The game's engine is a refined version of the one used for Super Smash Land, which Dan Fornace and Flashygoodness worked on previously before Rivals Of Aether started development.
Remnants of Super Smash Land are still present in the code of characters in Rivals, with one notable example being that Kragg's pillar uses modified code from Smash Land's incarnation of Mega Man's Item 1.
Orcane appears as a playable character in the puzzle/RPG game Dungeon Hearts DX, and appears as one of many guest characters in the Indie Massive Multiplayer Crossover fighters Indie Pogo and Fraymakers.
Some of the characters' names are references to the dev team's handles and nicknames:
"Zetterburn" comes from a old username that was used by Dan Fornace. The name itself comes from Henrik Zetterberg, a member of the NHL's Detroit Red Wings hockey team.
Similarly, Forsburn is named after hockey legend Peter Forsberg. Forsberg is also seven years older than Zetterberg, and thus, Forsburn is canonically the eldest brother.
"Etalus" is the Twitter handle of George Rogers, who is a producer and community manager for the game.
"Wrastor" is the Twitter handle of Ryan Sicat, the game's lead artist.
"Maypul" is a corruption of "Maple", which is the nickname of Dan Fornace's wife.
"Ranno" is named after the Twitter handle of Marc Knelsen, one of the game's artists. Bonus points for his mascot being a frog as well.
"Elliana" is named after the Twitter handle of Jonathan Rosseau, another one of the game's artists.
Zetterburn/Maypul is the favored ship of the dev team, with manytweets and even a blog post supporting the relationship. Might slip into Reality Subtext, as "Zetterburn" is an old username of lead developer Dan Fornace, and "Maypul" is a corruption of "Maple", the nickname of Dan's wife. Perhaps the greatest evidence of this comes from when Dan announced his marriage and he posted this drawing of Zetterburn and Maypul.
A week prior to the release of the Definitive Edition, a stage based on Nihil, the bonus area from the flash game Pause Ahead was released by fans to the Workshop, using the popular song "Nihil Descent", originally composed by Rivals' composer Flashygoodness, as its background music. Definitive Edition features two remixes of the same song on an otherwise unrelated stage.
Trivia Tropes
Ascended Fanon: Announced in Rivals Direct 3, four popular workshop characters were announced to be added to the base cast: Mollo, Olympia, Pomme, and Hodan. Mollo even made an appearance in the Tales of Aether comic books, showing that these fan-made characters are now a full part of Aether canon.
Dummied Out: Sandbert was originally the test character when the game was first being built, he appears in some of the earliest development screenshots, but didn't inititally appear in the main game. He was later brought back as a Workshop character.
The creators ran a Twitter poll to determine whether Ayala the rabbit or Elliana the snake would join the roster. Elliana won, though Ayala would eventually get compensation as an unlockable skin for Elliana.
Four user-created characters from the Steam Workshop (Mollo, Hodan, Pomme, and Olympia) were added to the official roster, including for the Nintendo Switch version.
Pre-Order Bonus: A set of Game Boy-esque skins, which were previously available as seasonal palette swaps, were given to players who purchased the game during its time in the Steam Early Access program. Unfortunately for those who purchased the Game Preview version on Xbox One, there is no way to provide rewards to those who purchased the game early due to Microsoft's restrictions.
Players of the Steam version who purchased any of the DLC characters prior to the release of the Definitive Edition update also received exclusive Vaporwave-inspired skins each DLC character they purchased.
This tweet by lead artist Ryan Sicat, shows number of concepts from a canceled game that bear some striking resemblances to the characters eventually created for Rivals of Aether.
In this tweet, we get a glimpse at early concepts for Orcane, Zetterburn, and Wrastor. Orcane is practically unchanged, Zetterburn's final design remains very close to his original concept, aside from different clothing items such as a pauldron on his left arm, but Wrastor could have passed for an entirely different character. Aside from being clearly female, Wrastor's original concept was much less bird-like, and had a pair of small stylized wings floating just behind her back.
Krag's original concepts have only a few differences from his final design, mainly concerning the appearance of his horn, but in one sketch, he is shown opening his shell to spread his wings, which we never see in the final game. He also has numerous unused sprites and color palettes.
Maypul was originally conceived as some sort of lizard-like creature, and then a malesquirrel with a staff. After her general design was finalized, her weapons were a pair of kamas, but were scrapped because it was difficult to translate them into sprite form.
Thesetweets, based on a fan concept from the Rivals of Aether subreddit, show a female turtle/tortoise with electrical powers. It may be possible that these designs eventually evolved into Absa.
Both Etalus and Absa went through numerous changes before the details of their design and sprites were finalized.
Elliana could've been a rabbit instead of a snake. Dan Fornace held a poll on which animal would be better as a pilot of a mech character. The snake won, and thus, Elliana was designed to be a snake. Ayala would later be designed as a reference to this poll, being a rabbit. Ayala would then come to be an unlockable skin in the Definitive Edition.
Some characters were originally going to have different mechanics for some attacks:
Maypul's seeds were originally able to deal knockback, as seen in the gifs on her official character page. In addition, her plant, Lily, could originally eat a number of seeds to become Fat Lily, extending the time she lasted on the stage and the time opponents remained wrapped when marked. Both the seed knockback and Fat Lily were removed from the game due to the moves encouraging camping.
Absa's side tilt was once a lightning bolt that instantly traveled across the entire stage. This was changed to a two-hit combo, starting with a fast, short-ranged attack, and then transitioning into the original lightning bolt. This change was made to slow down the move and prevent camping.
Etalus's ice armor originally gave him a single instance of super armor, but was replaced instead with limited knockback reduction.
Word of Gay: Mollo's original creator, GiiK, has confirmedon more than one occasion that he is canonically transgender. It is also worth noting that Mollo has a palette based on the transgender pride flag, both in his original workshop version and his new version from the Workshop Character Pack update.
, who is a producer and community manager for the game.