With only eight days left before the early access launch of Nightingale, their debut survival crafting game, Inflexion Games invited media to a remote presentation that served to recap what the game will be all about while also sharing some new details.
First of all, former BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn (CEO of Inflexion) revealed the game’s pricing. Nightingale, powered by Unreal Engine 5.3, will be priced at $29.99, €28.99, or £24.99. Then, he clarified that from the get-go, Inflexion wanted to push the boundaries of player agency through expression and empowerment, allowing them to be who they wanted and play how they wished. Expression was particularly important, as Flynn said it was a lesson learned at BioWare that the developers would like to expand upon. Another goal is to make Nightingale a ‘thriving virtual world’. Flynn believes games as places can do ‘tremendous good in the world’.
During the development, the team closely collaborated with the community, bringing around 20K testers that helped define the game (Nightingale is, after all, the first survival crafting title they have ever made). Flynn then said he wouldn’t go back to making traditional games where developers are entirely disconnected from the community until launch.
The presentation then moved to discuss the alternate history featured in the game. According to the lore, the world was much the same as ours until the Fae showed themselves in the early 1500s. With the power of Fae magic, the evolution of humankind changed radically. The titular city became the nexus of magical studies and progress, and it’s here that portals started uniting our world with other Realms. Thus, the human adventurers called Realmwalkers began exploring these alien places.
Everything changed again in 1889 when a mysterious miasma called The Pale started spreading from the Fae Realms to Earth, collapsing the existing portal network. Players start as newbie Realmwalkers who, in the middle of this cataclysm, thought they would get to the safety of Nightingale but are stranded in the Fae Realms instead.
Speaking about the Fae, their lore is fairly traditional. They are split into Summer and Winter Courts. The former, governed by Oberon from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is welcoming but fickle; the latter, ruled by Beira, is distant and suitably frosty. There are also some Fae ‘Ronin’ scattered through the Realms, by the way.
Players will be helped through their journey by Puck of the Summer Court. From the tutorial, Puck aids them with the basics of survival in the Realms, though eventually, players will graduate to being able to imbue Fae magic in weapons and tools.
They will also be aided by fellow NPCs from history and fiction alike, such as Ada Lovelace, Nellie Bly, Allan Quatermain, and Henry Hyde. Ada Lovelace is, of course, the famous mathematician and arguably the first computer scientist (the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4000 architecture is named after her). Ada, daughter of Lord Byron, died of uterine cancer in 1852. However, in the game, Fae magic cured her and she grows to be an old and wise faction leader. Henry Hyde is a construct from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Flynn said one of the ultimate goals of Nightingale is to build a ‘giant network of Realms and portals’, so Inflexion is a big believer in cooperative multiplayer, which currently allows up to six players to be in the same party. That’s why the developers have created the so-called Watch, a shared social space inspired by Destiny’s Tower where players can meet up with up to 30 players before joining a party and venturing forth.
Moreover, there’s also a form of asynchronous multiplayer where you can gift friends your Realm Card, allowing them to join the server even when you’re offline. Speaking of servers, they’ll all be dedicated servers hosted by Inflexion.
Still, the game is absolutely playable solo for those who wish to be alone in their exploration of the Realms. On that note, each Realm has a power number associated with it, and players can control that number with the Realm cards and the chosen difficulty setting. Players also have a Gear Score, which, like in other games, expresses the total power of the gear you’re equipping. Nightingale is balanced around players having a Gear Score equivalent to the Realm Power. Of course, they are free to try more or less challenging Realms, depending on their play style.
Flynn believes the Realms are the single element the studio is most proud of due to how beautiful and varied they are. There are three biomes at launch: desert, forest, and swamp, each with a different ‘survival pressure’. One of the most unique mechanics is that of the Realm Cards, which controls how players select their next world. The cards allow them to fine-tune which kind of Realm they’d like to find within the set of procedurally generated environments.
There are three Realm Card types: Biomes, Major, and Minor. The first is self-explanatory. The second sets the Realm Power and also tweaks the theme of the world, such as ‘The Hunt’ or ‘The Antiquarian’. The last changes variables such as abilities, weather, resources, or even gravity. Minor Cards are actually now inserted into something called Realmic Transmuter, which can be found in the Realm itself. These Transmuters are usually found on top of Fae towers (but they can also be crafted in your estate), and the changes made there instantly affect the whole Realm. Right now, every Minor Card you add replaces the previous one, but the developers want to change this at some point during the early access so that there can be multiple Minor Cards active at once.
The survival elements are rather typical, as Inflexion specifically didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. Notably, various NPCs can be recruited to assist with gathering, crafting, and combat. There is a trait system similar to Valheim, where certain benches and augmentations connect if they are close enough to each other.
The main activity will be hunting creatures, of which there are Fabled versions that drop unique materials. For the late game, Nightingale offers Apex Hunts, where Realmwalkers band together to defeat massive predators, and Vaults and Bunkers, combat-heavy dungeons with unique challenges and rewards. The Vaults and Bunkers are randomized as well.
Lastly, Flynn shared some features and improvements already planned for the game. Some of these come from the community, such as:
- Queued crafting
- Crafting from storage
- User Interface updates
- More robust NPC controls
Of course, Inflexion will also be adding new Biomes, new Realm Cards, new Apex creatures, new weapons and tools, and more to Nightingale over time. Look forward to an exclusive interview with the developers going live later this week.
