Many of you on the internet know me for loving indie games and playing them quite a bit on PC, Xbox, and even Nintendo Switch. Back on April 11, 2017, I got to dive into Aaero, from Mad Fellows. For those of you wondering what Aaero is, it’s a rhythm action rail shooter with a different way of playing a rhythm game. For me, this game was quite addicting when it came to its gameplay and working on unlocking all the songs and finding all the hidden items and this is well before any DLC was released. Personally, for me, I always like to check out rhythm games because I appreciate musical games and seeing how they can take music in different forms into a new area.
Fast forward to 2024, and Mad Fellows is back with the sequel to Aaero2, which wasn’t on my radar until they announced it. It came to mind, what new things could be coming to this franchise, and what new songs in partnership with Monstercat would be in this game. Some of you as well know I’ve worked with Monstercat when it came to raising money for Extra Life. So the amount of music they have in their catalog is quite extensive so who knows what we’d be getting. I got the chance to play Aaero2, which I’m currently playing for review ahead of its October 15th release. So please keep an eye out for my full review coming out soon!
With Aaero2 coming out very soon, I got the chance with Paul Norris from Mad Fellows about Aaero2 and what you should expect to learn more about the game itself. Without keeping you from what I know you’re here to learn about. The full interview is below and I’d like to thank Paul Norris for his game to chat about Aaero2 and more.
Interview with Paul from Mad Fellows on Aaero2
Andrew:
As someone who really enjoyed the original Aaero, I’m curious—What sparked the decision to create a sequel? Did fan response play a big role?
Paul:
By all modern-day video game metrics, Aaero wouldn’t have got a sequel, but we really wanted to make it anyway. It’s very niche. From a financial point of view, it absolutely didn’t warrant a sequel and definitely not one that took anywhere near this much time and effort to make. We worked round the clock on the first one and we had to make a lot of compromises to get it done within the timescale and budget. We felt we had unfinished business. We wanted to get the multiplayer in and have a solid platform on which to build DLC. The first game just wasn’t robust enough to build upon. Aaero2 is rebuilt from scratch to be more adaptable and expandable.
We decided that the sequel would take as long as it takes. Anyone responsible for scheduling or budgeting will tell you this is an absolutely terrible idea. I can confirm from experience that they are 100% correct. Everything can always be better. It’s the deadlines that ultimately decide when something is ‘done’. So here were are, nearly 8 years after the first one was released.
Andrew:
From my experience with Aaero, the blend of music and gameplay was spot on. How are you evolving that relationship in Aaero2? Any new twists to the rhythm mechanics?
Paul:
The combat system is completely redesigned from the ground up. The players that ‘got’ the missile timing in the first game loved it. Everyone else seemed confused. If I had £1 for every time I’d tried to explain ‘It’s 1/8th before the beat’, ‘like an open hi-hat before the downbeat’, ‘like a bat swinging before the impact’ then I’d have most of the budget for another game.
This was a fundamental thing with the first game. Music games have a ‘hit window’ that sits around the correct timing. If you hit it too early or late, in Guitar Hero for example, you get a ‘thunk’ sound and the guitar track stops. In Aaero, if you hit a bit early, no worries, the game could wait for a few milliseconds before launching the missile. If you hit a bit late, however, you need to time travel in order to go back and launch the missiles on beat. As much as I shouted at Dan, he was unable to write any time travelling code… until now!
No, he still can’t write time-traveling code. I’ve redesigned the combat system entirely for Aaero2. It now has a hit window around the correct timing (Which means I’ve essentially game-designed my way around time travel. That’s going on my CV).
The explanation of how this works and still keeps the impacts and explosions in time is long, boring and, now I think about it, potentially patentable so I won’t go into all that.
Andrew:
One of my favorite parts of the original was the variety of music tracks. How does the soundtrack for Aaero2 compare? Are there any new genres or artists that fans should be excited about?
Paul:
The whole soundtrack is amazing. We’re really proud of it. Working with Monstercat is great. They understand video games and the culture of streaming and content creation. They never once insisted or suggested that we made the soundtrack 100% Monstercat, it just turned out that they had more than enough in their catalogue. We’re very picky when it comes to choosing tracks for the game, but once we’d listed the things we wanted from Monstercat, we realised we’d filled the setlist.
There’s a big range of genres in this time. There’s some collabs with rock bands as well as vocals from the metal singer Sullivan King. Koven’s track provides some amazing female vocal ribbons to follow and Bossfight, as you can guess, is perfect tunes for fighting bosses to. There’s even a face-melting guitar solo in one track that is great fun to play.
Andrew:
The first game had such a unique visual style. How have the visuals been pushed further in Aaero2? What new environments or themes can players expect?
Paul:
The initial plan was to have 3 distinct environments, 5 tracks in each ‘biome’, and then a boss battle in that biome. That is how a sensible indie dev would do it. Reusing assets is key. I didn’t do that, though. At all. Each of the 18 tracks is set in a different place with unique assets and set pieces. It’s a great example of how not having deadlines ends up getting out of hand.
Deserts, forests, Hoth-like snow planets, lava and inter-dimensional anomalies. Some levels dip in and out of the water and some are set at the bottom of the sea. It carries on from the theme in the first game of taking the classic video game tropes and running with them. We even have a Giant Enemy Crab boss.
The visual style is much more detailed. It still retains the polygonal style but it’s much more refined. Again, there’s no texture maps at all, it’s all geometry. Ironically, that means that the low poly aesthetic is actually ridiculously high poly. Real-time lighting on the blue and orange ribbons adds a lot of texture to the edges of the screen. My goal was to leave the middle uncluttered to not confuse the gameplay but to have the detail appear in the edges of the screen, outside of the circular playfield.
Andrew:
I really enjoyed the challenge of the boss fights in the original. Are there new bosses or enemy types in Aaero2 that build on those mechanics? How have those battles evolved?
Paul:
The bosses are great fun to design and make. They kind of echo the bosses from the first game in some ways but pushed to the next level. The gameplay in the boss battles is more refined. In the first game you just clouted them anywhere to damage them, this time they have weak spots and evolving gameplay as the level progresses. In keeping with celebrating rather than avoiding video game tropes, we have glowing orange weak spots. (Hit the weak spots on the Giant Enemy Crab for Massive Damage!)
Andrew:
In Aaero, tracing light ribbons in sync with the music was so satisfying. Are there any new gameplay mechanics or features related to that core experience in the sequel?
Paul:
Tracing ribbons with another player really feels amazing. Having two sets of ribbons, orange and blue feels and looks balanced, like they should’ve been there the whole time. The ribbon mechanic is one thing from the original where the feedback was always positive so we didn’t want to mess with it too much. ChillOut and Normal difficulty now has a slight magnetic effect to assist with tracing ribbons. Advanced and Master, you’re on your own.
Andrew:
Will Aaero2 have any new modes? I know the game itself will have multiplayer and PvP, but where there be community-driven challenges or anything else that weren’t part of the first game?
Paul:
We’ve included some of the things that players have come to expect from modern games. There’s an xp leveling system and medals and stats to earn and display on your profile card. The aim was to have all the good things about a battle pass without the bad. For me, that means ways of showing other players your achievements and skill. Unlocking cool artwork and concept art for your profile card. Daily and weekly challenges to encourage players to get the most out of the game but without having to pay extra for it.
If you see cool profiles or ‘bling’ in Aaero2, they’ve earned it with skill, not bought it.
Andrew:
Having played the original, I noticed that the community was quite passionate. How much of their feedback has influenced Aaero2? Were there any specific fan requests you incorporated?
Paul:
This is a big thing for us. We started out, as games always do, with a post-mortem of the previous game. I started collecting up feedback from comments, reviews, videos, streams and everywhere else. The initial idea was to incorporate as much of this into the sequel as possible.
After a while, we decided that we’d attempt to address every single piece of feedback we could find.
We prioritized based on how common the comment was. For example ‘I don’t understand the timing of the missiles’ was top of the list. ‘Homing missiles seem unfair and frustrating’ was also up there. Then we worked our way all the way down to things that had only been mentioned once. If it was a good point, didn’t negatively impact any other area of the game and was viable, we were going to put it in and give it a try.
I’m not going to claim we put all of the feedback in there. There was, of course, some that just wasn’t going to work. What I can confidently state is that if someone made a public comment about Aaero, we found it, read it, wrote it down, and carefully discussed it.
Andrew:
As someone who’s been following indie games, what advice would you give to developers looking to create something as unique as Aaero? What lessons did you learn between the first game and its sequel?
Paul:
As anyone giving out advice to indies will tell you, you should start with the monetization model, research the size of the market and play to any current trends. We just don’t ever do that. Frankly, don’t take advice from us. It’s a miracle we’re still around.
Andrew:
For readers who want to stay updated on Aaero2, where’s the best place to follow you? Can you share your social media, Discord, or any other channels?
Paul:
@MadFellowsGames on X and discord.gg/aaero is the place to get hold of us.
I again would like to thank you Paul for taking time out of your weekend to talk about Aaero2 which will be coming out October 15th, 2024 on Xbox, and Steam which is coming soon. I can’t wait for our readers to check out the game once it’s released and with the new co-op/PvP see how people will enjoy the game even more.
