Nightingale devs say they're 'not satisfied' with the game, its reception, or its player numbers, but they've got big improvements coming
Step one: bigger build limits.
Last week, Inflexion Games published a YouTube video in which CEO Aaron Flynn and art and audio director Neil Thomson assessed the current state of Nightingale and where the studio hopes to take its gaslamp fantasy survival game next. Inflexion's assessment was unconventionally frank: "We are not satisfied with where the game is at, we're not satisfied with the overall sentiment, we're not satisfied with our player numbers," Flynn said.
Despite the video's vaguely uncomfortable air—watching it felt like the two developers were expecting me to scold them—it's admirable for its candor. In updates released since Nightingale's early access debut in February, Flynn says the studio has worked to address the "shortcomings of the experience," adding a much-requested singleplayer mode and a host of quality-of-life updates. To Nightingale's credit, while its Steam rating sits at an overall "Mixed," its recent reviews have come in at a rosier "Mostly Positive."
With those basic improvements in place, Inflexion's spent the last few months on overhauls for the overall gameplay experience. While Nightingale will maintain its core conceit of adventuring between dimensions of a gaslamp fantasy setting, Inflexion is hoping to add more structure to those adventures. Thomson said that Nightingale has been "almost too open world, too self-motivated in terms of goal-setting." To address that, Inflexion is working to better communicate to the player where they're at in the game's progression, what goals they should pursue next, and what they'll be able to do along the way.
Even better, Inflexion's worked to bring a big improvement to what everyone really wants from a survival game: building a cool house. Inflexion's increasing Nightingale's build limits so players can place more pieces and build "more creative, more expressive estates." Before, Nightingale had been fairly restrictive in the size of structures you could create, but Thomson said the higher build limit is a "multiple-time increase."
Flynn finished the video by saying he's "extremely confident" that Inflexion is bringing Nightingale to a state that meets its own expectations. Thomson agreed, saying the studio's made "Nightingale, but better." Inflexion is hoping to release the latest slate of improvements in an update later this summer.