With the success of games like Palworld and Enshrouded in 2024, it’s clear that survival games are still incredibly popular. There are many reasons for this, but it seems there’s always room in people’s hearts for one more, as long as it has an interesting concept and solid mechanics.
Enter Nightingale, the first game from Inflexion Games, a studio staffed by veteran developers. Nightingale takes place in a world very similar to ours, except in the 1500s humans realized it wasn’t the only sentient species on Earth. The goblins introduced themselves, and since then, humans have evolved differently, so much so that by the time we reach the Victorian era, we are able to travel to different realms using some advanced technology. At some point, however, the technology fails, leaving you (and up to five friends) in a random, hostile realm.
From a background perspective, it’s clear that a large portion of the Inflexion team have worked on Mass Effect. There’s a lot of interesting story in Nightingale, and a lot of thought has been put into the factions and world you experience in this game. Yes, the world, like, has multiple areas for you to explore. In Nightingale, you don’t just get dropped into a random world and left to survive until you conquer it. Using portals scattered across the map (as well as smaller personal portals later in the game), you can teleport yourself to different realms, utilizing cards to differentiate difficulty, biomes, and other factors.
It’s hard to explain this concept of multiple worlds without involving a lot of text, but it’s really complicated at first. Loading a portal with different cards, each of which changes the world you go to, sounds like too many layers to add to this survival cake, but the mechanics are neatly wrapped up in a solid tutorial explanation, and allows Nightingale to truly differentiate itself from the wider survival crowd. These cards also offer some cool and unique effects. Some lower the world’s gravity, allowing you to jump from great heights without breaking your legs, while others turn the skybox blood red, forcing the kingdom into eternal night, which means tough enemies are constantly spawning.
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Nightingale is already a pretty gorgeous game, but Nightingale really showcases how miraculous it looks. The wider environments are procedurally generated, so each area will feel different, keeping the experience fresh. There are some things that are guaranteed to appear, though, so you’re always guaranteed to get loot and more crafting items from every place you visit. The kingdom is full of strange creatures. Some are hostile, some are peaceful, but they all catch your eye once you spot them. With Nightingale , even though the world is procedurally generated, it seems like a lot of thought went into making each area feel distinctly alive. It’s impressive and makes me want to explore a survival game, where usually I just gather enough resources to build a decent base and then never touch it again.
You can build anything in Nightingale, from a rugged outpost to a great mansion. Like almost every entry in the genre, you’ll need to unlock recipes, upgrade your gear, and explore more resources until you can actually build your dream home. In its base building, Nightingale shows that variety is indeed the spice of life, as you can build from a range of different building styles, either individually or combined together as needed. For example, you can really annoy any artist or architect you might know by plastering a pagoda element on a Tudor-style house.
So, we have a lot to do for explorers and builders, but what about survival players who just want to fight? Okay, it does seem like you’ll need some late-game gear for raiding, but there’s a lot more to fighting in Nightingale than just shooting the predatory creatures you encounter. There are some great towers, like dungeons, filled with enemies and puzzles, and in a developer-led demo we also got to take part in a massive raid, taking down a massive beast that left in its wake There was a wave of destruction. These are all very cool battles, but one thing to worry about is that you might have to spend a long time in Nightingale to get to them.
Nightingale is currently gearing up for an Early Access release, which seems to be the norm for survival games these days, but even so, I’m hoping something will turn around in the coming months. The user interface needs some overhauling. Personally, it’s not appealing, especially when looking at your inventory. Gameplay-wise, there are some issues with certain tools, such as the climbing hook that only works about a fifth of the time as intended. The early game may seem a bit dull compared to later-game activities, but then again, we haven’t spent much time with Nightingale yet, so the conclusion may change.
Otherwise, Nightingale is a unique survival experience where cool rules seem to define how you play. You can use your umbrella to float around the map and dress as sharply as you want without sacrificing gear points. It seems to have something for every type of survival player, and it’s one of the most interesting entries in the genre in recent memory.
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