18/06/2025, London, UK - A story-driven sci-fi survival game about mining, base-building, and carving out a future in the ruins of corporate greed, publisher CULT Games and solo developer Pawsmonaut Games are proud to announce they are launching AETHUS on Steam in 2025.
Take the helm as Maeve, a mining engineer on the run from her former employer, the corrupt mega corporation Astral Resource Corporation (ARC). Delve into the corporate mystery in this dystopian underground at your pace, exploring the remnants of a doomed mining expedition, and the abandoned facilities left behind by previous expeditions.
Beside Roland, an ageing utility drone, made of sarcasm, secrets, and scraps of a past that everyone but Maeve is keen to forget, take on a familiar evil as you literally build your dream abode in this unique low-poly style, gutwrenching narrative experience:
- Laser-blast mining in a handcrafted alien world: Drill, scavenge, and rebuild as you navigate decaying infrastructure and living terrain. Explore a futuristic world and mine for the valuable resources you need to design and create your customisable outpost. Use mining lasers and explosives to gather rich resources, salvage your finds and sell off the rarest gems and ores for maximum coin.
- A fully voiced narrative about family, grief, and resistance: Uncover a dystopian corporate conspiracy, and decide how far you’re willing to go for the truth.
- Build your outpost, grow your own future: From salvage to fungus, rare ores and reclaimed tech, create a home-from-home outpost. Unearth blueprints hidden in the depths of AETHUS, giving you the ability to expand your habitats and build new furniture, elevating your living quarters. Power up production and let automation do the work as your new world thrives.
- Made with care, not crunch: From UK-based indie solo-dev studio, Pawsmonaut Games. No AI content. No microtransactions. Just one person, one vision, one chance to leave your mark on AETHUS.
AETHUS is coming to Steam this year! Wishlist the game now or dive into the demo available on Steam.
CULT Games is a publisher label partnering with talented development studios to publish extraordinary games with a community-focused approach. Led by a team with decades of experience driving commercial and critical success in games and entertainment, the sometimes zealous, always hardworking, London-HQ'd collective is launching its first games in 2023.
ABOUT PAWSMONAUT GAMES
Pawsmonaut Games is a proud Scottish solo-independent game development studio, founded in 2023 to create deep, compelling experiences without micro-transactions, battle passes or predatory monetisation.