It’s been a pretty good year for survival games so far. Less than two months into 2024, not only did we have Palworld surpass all expectations and become one of the biggest releases in years, but Nightingale entered Early Access within days, and No 》 and other old games entered the early access version within a few days. Man’s Sky, Rust, and Valheim continue to thrive. Despite the fierce competition, Aaryn Flynn, CEO of Nightingale developer Inflexion Games, believes the pool is big enough to accommodate everyone.
“I’ve said it to a few people,” Flynn told me, “one of the things that stands out about survival production is that there’s no set template right now. For shooters, for a long time it was ‘capture the flag’ ” and then came Battle Royale, which became the template. There was no such thing with Survival Crafting – within a month you had a Pokemon-style capture game where you could automate your base with their jobs, becoming a really cool Fantasy Action-Adventure Game You build with voxels in our Victorian fantasy game where you jump through portals in first-person combat.”
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When asked specifically about Palworld and whether the Nightingale team had learned anything or had any ideas from Pocketpair’s failed game, Flynn praised the team and expressed his personal uncertainty about Palworld’s originality issues.
“Good for them. This is the third or fourth game they’ve released, so obviously they’ve been taking lessons from games like Craftopia and incorporating them into it. I can’t answer questions about whether the game violates Any questions stipulating someone else’s IP – I’m not an expert [on] That – but as long as it can exist and someone smarter than me can figure this stuff out, that’s great! This is a diverse genre. “
The issue of oversaturation is a core problem in video games, especially during periods of massive game release. Last year alone we saw blockbusters like Elden Ring, Armored Core 6, and Baldur’s Gate 3, and these games tend to get pushed in between these successes, from indie games to triple-A full-length games. Crushed.
Genre saturation too! Too many popular games in the same genre can lead to a lack of curious players willing to jump into your new game, and when genres like FPS games hit a slump, you can see fast hits like The Finals emerge and Provide entertainment to players. A hungry audience. There are many popular survival crafting games out there – many of which retain dedicated player bases.
Despite the dire times we’re currently in when it comes to video game development, Flynn remains confident, citing the lack of set templates within the survival genre that he previously mentioned. “I hope fans don’t really make choices along these lines. Some work for them and some don’t, and that’s fine. There’s room for a variety of different survival crafting games in this genre.” To its credit, there are The data suggests that Nightingale does have enough interest to merit such a stance, as it currently sits at No. 8 on the Steam wishlist.
It also helps that the game is cool too! If you want to know why, you can check out our Nightingale preview here!