Aether & Iron Sets Up A Beautiful World For A Gritty Noir Story

Imagine a 1930s New York where technology had been created to float parts of the city into the sky, flying cars were common, and everyone spoke with enough pulp to put Humphrey Bogart to shame. This is the world of Aether & Iron, a new detective game, by Seismic Squirrel.

At SGF we had a chance to sit down with Tyler Whitney, Narrative Lead, and Joshua Enz, Producer, to talk about what inspired the game, what experience players can look forward to, and even got some time hands on to explore a picturesque bar in the clouds, take on a mysterious man in car on car combat, and explore our home base.

What A World To Live In

In Aether & Iron, players take on the role of Gia, a down-on-her-luck detective who has had one too many jobs go sideways. Returning to her employer, Mr Black, she's handed the job of escorting Nellie to the Lowers.

This job quickly escalates as both Gia and Nellie are thrown into danger and important and mysterious documents that Nellie was holding close are stolen.

The game is broken up into two gameplay styles, the first is exploration. As Gia you'll be able to interact with scenes and locations, having conversations with those you come across, or perhaps find an item or two to pick up for use later.

My first experience of exploration was in a bar with a glass floor, the view extending down to nothing but clouds below, the interior decked out as you'd expect a speakeasy of the time, but with a 'Neo-Decopunk' aesthetic.

When asked about what led to the idea of merging the past, of 1930s New York with a futuristic concept like that of Aether, the simple response from Whitney was that "we know that we want to have something beautiful, but was different." Whitney also offered up his love of movies like 2004's Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, though he jokingly accepted that he might be in the minority for that.

Seeing the gleaming skyline of the city it reminded me of the Metropolis of Superman's Silver Age. Beautiful skyscrapers that tell you that this is a safe and glorious place to live, that's ignoring the other locations in this game.

After picking up a bottle of booze and prodding the passed-out drunk, I approached the bar to open dialogue with the barkeep, a fellow employee of Mr Black.

Explore And Interact With The World of Aether & Iron

Dialogue in Aether & Iron is fully voiced, letting you really get sucked into the noir dialogue filled with flowery phrasing and an internal monologue that exposits without feeling like it's spoonfeeding information to the player.

Additional Voice & Text Options On The Way
It was explained to me that after Aether & Iron launches at the end of the year they will be adding Spanish and Chinese text localization, as well as working to add Spanish and Japanese Voices

Whitney attributed the passion for this genre with characters like Phillip Marlowe. He spoke about how he was given reign to write and that he then made it "flowery as hell." He wanted to write in a way that would make you feel, he laughed referencing the line "walking a knifed edge with bare feet" and how even now the thought of that made his toes curl in response.

At various points in conversation you'll be prompted with choices, these might be of no consequence merely moving the conversation forward, could only be possible if you have a certain item, or could be settled with a speech check.

An element of the speech checks that I loved were the inclusion of dice rolls. Each would prompt you to roll two dice, add your relevant stats, and any companion bonuses to try to meet the difficulty level of the check. You might be trying to fool someone, get some additional information out of them, or press your luck with an intimidating statement.

The Choices… And Consequences Of Dialogue

While I cleared most of the speech checks during my time playing, earning additional experience and earning additional money for Gia, there was one extremely difficult check that I failed. This didn't lead to any immediate negative repercussions but instead a funny moment where Nellie made fun of Gia and her very obvious attempt at lying. 

It might not have earned me experience as a character, but as a player, it showed a side to this new character I hadn't seen yet and endeared me further to her.

I asked about what kinds of negative repercussions there could be, and if you failed enough, if there were "fail states" where you'd have to revert to a save. The answer I got was quite surprising as there could definitely be scenarios where you keep talking back and end up getting shot because of it.

Each of these fail states are presented with the idea of a retro newspaper spinning up towards the screen. When one happens it's something monumental enough that it would make the front page, Whitney explained that internally they "view them as hidden collectibles."

The choices that you make during the story of Aether & Iron each have varying weights and some can even lead to exclusive branched narrative paths.

Aether & Iron is expected to take about 20 hours for an initial playthrough, and Whitney mused that if you knew exactly what you were doing it would take about three playthroughs to see everything, but I'm guessing if you're going in blind it might take a lot longer.

Due to the way you not only interact with the world, but also pick up and develop relationships with different characters and factions of Aether & Iron there are currently ~16 different endings. These aren't all wholly unique but much like a game like Fallout has endings for individual character stories, faction plots, and the overall game each of the permutations can lend to one another.

Time To Hit The Road

Outside of exploration and interrogation when making your way across the city there are events that can prompt such as road combat.

Here the combat is turnbased, functioning on a grid where every turn you have a certain number of actions you can perform. You can ram your car or unleash a shotgun blast, or simply shift from lane to lane.

A neat element of movement is that while shifting lanes left and right you'll use up a point of stamina, but going up and down (accelerating and decelerating) you have complete freedom.

Other dynamic elements of this combat were other drivers on the road, that you could use to get inbetween yourself and whoever you're facing, and also lanes that appear and disappear during combat. Just like real life you may be asked to merge or shift lane so as to stay on the road, be sure to pay attention!

Rooted In History

An interesting aspect of Aether & Iron for history buffs is that there are certain characters and elements that are rooted in the real life history of New York. An example given was that of the White Wings, the group of uniformed cleaners for New York established in 1895 by Colonel George E. Waring Jr.

Each of the segments of New York that have taken to the skies in Aether & Iron function like company towns, with an organization at the head, and one of these factions is a militaristic group of cleaners.

It's by creating the world first, and then creating a story that inhabits it that the team hopes to create "a world that others feel so immersed in that when they walk away they continue to play in their heads."

TechRaptor was able to preview Aether & Iron at Summer Game Fest 2025