As anticipation grows for the upcoming launch of Inflexion Games‘ Nightingale via Early Access, the studio has released a new update detailing the valuable findings from its March playtests, as well as the plans being put in place to further improve the experience.
Having concluded the fourth Closed Alpha playtest in March, where more than 1700 players were able to jump into Nightingale to experience an almost complete Early Access build of the game, the overall feedback has been that Inflexion Games are moving in the right direction.
Positive Findings
One of the good things about the entire playtest duration was the performance of the servers, which continued to hold up even through 59 continuous hours of play. In general, both single-player and multiplayer functioned as intended, although there were a few issues that needed to be sorted out. The team’s aims to further enhance the combat loop and the overall fantasy element of Nightingale were well received as well.
“We are happy to report that generally, players liked how the combat felt this time around. They thought that it felt snappier and that the fantastical element was definitely improved. So many people loved and commented about the Fae-inspired assets and an overwhelmingly amount of playtesters praised the overall audio of the game,” said Community Coordinator Maribel Diaz.
The high level of visual fidelity can be seen in the many screenshots taken by playtesters, a new function made available for this round of testing. With the build limit increased five times more, it allowed players to use their imagination and craft out a haven of their own before showing it off.
Areas of Improvement
While the Nightingale playtest is considered a success, it also provided the team with vital information on what to work on next to further enhance the game before the actual launch, especially for crashes.
“We did record a few more graphic crashes compared to previous playtests. Now this did seem to hit some players more than others, so our development team is currently diving into why this is happening,” said Community Manager Steph Herdman. “We have some pretty good hypotheses as to why, but we want to make sure we’re doing our proper due diligence in both identifying the issues as well as the proper fix.”
Another area of concern was that the game’s throughline was not as intuitive to allow players to learn organically through gameplay and reach the endgame. This is something that Inflexion Games is acutely aware of, and the feedback will allow them to further refine portions of Nightingale where there is the most friction. The same applies to the resource and tool balancing for the economy, which will be continually tweaked.
A fix for proper progression tracking in co-op play is in the works, together with tackling of other minor issues that will not be a problem at launch.
There will be at least one more playtest happening for Nightingale, likely in May, with room for more players to enjoy the game for an even longer time. It is also likely that the team will share an exact release date for the game following this last playtest, which will be even better news for fans of the genre.
