Played the free Aether & Iron demo? Can't wait for the full game to get back into its world? This reward is for you. We're looking for short but brilliant stories set in its inventive 'decopunk' world. Here are the rules:

• Please write an original piece of flash fiction, set explicitly in Aether & Iron's floating, alternate-1930s New York. As long as it takes place in the same world, your story can be entirely new, or it can intersect with that of the Aether & Iron demo. See 'inspiration' below for some ideas!

• Once written, please tell us your story in a YouTube video. It should be between three and nine minutes in duration. We prefer well-delivered human voiceover, but if you're shy, we'll allow the use of text-to-speech generators. You may not use generative AI in any other way. As always, our antisocial content policy will apply to suspected cases.

• As for your video's visuals, we recommend suitable gameplay footage or images from the Aether & Iron demo. Try to match them as closely to your story as you can, and you're welcome to use video-editing tricks to achieve this. This is not a strict requirement, however, and if you can find more suitable visuals you're welcome to make use of them. It must be clear and explicit that your story is from the world of Aether & Iron, however.

• Remember our flash-fiction writing advice: Often, aspiring authors of flash fiction fall down by trying to write an entire story, complete with beginning, middle, and end. Flash fiction doesn't need to do that, and is often better when it doesn't. You can leave questions unanswered, mysteries unsolved, and readers wanting more. Sometimes, it can even be a single scene!

• This is a time-limited, podium-finish reward that will only close and its submissions be judged on December 5, 2025. Assuming we receive submissions of sufficient quality and quantity, top prizes will go to good, well-written, original stories that make good use of the Aether & Iron setting first and foremost, and well-produced videos that do a good job telling them as the secondary criterion. Top prizes will not be awarded by default to entries that fall short of the required quality.

If you're looking for a few ideas or points of inspiration to fire up your creative juices, consider the following:

• Throughout the demo, both Gia and Nellie refer to several episodes from earlier in their lives. You could depict one of them as a flashback, or show us the same event from the perspective of other characters.

• You could bring one of the game's exciting car chase sequences to life: a shootout on a sky-high highway, as a piece of single-scene flash fiction!

• You could dive into the lives of other characters in the demo, or the conflicts they hint at. The Scrapper King had an exchange with Gia and Nellie: what happened to him after they drove off? What kind of obstacles do aethoneers like Alexander and Maria face, or secret police like Intelligence Officer Pitt? What has happened to General Eli to make him act as he does? What was Nellie's life in the uppers like, and should you show it through her eyes, or might one of her colleagues have a story to tell? And what is the deal with Mr Blanc?

We can't wait to see what you come up with!