168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nightingale is❀ a strange game, and I’m intrigued by it. It’s a survival game in the modern sense, a term that has now come to include a much wider variety of games than its original hardcore survival roots ever intended. You don’t need to eat food to survive in Nightingale, but progress will be tough without eating special meals for the buffs they provide. You don’t need a shelter either, but your building and the furniture inside also provide different buffs. Its core mechanics without being necessary.
It’s strange because, although I understand how these mechanics work, Nightingale presents them in a new way. Clearly inspired by RPGs of old, particularly Bioware’s back catalogue (which makes sense as Inflexion Games hosts a number of ex-Bioware developers), Nightingale has a fascinating art direction. It’s a mythical world, where you can jump between different realms, meet characters from actual history - you bump into Nellie Bly at one point - and fight enormous monsters. You also glide everywhere on an umbrella and shift 🉐the very fabric of reality with game-changing cards, with one even causing the world to be plunged into an endless Blood Moon, where monsters are stronger, but the loot is richer.
There were some worries abo🍨ut the graphics not meeting the community’s expectations during the Steam Stress Test a couple of weeks ago, but during my playtime I found myself quite pleased with the visuals overall. The landscapes are always different from realm to realm, and the weather cycle keeps things dynamically atmospheric over time—I particu💛larly liked huddling down in my small house while hailstones thunked into the ceiling above my head.
You can play Nightingale on your own, but a lot of the game is designed to be played with other people. Some puzzles require you to listen out for musical tones, and this is made twice as easy if you’ve got some other folks positioned properly to work out the sequence. The boss battles are enormous, and while you can put out some big dama💜ge on your own, different damage types and weapons are useful for these encounters. Realms are also unique to each player, so if you have friends to play with, you get to explore more realm combinations.
I recently wrote about how Nightingale’s liv🥂e-service releas🙈e of ongoing content is going to make or break the game, and having played several hours already, it’s clear that its real potential hasn’t even been tapped into yet. That being said, ther𒈔e are already dozens of hours of content. Aaryn Flynn, Inflexion CEO, told me that it should take around “50-60 hours” to reach Nightingale’s endgame.
Progression is structured around quests, crafting, and exploring new realms. Realms are combinations of existing, pre-set rules (Forest, Desert, or Swamp biome), with a Minor card that determines what sort of Points Of Interest you might find. Each realm is procedurally-generated, and some POIs are procedurally-generated also. Crafting blueprints are found by completing puzzles and defeating enemies. The idea is to take back everything you’ve found to a central hub, essentially creating trans-dimensional bridges between realms, something Flynn referred to as a sort of “Silk Road” in our co-op sess🦄ion.
I had a lot of fun slowly upgrading my gear. It’s classic survival crafting fodder. New tools allow you to get new ore, new ore allows you to ♏make new tools, and so on. That being said, I wasn’t massively impressed with combat. One enc𝐆ounter had me firing small marble rocks from my sling at an Automaton boss that had become glitched into a wall. Melee combat does feel quite meaty, and with the short time I had to play with firearms, their lengthy reload time and powerful output makes them feel slow, but deliberate. However, for a game so focused on combat, this is an area that I think still needs more tweaking. Flynn did tell me during the co-op session that the team were still making balance changes, and overall it does feel like they’re receptive to feedback. We’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out over the early access period.
In tꩲerms of progression, you’re ultimately working your way through a story with the endgame goal of building a massive base or getting the best, snazziest-looking gear in the game. This is where the game begins to shift slightly. Usually, I’m not too fussed about gear in a survival crafter—MMOs have always 🌠scratched that itch better for me. But Nightingale does have some MMO elements. There’s an endgame hub that supports up to 30 players at once, a place where you can trade, chat, and join forces to tackle endgame Vaults. This repeatable content allows you to grind for Essences, which are used to purchase new items and crafting recipes.
This is the format where new content for the game will be released. The success of Nightingale really rests on how quickly and how consistently the team at Inflexion can get content in front of the players when they’ve reached the endgame. You’ll enjoy the journey to the end as you explore the strange realms and tackle monsters, but it’s the promise ♓of an infinitely replayable world that really gets me excited about Nightingale. That’s where it takes the step from an ordinary survival crafter - albeit one with high production value and fantastic world design - and becomes something new and original.
