Do you want to review the most exciting, most anticipated, and most erm...Victorian... survival game of the year? You're in luck.
You may have already seen our Nightingale first impressions and hot takes bounty, for which we're only after a few sentences per submission. For this bounty, we're looking for a deeper dive. As such, we're leaving this bounty open until March 15. Feel free to enter anytime between now and then, but make sure you get at least 20 hours of gameplay under your belt first.
A good review should be honest, well-researched, constructive, and critical. You don't need to spend long describing the features, but you do need to evaluate and appraise them, as well as the game as a whole. That said, Nightingale is currently in early access, so keep that in mind throughout your review.
We're looking for between 400 and 1,200 words in your review.
We'd also love to see some video entries (three minutes minimum).
If you feel you haven't properly explored an aspect of Nightingale, we'd prefer you acknowledged that and left it out.
You're more than welcome to add screenshots to supplement your review, but do follow the image-submission guidelines below.
Update14/03: We've extended this bounty by a week and a half to allow for more submissions.
already paid
$60 / 100
Reward details
This reward closed to entries at 11:16am on March 26, 2024 but you can still reply, react, and join the conversation below! If you’d like to enter other rewards which are still open, click here.
Phew, made it before the deadline! I will definitely do another one after more gameplay when I can comment on more aspects of the game from a newbie's point of view. It's my first game review video I hope you like it :)
From Sky Castles to Survival: A Comprehensive Review of Nightingale's Wonders
After dedicating 125 hours to Nightingale, I feel confident enough to share my thoughts and experiences about this project. This time, instead of my usual deep dive into every game aspect, I'll focus more on the emotional and experiential side.
The Game at a Glance
Firstly, for those unfamiliar, Nightingale is a survival exploration crafting game, developed by Inflexion Games. Its Victorian, or 'Gaslamp Fantasy' setting, is akin to a fusion of Agatha Christie’s "Oriental Express" with elements of the Wild West (thanks to its Desert Biome), closely resembling the world of the Dishonored series.
The game supports both solo and co-op play, but lacks an offline mode; every realm is server-stored. These Realms are procedurally generated worlds, each spanning about 8-10 square kilometers, with over 20,000 variations promised by the developers (source). For more on this, check out my guide to their realm system.
The crafting system is twisted. It's not just about combining materials; you can modify workbenches or even entire realms to affect the items you produce, a paradise for those who love to experiment with new combinations. Don’t worry if this isn’t your cup of tea; Reddit with an army of theorycrafters is already filling up with helpful guides and spreadsheets.
Building Mechanics
Regarding building mechanics, my advice is to withhold early judgments. Like many, initially, I compared it to Valheim and felt let down. However, as I unlocked more blueprints and grasped the system's nuances, it began to really impress me. Just look at my Sky Castle preview.
Currently, Nightingale is in early access, available only on PC (Steam and Epic). The game's launch was remarkably smooth; I encountered only one major issue, which was quickly resolved. With consistent updates and hotfixes, the developers are clearly committed to the game’s progress. Technically, it runs on Unreal Engine 5, incorporating features like lumens and dynamic lighting. The textures are well-executed, and I rarely experienced severe FPS drops, even on my gimmick RTX3070 laptop GPU.
Community and Interaction
But the most vital aspect of Nightingale is its community. Although fully playable solo, the game fosters player interaction beautifully. For instance, there was a time I was in trouble, and the Players Discord community organized a rescue mission (link). Additionally, one of our JA members @stevietdork even built a community Portal city (link). These kinds of communal efforts are rare in other games. The lore and plot ingeniously build a foundation for a robust community, promoting (or even dragging you into) a role-play atmosphere where cooperation and sharing are key to overcoming challenges.
Currently, the game lacks direct competitive play (PVP), which likely attracts players with specific worldviews and mindsets.
L'Épilogue
Priced at €28.99, Nightingale is worth every cent. I recommend it to fans of exploration, crafting, and building games. You're sure to relish the hours spent exploring the Fae Realms and constructing your base or even an entire city for fellow Realmwalkers.
Nightingale is an interesting game for me to review. I don’t usually play survival crafting games. A lot of players enjoy the freedom and creativity to go out into a survival virtual world and craft their story. I prefer a more guided and structured approach with clear signposted goals and targets to achieve. With Nightingale being an open world survival crafting game, why then am I here, 35 hours of gametime later with no plans to drop the game, and eager to explore into the end game?
Nightingale is an early access title, with many improvements and changes to come. This review should be taken in that context to help you decide if you should pick up the game now or wait to see how it develops and improves from here.
The launch trailer for Nightingale draws you in with an impressive, dreamy world full of large exotic architectural structures, colourful environments, and giant mystical creatures. Unfortunately for most of the 35 hours I have played so far this has not been my experience. While it has its moments, Nightingale for the most part is a slow-paced relaxing game both in gameplay activities and in narrative pace. It’s only as I am reaching the later game that it has started to deliver on the visual and content experience I imagined off the back of the trailer.
That’s not to say the graphics aren’t impressive. I am running at max settings for all graphics and display options. The game runs on Unreal engine 5.2 and makes use of the engines nanite and lumen technology for impressive, detailed objects at any distance, along with accurate real time lighting and shadows that these two technologies combine to offer. The environments in the game are technically impressive. In the forest biome for example, birds and wildlife fly about in large numbers, while grass draws deep into the distance and trees have high amounts of detail.
Nightingale starts with a long tutorial that introduces you
to one of the games key, unique concepts, that of realm diving. This takes the
forms of portals where cards are combined to procedurally generate a unique realm
to dive into and explore. Once you complete the tutorial you arrive at the
abeyance realm. This is your home world where you set about building your
permanent base.
While you get to choose some nice stylised Victorian steampunk clothing
options in the character creator, you are quickly making some bland generic clothes
to “upgrade” to along with your basic generic wooden and stone home. This is
the first sign in the game the unique visuals and art style are not going to be
here in the early game, at least not when it comes to your own home, clothing
and tools. While this is eventually delivered on, it takes time to unlock and arrive
at through the traditional survival crafting grind.
It’s from this realm, you use the cards on a portal to go on
your adventure and realm dive into other unique locations. This essentially
boils down to two cards types. A biome card of forest, desert, or swamp, and a
major card which in effect sets the difficulty level of the realm by altering the
dangers, creatures and puzzles you will encounter. Some additional visual
styling and atmosphere such as an impressive skybox and moody lighting are also
set based on the major card chosen. Inside each realm you can also play a minor
card. These are fun twists that alter different aspects of the world, such as change
all trees to drop meat instead of wood, permanent night sky with a blood moon
and more aggressive creatures, or reduced gravity. There is a large amount of
these cards on offer, giving a good variety and unique changes to each realm
when used.
Within these procedurally generated realms, as well as exploring the world and gathering resource for crafting, a range of points of interest are on offer such as puzzles to solve, sites to defend and agility challenges amongst others.
While this is an open world survival crafting game, there is also a quest log that signposts you through the games content and progression. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game and has been one of the key things that has encouraged me stick with it and enjoy it. While I would have dropped other survival crafting games in the early game, in Nightingale I have always had multiple signposted goals to achieve that offered just enough info for me to be able to progress, while not giving too much away to me. Leaving me to explore and discover the various aspects of the game, the upgrades and builds needed to achieve the goal.
One of these repeated goals is to unlock one of the many sites of power found in your abeyance realm. These are gated by gear score, which when completed, unlock a new major card of higher difficulty. This is the games central content gating and progression system. The towers act as combat heavy dungeons and can offer some rewarding, tense, and challenging gameplay. A nice change of pace from the serene and satisfying crafting systems.
It's through completing these sites that the game begins to slowly open up and deliver on it’s trailer. Magical augments begin to be made accessible through the different realms vendors which can be tied to weapons, along with an increase in the variety of tools and weapons available. This leads to some interesting strategic combat choices depending on the enemies and situations being faced. The variety of enemies and beings found in the realms become increasingly varied, unique, fantastical, and impressive. Then finally the large, impressive beings we saw in the trailer make an appearance towards the end game.
Combined with you ever improving your crafting benches, home
improvements and new architectural styles it’s here where the game begins to
shine and show it’s best. This is where I am in my journey in the game
following my 35 hours. The games systems are coming together, the unique style and
features of the game are in full swing, yet there are more objectives to complete,
more progression to be made and much more content to come.
When the end game is finally reached, a location I have read about called the watch opens. This is a player hub lobby, where groups of 6 can party up and go off and tackle a procedurally generated dungeon known as a vault. While you can recruit an NPC follower through the game or play with friends, I can’t help but think this content should be made available in some form in the early game, for example, optionally matchmaking into a group at the entrance to a site of power. That said it offers a tantalising target to eventually reach as a reward.
Throughout the game it’s this tempting hint of what’s to come later that keeps you progressing, contributing to the enjoyment and reward the game offers. To conclude though I am reminded of the often repeated quote “Life is a journey, not a destination”. It’s this long journey through the game that brings the enjoyment, not what there is to do and see once you get there.
Im glad you put a long time on this one to give us time to experience more of the game. Will have a go at writing one, but holding off till close to the deadline.
That's amazing, thank you so much! I'll get some more game time in and hopefully be able to cover more topics from the list. Really want to make a video entry for this, but didn't have time so far. Now with that FFXIV raid clear out of the way I got my Saturday editing time back 🎉
