Nightingale Impressions: An incredible world with early access problems

If you’re a fan of survival and crafting, 2024 has been an absolute treat so far. We already had Wrapped up And Palworldand a new early access contender has just emerged: nightingale. nightingale does not have a strong and immediate hook PalworldIt also doesn’t have some of the quality of life features available in Wrapped up. What this game really has is an impeccable sense of style and art direction, and that’s the lifeline that I clung to during my first brutal hours with the game.

nightingale mixes the kind of environments you’d expect from a survival game – verdant forests, mysterious deserts and swampy swamps – with Victorian aesthetics, high fantasy and fairies. I am a realm shifter and have made a pact with a fairy leader named Puck. Something called Pale, a space between worlds, enveloped the earth and froze it. Some Realmwalkers were able to escape through portals, but then became lost in an unknown realm. The player is one of these refugees; I get to pick and choose the details of her early life and upbringing before everything went apocalyptic.

Luckily I have a little fairy to help me. nightingale It starts with a tutorial in which Puck teaches me how to build, craft, find shelter, and kill beasts. I jump from a forest to a desert to a swamp and enjoy some of the sights that the procedurally generated areas have to offer. The most important thing I learn is Realm cards that fit into a strange machine that looks like an old movie projector. This allows me to jump to new locations and change everything from the biome I arrive in to the danger I can expect.

Image: Inflection games

It is important to note this nightingale Currently, players are required to be online, even for solo play. More than once I’ve gotten into trouble only to have the connection disconnected or server issues on the game site. It’s a major criticism that the fan base has against the game’s release, and if you read the reviews, it’s one of the main reasons the game received a “Mixed” rating on Steam. Developer Inflexion Games is working on an offline modebut at the moment I’m at the mercy of the game’s servers. nightingale is a Steam Early Access game, meaning some of these issues will likely be fixed before the release of 1.0.

When things actually work and I can commit to it nightingaleI immediately start coming across things that evoke a sense of awe. For example, I get frightened when a huge, tree-like creature moves along spindly branches. As I watch intently, the thing stops and pours out a pile of sticks, which prove useful in making my first set of tools. In a forest realm I encounter a huge spectral elk that sparkles with astral power.

Each realm is littered with strange structures, some of which exist in bubbles with no gravity. Some of the buildings I find appear man-made, while others seem alien and strange. I find strange-looking growths that glow with great power from within, or artifacts of the old world that have been left behind and overgrown. nightingale oozes style; Even the almost obligatory addition of a glider has been jazzed up a bit and I’m using a Mary Poppins style umbrella instead.

All these virtues are urgently needed because the first part of it nightingale Leaving the tutorial is slow and tedious. I had to start building a base, preparing workbenches, and establishing a solid food supply. These are all standard survival tasks, and Inflexion Games hasn’t quite managed to make them feel good. Take, for example, cutting down a tree, one of the most basic survival activities of all. I hack at the trunk, becoming more splintered with each swing until it shakes away from the stump and bounces in place before exploding into resources. If you compare it to a game like Sons of the forest or Valheimwhere felling a tree results in a real display of physics, where the trunk tips over and falls, it’s not enough.

Image: Inflection games

It feels like a small thing, but nightingale sucks with these little problems. When you hit a rock with a pickaxe, it explodes outward, throwing resources in; The awkward animations continually destroy the beautiful immersion created by the game’s environment and design. I also constantly had little quality of life issues, like the fact that my crossbow wouldn’t auto-reload. An extra click doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when I’m kiting a pack of wolves it can mean the difference between life and death.

Character creation is another process that doesn’t feel quite right. When creating a character, I was greeted with pre-made faces to use as a starting template, most of which were lumpy and strange. Admittedly, I’d rather have a characterful face that looks like it was carved out of a ham rather than a smooth and perfect doll face… but it takes a bit of playing with levers and tweaking to create a photogenic protagonist.

The first few hours after the tutorial are a bit slow and I can see players dropping out at this stage – but once I got my base set up properly and started diving into new areas to explore and loot, nightingale became really fascinating. This game is off to a slow start and there are more than a few issues to work out in Early Access, but the art style and direction help a lot in keeping me playing. I’m excited to see more of this nightingale and continue to immerse yourself in new worlds, even if it’s an uphill battle to get to the good parts.