denis Sinner, who worked on the Might and Magic and Tropico franchises, the small team's debut project was Monster Sanctuary. Developed in collaboration with Team17, the game was released for PC and consoles in December 2020. Monster Sanctuary received several free post-launch updates and DLC before the team moved on to their second project: Aethermancer. For this game, moi rai is collaborating with the US-based indie publisher offbrand games, which is a privately owned company."We don't have outside investors or quarterly shareholder targets driving our decision making. Our decision makers work directly with our developer partners every day. As a passionate team of lifelong gamers, our mission is to find incredible indie games we love so we can go deep, shine a huge spotlight on them and do our best to share them with the world," the publisher said. Aethermancer is their second game after Rivals of Aether II (October 2024).

Aethermancer was released for PC on 23 September 2025 for €21.99. The current Early Access version includes one player class, three difficulty modes, 28 monsters (each with a shifted variant) across 19 types, 443 monster abilities, three biomes to explore, four avenues of meta progression, town decorations, and a Monster Deity boss fight. The game is expected to remain in Early Access for around a year. moi rai games: "With the full version of the game, we intend to build upon the foundation we’ve built with the Early Access launch. We plan to add polish, quality of life improvements, more monsters, more biomes, a fleshed-out end game area, deity boss fights, and player classes. Our hope is for the full version to have endless builds to experiment with, hours of exploration, as well as rewarding endings (and true endings)." During Early Access, the team first intends to introduce quality-of-life updates, such as more UI and combat clarity and combat speed settings, before adding two new classes, two additional biomes, a monster journal and new monsters, as well as the final boss. Early Access is scheduled to end in late 2026. Aethermancer achieved a Steam CCU peak of 2,975 on day one. This is considerably higher than Monster Sanctuary's day one peak of 1,397. After Early Access, it will also be released on Switch.

Conclusion

Building on the success of Monster Sanctuary, Aethermancer showcases the clever incorporation of monster taming into a roguelite. They have laid a strong foundation with Early Access.