Inflexion Games are closing their UK office, laying off staff and restructuring their main Canadian studio after failing to find commercial success with their Victorian fantasy survival game Nightingale. Reportedly, at least 22 people have been let go.
]]>Tomorrow will see the release of Nightingale's Realms Rebuilt update, which hopes to revive the ailing Early Access gaslamp survival craft 'em up. It's aiming to do that with a new handcrafted campaign, which now sits alongside the procedural worlds already present, along with new weapons, spells, boss battles, dungeons and much more, as the developers outlined yesterday in a new blog post.
]]>Baroque wilderness-builder Nightingale has not been doing brilliantly since Ed Thorn described the launch early access version as "a numbers grind disguised as a gaslamp survival game". We had moderately high hopes for it before the early access release - I personally enjoy the fairytale setting, with its pop-up Pucks and magic umbrellas, but I also think I've raised enough hovels on procedurally generated maps for one lifetime. Still, I'd quite like it to come good, if only so I can justify op-eds about Lewis Carroll, and I'm somewhat encouraged by what I've heard of the game's forthcoming Realms Rebuilt update.
]]>Having played Nightingale a bunch for early access review, I wasn't entirely convinced by its mixture of survival and Destiny-esque power level grind. I also wasn't too keen on its slew of bugs and tricksy interface. Still, the devs are hard at work fixing things, as the latest patch squashes major crashes, material losses when building, and further improves the UI.
]]>Not long ago, a few of us from the RPS Treehouse wandered through first-person survival 'em up Nightingale with its boss Aaryn Flynn, and then had it out about the game's crafting menus. I was one of the folks who wasn't so hot on what we'd played, and I'd hoped that the early access version would prove me wrong.
Alas, I am sad to report that I still do not like Nightingale. From what I've played so far, the game is an awkward marriage of survival game and live service loot grind, which makes you feel divorced from the very world you inhabit.
]]>Sometimes I wonder whether every genre fantasy RPG or RPG-inflected game is essentially a journey towards the Big City. Most such games start you off on the periphery of the world, out in the sleepy and/or brutish hamlets of FirstActShire, Chosen One County, and send you on a loose quest towards the cosmopolitan centre, where you'll typically learn about the ultimate villain of the piece, gain access to the juiciest concentration of shops, crafting facilities and quest-givers, and glean some hint at the location of the endgame dungeon. Sometimes the quest takes days of playtime, as in Baldur's Gate 3. Sometimes it takes less than an hour, as in the original Destiny. It's a common-enough device that when an RPG starts you off in the Big City, like Dragon Age 2, or creatively "provincialises" the Big City, like Roadwarden, I feel slightly unnerved.
]]>Nightingale’s dapper cast of cross-dimensional pathfinders are right about one thing: realmwalking is dangerous business. Attempt to tele-portal between realities on the Steam Deck, for instance, and you may find yourself trapped in the Stygian void, naught but a frozen loading screen tip for company and suspended hopelessly for all eternity. Or until you hold down the power button.
This crashing tendency alone means that while Nightingale can technically run on the Steam Deck, even without resorting to rock-bottom graphics settings, the current early access build isn’t yet ready for regular handheld play. That’s nothing developers Inflexion Games won’t tell you themselves – they’re "not considering [the Deck] officially supported at launch," after all – but if you were thinking of giving this gaslamp fantasy survival sim a portable whirl, you might want to let that call to adventure go unanswered.
]]>Credit to Nightingale, I’ve been enjoying the early access form of Inflexion’s gaslamp fantasy survival crafter a fair bit more than I did its older stress test build. The UI is cleaner and tighter, and I’ve had more space to explore (and enjoy) the mysterious nooks of its magic 'n' moustaches world. There’s potential here, but it’s very much the raw kind, especially when performance needs as much work as it does.
Besides relying on upscalers like DLSS for truly smooth running, Nightingale currently has a serious stuttering problem, and bumping into an ugly graphical artefact or even a hard crash is worryingly common. I’ve pulled together an optimised settings guide (down below) so that you don’t need to drop the visual quality lower than is strictly necessary, but do keep in mind that this is early access with emphasis on the early.
]]>After launching Nightingale into early access on Tuesday, developers Inflexion Games (led by former BioWare CEO Aaryn Flynn) have quickly realised a big miscalculation: lots of players want an offline mode. The gaslamp fantasy survival game requires you be online even if you want to play by yourself, which dovetailed poorly with server issues at launch to frustrate folks. Inflexion say that early in development they needed to make a choice between focusing on co-op or offline first, and now think they made the wrong call. They plan to remedy this, but it's not yet clear when they'll actually add an offline mode.
]]>Wondering how to get Stone Blocks in Nightingale? When it's time to get started building your base in Nightingale, you're going to need a few basic building materials. Stone Blocks are key components for a good number of the structures on your crafting list, and while obtaining these chunks is a simple affair, you might still feel a bit lost if you've only just spawned in your Abeyance Realm at the very start of the game.
We've got all the info you need if this is the case. Read on to learn how to gather Stone Blocks and get started crafting.
]]>Want to know how to fix a Sprained Ankle or Broken Leg in Nightingale? Nightingale is a survival crafting game that offers many challenges that must be surmounted in order to stay alive within the Faewilds. As you traverse these wild Fae lands, there's a good chance that you might suffer the effects of a Sprained Ankle or a Broken Leg.
Don't despair and hop along in distress! See below for our full rundown of these conditions, as well as how to fix a Sprained Ankle or Broken Leg in Nightingale.
]]>Want to know how to recruit Survivors in Nightingale? Survivors are NPCs that you can acquire in Nightingale to help you at your base and gather materials. These loyal recruits will also lend a hand in combat and can be a useful deterrent against Bound enemies.
Although these fellow Realmwalkers can occasionally get in your way, they are valuable assets to accrue, especially early on in a Nightingale game and if you are playing solo, rather than multiplayer. Below, we've detailed how to find these recruitable NPCs in Nightingale and how to add them to your party.
]]>Want to know how to cook in Nightingale? As with most survival crafting games, knowing how to cook can quite literally mean life or death in Nightingale. Campfires not only provide warmth and refuge within the wilderness but they can also be used to make Healing Salves and cook ingredients from hunting, fishing and gathering.
]]>Wondering how to destroy and move structures in Nightingale? If you've played any survival game, you're probably accustomed to building a structure only to unfortunately realise a few hours later that you need to tear it down for a variety of reasons, be it an overly crowded base, limited resources, or simple aesthetics. Nightingale is no exception, and you'll demolish excess structures or change their location on more than one occasion while cultivating your plot of land in the Faewilds.
Destroying and moving structures isn't a difficult process at all, but it can feel somewhat tricky at first considering that Nightingale's UI offers a few different options for doing this. Read on for the full details.
]]>Want to know how to fast travel in Nightingale? Much of Nightingale centres around the free exploration within the different Fae Realms. With so many combinations of Realm Cards available, it's easy to get lost and separated from your home realm, or 'Respite Realm' as it's otherwise called.
]]>Looking play Nightingale multiplayer? If there's one thing better than adventuring through the Fae Realms, it's doing so with friends. Nightingale is a survival crafting game set amidst mysterium and Victorian-era fashion. Along the way, you'll encounter mythical beasts that get more and more ferocious as you delve further from your starting realm.
]]>Wondering how to get Essence in Nightingale? Described as a "fundamental magick" in Nightingale, Essence is an essential resource used as both a currency and a means of upgrading and repairing gear. It's important to start gathering Essence as soon as possible, but Nightingale doesn't entirely say very much about the different types of Essence available to players, nor which items yield the greatest amount of Essence.
Luckily for you, intrepid Realmwalker, we've broken down the details below. Read on for both an explanation of the different types of Essence as well as strategies for utilising Essence and stockpiling it in Nightingale's early game.
]]>Curious about the best starting biome in Nightingale? Nightingale sends its Victorian-era heroes into a wide variety of Fae backdrops infused with bizarre magic and all manner of mysterious creatures, and at the very start of the game, players will need to make an important choice regarding their starting biome. Would you rather begin your quest in a Forest, a Desert, or a Swamp?
All of these environments present their own set of challenges and rewards to a fresh Realmswalker, and while you'll get the chance to visit all three during your Realm-hopping quest, it's important to consider which to begin in. Read on for a full rundown on the best starting biome in Nightingale.
]]>Before founding Inflexion in 2021, Aaryn Flynn worked at BioWare. He's got credits on some of the studio's best-loved games, from Baldur's Gate 2 through Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic to Dragon Age: Origins and the Mass Effect trilogy. He was BioWare's general manager for several years, but left the company in 2017 following the release of the less-regarded Mass Effect: Andromeda. New survival sim Nightingale is his first early access project, and it's certainly been a learning experience, with Flynn obliged to rethink many of the things he learned about gamedev during his BioWare days. Speaking to me ahead of Nightingale's launch, Flynn talked about the difficulty of making headway as a new developer in an industry where the most successful competing live service titles have effectively become part of the landscape - indeed, a force of "gravity".
]]>Inflexion's fantasy survival sim Nightingale releases into Steam early access today. Our pre-launch impressions? Well, the procedurally generated landscapes are engrossing, a blend of British fairytale influences with many a hushed forest, spidery swamp and tempting ruin. We're also pretty keen as a team on the game's Realm cards system, which lets you shape those fairytale worlds both before and after you portal into them. But we were less enthralled by HUD and user interface elements such as the crafting menus and hotbar, which we found ornate and circuitous to the point of confusing.
Speaking to me after our co-op hands-on - in which guides writer Kiera made friends with a tree monster only for somebody to shoot it - Inflexion's CEO Aaryn Flynn explained a bit about how the game will evolve during its early access period, which Inflexion estimate will last 9-12 months. Thankfully, it sounds like fine-tuning the UI is a priority, though Flynn is "cautious" about committing to a full-blown roadmap.
]]>Among the things I like bestest about Inflexion's alt-Victorian fantasy survival game Nightingale is its Realm cards mechanic, whereby you generate and modify worlds by playing Major and Minor cards. Major cards are used at portals to conjure up a particular biome or world type and set the difficulty, including an approximate choice of resident NPC factions, local fauna and resources. Minor cards are played within worlds to mess with their workings. You can lower the gravity for optimal umbrella gliding conditions, alter the weather or summon a Blood Moon (sorry, Zelda) that reduces your max health.
]]>By now you'll probably have read quite a bit about our preview adventures in Inflexion Games' upcoming fantasy survival adventure Nightingale - including our slightly raucous attempts to interview CEO Aaryn Flynn while instant KO-ing tree monsters and abusing our supplies of ice bullets. But outside this guided co-op session, several members of the RPS Treehouse were playing it on their lonesome last week, too, getting to grips with Nightingale's particular flavour of sticks-and-stones crafting, cooking up meat and berry wraps to keep ourselves fed, and generally being cajoled and maybe even lightly seduced by our fae Shakespearean guide, Puck.
With so many folks playing it - some diehard survival heads and others who are mostly just glad to be having a break from Palworld for a spell - it quickly became apparent that lots of us had quite different takes on how Nightingale worked as a craft 'em up. I swear, I don't think our RPS Slack chat has ever seen such passionate discussions about UI layouts and hotkey assignments, so we thought it might be fun (and useful) to try and distil some of those thoughts for you. Will Nightingale succeed in capturing survival newcomers with its peculiar blend of gaslamp tea leaves, or will it chaff like a Victorian corset for the survival hardcore? Join us as we discuss some of its finer points below.
]]>Twas brillig, and the RPS editors did gyre and gimble in the wabe: all mimsy were the studio executives, and the guides writers outgrabe. If you’re still reading, congratulations, you’ve either got a dangerously high tolerance for bad literary jokes or you’re really eager to hear about Nightingale, the new survival sim from Inflexion, which launches into early access on 20th February. A quick recap on Nightingale, in case you missed our early access preview today: it's a strongly British-influenced "gaslamp fantasy" experience in which players travel alone or in groups between procedurally generated fairy realms using magic portals. You can build bases in each Realm, go on story quests and hunt the wildlife for crafting materials.
Last week, RPS adventurers Edders, Kiera, Jeremy, Ollie and myself had a chance to play co-op with Aaryn Flynn, Inflexion’s CEO and former general manager at BioWare, while chatting to him about the game over Discord. The resulting, not entirely planned group interview lasted two hours and consisted mostly of people yelling at each other about ice ammo and tree monsters, but we did find time for some proper Q&A. Please find below an abbreviated transcript.
]]>The major thing Inflexion's fantasy survival sim Nightingale gets right is that it makes procedural generation feel like sorcery. "Procgen" has become a ubiquitous concept in game design and especially survival game design, and I fear we've all lost sight of how magical it is to summon a landscape full of idiosyncratic flourishes from a hidden dataset. It's partly, in fairness, that many semi-randomised settings feel indistinct, smooshed together with little of the character you'd get from a "hand-made" environment and setting. Nightingale slices through the ennui in a couple of ways.
One is that this is a relatively storied and text-driven survival experience, with a self-summoning fairy narrator, Puck, who immediately buries you in Shakespearean turns of phrase as he weaves the history of a multiple-dimensional universe of "Fae" realms, roamed by creatures of Irish, English and Scottish myth and legend. I'm not sure Puck will be everybody's cup of tea as principal quest-giver and narrator - according to Inflexion boss Aaryn Flynn, some early players have struggled to make head or tail of his dialogue. But he helps conjure up an eldritch mood that sets Nightingale apart from most genre fantasies, including the Dragon Age titles Flynn once worked on at BioWare.
]]>Surprise, Nightingale heads. Developers Inflexion Games have just announced their upcoming crafting survival 'em up is arriving into early access two days ahead of schedule. Nightingale was originally set to launch on February 22nd, but will now release on February 20th on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. This is mostly to help the team nip any launch day bugs in the bud a lot sooner during the week, rather than have them lingering in the game over the weekend.
]]>Inflexion Games have announced accessibility options for Nightingale, the Victorian "gaslamp fantasy" survival game in which you wander the Fae Realms in bowler hat and ballgown, building houses and murdering eldritch wildlife. Among the wildlife you'll murder are giant spiders, which might be a dealbreaker for some people, so it's just as well Nightingale comes with an arachnophobia mode which transforms those spiders into... large, winged balloons with teeth. It also replaces decorative, non-interactive, smaller spiders and scorpions found in the game's environments with ant models. If you have a phobia for ants or menacing balloons, you're out of luck, I guess.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller, independent games that shine the brightest. They certainly make up the bulk of our most anticipated games list for 2024, which the RPS Treehouse has been feverishly putting together over the last few days. The bad news is that there are still loads of great games coming out. So come, join us, and see what's on our personal wishlists for 2024.
]]>Graham said to me earlier today, "you've got a real soft spot for chintzy big swing fantasy", and what can I say? The man is correct. Hence, though I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in open world survival crafting games like yer Valheims and what have you, I cocked my head like a dazzled magpie at the Gamescom release date trailer for Nightingale. It's the chintzy big swing fantasy (okay, Victoriana urban fantasy but it still counts) coming from Aaryn Flynn-founded studio Inflexion Games. And it's coming to an early access release near you on February 22nd next year.
]]>What is Nightingale, and when is it coming out? As you'll know if you read through our compendium of our most anticipated games of 2024, Nightingale is the game I'm most excited to play this year. It's a gaslamp fantasy survival crafting game by Inflexion Games, which tasks players with traversing an endless network of Fae realms, gathering resources, building bases, battling wonderfully - horrifically - designed creatures, and more.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>It's been a full year since ex-BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn and his new studio Inflexion announced Nightingale at The Game Awards. In case you've forgotten, Nightingale is a PvE crafting survival game with a strong Victoriana vibe, but since our chat with them back at Summer Games Fest in June, and an early access delay into the first half of 2023 to accommodate the switch to Unreal Engine 5, we haven't heard too much about the game.
I got to natter with Flynn, director of production Leah Summers, and art director Neil Thompson earlier this week, ahead of the debut of a new trailer for Nightingale at The Game Awards this evening. They filled me in on how the game's blend of fairies and reality-hopping realmwalkers has progressed over the past year - and it turns out that players have had a lot to do with it.
]]>If you’ve ever opened an umbrella and wished you could take off into the air like a fussy Edwardian governess prone to breaking into song, then you’ll probably get a kick out of the latest trailer for Nightingale. We got another glimpse at Inflexion's survival craft ‘em up during tonight's Game Awards, which showed off some of the magical enchantments you’ll get to encounter. Case in point: flying brollies. Have a watch below and tell me this don’t look like a right lark, guv’nor. What? I’m British, I can talk like Dick Van Dyke if I want.
]]>Another game which intended to release in 2022 has posted a JPG to Twitter. This time it's Nightingale, the survival game which was one of our favourite games from not-E3, which has announced a delay until "the first half of 2023."
]]>Not E3 2022 is over. It's done. I think? I mean there's a Nacon showcase in July but, I mean come on now, we can't start classing events that occur outside of June as being part of the event formerly known as E3 can we? That would be preposterous. Before long it would spool out across the entire year, absorbing every month until E3 is a constant series of video events that could happen at any point. Do you want to live in a world where Geoff Keighley is allowed to drop a World Premiere at 4PM on Christmas Day? It doesn't bear thinking about, really, does it.
]]>Nightingale is an upcoming PvE open-world survival craft 'em up by Inflexion Games, a studio led by former BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn. Imogen (RPS in peace) spoke with him earlier this year about the game's gaslamp fantasy setting and why they chose to enter the survival genre gauntlet, among many other things. At this year's Summer Geoff Fest, I caught up with Flynn for another quick chat. This time, we dug into the game's recently revealed card crafting and realm-hopping features, as well as the choices you might make along the way.
]]>Nightingale, the upcoming PvE open-world survival craft 'em up from former BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn's new studio, is getting into the card game business, according to its latest gameplay trailer shown at tonight's Summer Game Fest. Its freshly flaunted Realm Cards will be your ticket to navigating its mysterious portal network, although naturally you'll need to craft them by pulping different resources together first. Anyone spot a paper press in the new trailer below?
]]>Three months after the new studio of former BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn announced their game Nightingale, they're being bought by Tencent. The media conglomerate are buying the studio, Inflexion Games, off tech company Improbable, who say they're too busy with the metaverse nowadays. So far, the plan remains the same: launch the multiplayer Victorian fantasy craft-o-survival game into early access later this year.
]]>2022 is finally here and that can only mean one thing. We've got another year of hip new video games to look forward to, and we've been busy rustling up the ones we're most excited about. In truth, there are tons of games on the horizon that could easily sit on this list, and some of them are so close to release we can practically already see the pixels on our screens morphing into their lush, polygonal landscapes. Games like Monster Hunter Rise, God Of War and Rainbow Six Extraction. You won't find them here, but trust us, you'll be seeing a lot of them over the coming weeks.
There are always more games coming out than we have fingers to write about them, but the 2022 games we've listed below are the ones the RPS team are personally most looking forward to playing. We've got games big and small here, and they're all listed in alphabetical order. After all, release dates are increasingly slippery beasts these days. Think we've missed something? Why not take to the comments below and tell us all about it. You might just convince us to put it on our radars. But enough from me. Here are our 43 most anticipated games of 2022.
]]>Nightingale certainly isn't the sort of game I was expecting from a former BioWare developer, but I'm well excited to give it a go. Announced at The Game Awards 2021, Nightingale is a survival craft 'em up set in a fantastical, alt-history world. It's being made by Inflexion Games, a studio lead by Aaryn Flynn, former programmer and general manager at the Dragon Age and Mass Effect developers.
But don't go in expecting the sort of huge, arcing plotlines of BioWare's recent games. While Nightingale will have an over-arching narrative, it's being designed to offer up adventures that let you make your own stories. I spoke to Flynn at the end of last year to find out a little bit more about what that entails.
]]>Inflexion Games, the new studio of former BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn, announced their debut game during The Game Awards. Nightingale is a "shared world survival crafting game" set in a Victorian world of gaslamp fantasy, which will send us into magical realms to explore, build farms and communities, craft tools and weapons, and such for a fight against the Fae. Should any Fae be reading this post, allow me to stress to our readers that this is vile propaganda, and to stress to you that I would very much like to wake up with all my teeth.
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