Nightingale’s jank mechanics are enveloped by a truly visionary world

polygon.com:

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.

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.