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’ve already had Enshrouded and Palworld, and a new early access contender has just shown up: Nightingale. Nightingale doesn’t have a strong and immediate hook like Palworld, nor does it have some of the quality-of-life features available in Enshrouded. What this game does have is an immaculate sense of style and art direction, and that’s the lifeline that I’ve been clinging to through my first few brutal hours with the game.

Nightingale mixes the sort of environments you might expect from a survival game — verdant forests, mysterious deserts, and boggy swamps — with Victorian aesthetics, high fantasy, and fae. I am a Realmwalker, and I’ve entered into a pact with a fae guide called Puck. Something called the Pale, a space between worlds, enveloped and froze the Earth. Some Realmwalkers were able to flee through portals, only to be lost to some unknown realm. The player is one of these refugees; I get to choose the details of their past life and upbringing before everything went apocalyptic.

Luckily, I have a little fae guy helping me out. Nightingale starts off with a tutorial, where Puck teaches me how to build, craft, find shelter, and kill beasts. I jump from a forest to a desert to a swamp, taking in some of the sights that the procedurally generated realms have to offer. The most important thing I learn about is Realm cards, which slot into a strange machine that looks like an old movie projector. These allow me to jump to new places, modifying everything from the biome I’ll arrive in to the danger I can expect.

Image: Inflexion Games

It’s important to note that Nightingale currently requires players to be online, even for solo play. More than once I’ve gotten into a groove, only to disconnect or suffer server issues on the game’s side. It’s a major contention that the game’s launch fan base has, and upon reading reviews, it’s a large part of why the game has racked up a “Mixed” review score on Steam. Developer Inflexion Games is working on an offline mode, but for now, I find myself at the mercy of the game’s servers. Nightingale is a Steam Early Access game, which means some of these issues will likely be addressed before the 1.0 launch.

When things are actually working and I can dive into Nightingale, I immediately start to encounter things that inspire a sense of awe. For instance, I find myself startled by a giant treant-like creature dragging itself on spindly branch arms. As I watch cautiously, the thing stops and poops out a pile of sticks that prove useful in making my first set of tools. In a forest realm, I encounter a giant spectral moose that sparkles with astral power.

Each realm is dotted with strange structures, some of which exist in bubbles free of gravity. Some of the buildings I find look manmade, while others seem alien and strange. I find alien-looking growths, glowing from inside with great power, or old-world artifacts that have been left behind and overgrown. Nightingale is dripping with style; even the near-obligatory addition of a glider has been spiced up a little, and I use a Mary Poppins-style umbrella instead.

All of these virtues are sorely needed, because the first chunk of Nightingale out of the tutorial is slow and plodding. I had to start building up a base, preparing crafting benches, and getting a solid food supply going. These are all bog-standard survival tasks, and Inflexion Games hasn’t quite nailed the process of making them feel good. Take chopping down a tree, one of the most basic survival activities possible. I chop at the trunk, which becomes more splintered with each swing, until it shudders loose from the stump and bounces in place before exploding into resources. When you compare it to a game like Sons of the Forest or Valheim, where felling a tree leads to a proper display of physics where the trunk topples and falls, it falls short.

Image: Inflexion Games

It feels like a small thing, but Nightingale is lousy with these little issues. Hitting a rock with a pick causes it to explode outward into resources; the awkward animations continually chip all of the beautiful immersion built up by the game’s environments and design. I also found myself constantly running into tiny quality-of-life issues, like the fact that my crossbow wouldn’t automatically reload. An extra click doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when I’m kiting a pack of wolves, it can be the difference between life and death.

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

The first few hours after the tutorial are a little slow, and I can see players dropping out during this phase — but once I got my base properly set up and I started delving into new realms to explore and loot, Nightingale became truly intriguing. This game has a slow start and more than a few issues to work out while in early access, but the art style and direction does massive work at keeping me invested. I’m eager to see more of Nightingale and keep delving into new worlds, even if it’s a bit of an uphill battle to get to the good bits.