Two things I can't ever seem to get enough of are historical fantasy and crafting survival games—exactly the combo that a group of former BioWare developers are working on at Inflexion Games. The studio has just announced its first game Nightingale with a gameplay trailer during The Game Awards and its plans to launch in early access next year. Good heavens, it's full of wonderfully outlandish outfits and bizzare Fae enemies too.
Nightingale is a fantasy crafting game about portals to dangerous alternate realms with the Victorian flair of rifles and bowler hats and gas lanterns and all. Inflexion also call it a "shared world," which I take to mean that we'll be able to host sessions for a certain number of co-op pals to join.
"Thrown into a labyrinth of fantastical and perilous worlds in the wake of a magical cataclysm, players must venture through mystical portals to explore increasingly dangerous realms, in search of the last haven of humanity, Nightingale," Inflexion Games says.
The reveal trailer down here shows off just how freaky some of the monsters in these other realms will be: giant beasts that might be dinosaurs, actual humanoid giants, and those horrific alien-faced creatures with bat wings. I imagine those are the Fae.
Don't worry, all that supernatural stuff doesn't mean you're getting away without felling some trees. By crafting survival law, there do appear to be crafted axes and trees to chop.
Nightingale is checking off all those usual crafting game boxes and then some, by the looks of it. As it goes in survival games, Nightingale will be touring us through various biomes like forests, swamps, and deserts. Inflexion Games says that there will be a building system for creating farms and estates, crafting gear and tools and weapons, and combat—all in solo or shared worlds.
It's always the building that catches my attention, and Nightingale certainly has my ear with the prospect of some cute provincial farms that will probably get smashed up by fantastical enemies.
Don't miss the audacious outfits on these characters either. So help me I will be stomping around in that pink ensemble. I don't care what kind of Fae I have to defeat or what complex crafting station I may have to build on order to do so.
Nightingale will enter early access in 2022, Inflexion Games says, with closed testing beginning "in the coming months". You can sign up for that over on Nightingale's website.
"The realms of Nightingale are vast and have many secrets to uncover, and we cannot wait for players to start discovering them," says Inflexion CEO and former BioWare GM Aaryn Flynn. Previously called Improbable Canada, Inflexion Games was formed back in 2018 by a group of former BioWare members and has now grown to a team of over 100 developers.
Here are a few more shiny screenshots from the reveal trailer:
