Gorgeous 2024 survival game launches huge, story-led update leaning into its fantasy world

The launch of Nightingale saw it reach a peak of almost 50,000 concurrent players; no small achievement for the debut release from developer Inflexion Games. Yet, despite its distinctive ‘gaslamp fantasy’ world, the new survival game struggled to maintain an audience in a busy year packed with the likes of Palworld, Enshrouded, Soulmask, and Once Human. Returning to the drawing board, the studio has been hard at work on the game’s grand reintroduction – Nightingale: Realms Rebuilt. Ahead of its launch, I spoke with CEO Aaryn Flynn and head of production Leah Summers about the future of the game.

“We got some things wrong at the February launch,” Flynn admits. Among the issues the Nightingale team is addressing in Realms Rebuilt are a lack of structure in its campaign and core progression, restrictive build limits, and repetitive boss battles. Now, when you jump into the new update, you’ll have a core series of handcrafted realms to explore that push a more directed story, guided by the goat-masked Puck, along with all-new and more engaging enemy encounters, an improved onboarding experience, revamped progression, and the more flexible, substantial build limits you’d expect of the best survival games.

A big lesson learned from the launch is to really emphasize the game’s particular style, that so-called gaslamp fantasy design. For how many new games the survival crafting genre has seen in 2024, each of them offers a very distinctive setting, and Nightingale’s is perhaps one of the most striking. Yet Flynn says the team didn’t anticipate just how popular the genre would become this year, and how crucial that setting would be to standing out from the pack.

“I think this goes back to some of the mistakes that I certainly made, which is that recognizing that the uniqueness of Nightingale is powerful and should be brought forward. It should be deeper and broader, and you should feel it more in the game,” he remarks. “When you play Palworld, Enshrouded, Sons of the Forest – just as a few examples – those games really own their setting and we weren’t doing so much of that.”

“We felt a little more old-school survival crafting and that was a great foundation for mechanics,” Flynn continues, “but a lot of players have played that now and they’re looking for that setting that immerses them more. So that’s where we are now, doing our best with the story realms.” Inflexion is certainly looking to lean more into how fun and fantastical its setting is, and to embrace the sillier aspects, such as a cat in a fancy Victorian hat.

That push extends to elements such as the building. Along with the dramatic increase to Nightingale build limits, which in particular enable much bigger single structures than were possible before, Realms Rebuilt also introduces a new Regency era tileset to further expand your options for creativity. “We knew that there was a limit [at launch] and that people would hit it,” Summers says, “we just weren’t sure how painful that would be. Then we started to see the community building these big megastructures. I think our engineering team did a great job getting us to the new limits.”

The opening hours have also had a hefty rework. While Nightingale launched with a rather robust tutorial system, it ended up feeling fairly dry, focusing on pure mechanics instead of drawing you into its world and lore. “We don’t need to spend time telling you how to make a campfire,” Summers says. “We were probably 20% hooking you in, 80% tutorializing [at launch],” Flynn adds, “now we’re at 80% hooking and 20% tutorializing.”

“We’ve made a couple of adjustments – some cleaner pop-ups and notifications, that kind of thing,” he continues. “It’s not as intrusive. You picked up this game because you were interested in playing a gaslamp Victorian fantasy game, let’s make sure you feel that as soon as you possibly can.” It’s certainly a setting that catches the eye, so I’m looking forward to seeing how Realms Rebuilt focuses on truly fulfilling that promise.

Beyond the launch of Realms Rebuilt, however, what does the future look like for Nightingale? “We are actively planning for our next update,” Summers teases. “We’re thinking about new stories, new characters, new realms and experiences – hopefully soon. We’re full steam ahead on our side.” Flynn chimes in to add that the team is planning to showcase new biomes and a creative mode for builders.

“Biomes are really the foundation of a good survival crafting experience because players understand what the survival challenge will be. ‘It’s going to be hot; it’s going to be cold; okay, I’m going to try and solve that.’ It creates really fun goals as you solve puzzles and take on those challenges.”

In closing, I ask how the team feels about the state of survival games in 2024 – as an ARPG fan, I’m used to the audience rotating periodically between games with each update, and that feels like it’s something we’re seeing in the survival space too. “Totally, I think that’s something that’s a bit different about survival crafting games,” Flynn responds, “because they’re not really pure ‘live service’ games the way a Fortnite or an Apex or a Dota is.”

“I think people will go between them and say, ‘Here’s a new update, I’m going to try this out,’ and that’s great for us – it’s great for everybody. I hope survival crafting games stay that way.” He nods to a comment from Palworld community manager ‘Bucky’ saying that player fluctuations as updates come and go are normal and aren’t worth arguing about. That flexibility, Flynn says, “is a good thing about this little corner of the industry, and it’s probably something that the game industry has to get better at and be more comfortable with as it evolves.”

“Absolutely,” Summers reiterates. “We’re all fans of survival games here, we love playing all the games, and it’s great to see everybody evolving. We want to take lessons, whether it’s from our own players giving us feedback or seeing other things, and contribute to that. So I think that plays a lot into how we think about Nightingale.”

The Nightingale Realms Rebuilt update launches Thursday September 12 as a free update for all players. You can buy the game for $29.99 / £24.99. If you’re curious to see what Realms Rebuilt has to offer, head here to take a look.

Alternatively, we’ve got even more of the best crafting games for anyone that loves to create, along with the best co-op games if you’re after something you can enjoy with friends.

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