As Inflexion Games‘ debuted an all-new trailer for its shared world survival crafting game, Nightingale, at Opening Night Live of Gamescom 2023, the excitement of the development team is surely shared with its invested community.
While eager Realmwalkers will have to wait a little longer, until February 22 2024 to be exact, before they can jump into Early Access, that means the folks back at the studio will have even more time to create a product that has plenty of player feedback built into it already.
“I haven’t worked on an early access title before. And a lot of our developers haven’t either. And so we were a little bit nervous about Nightingale, but the players have been absolutely amazing. They’ve been so gracious and so appreciative. And so giving of their thoughts, feedback, praise, and even constructive criticism, all that stuff,” shared Aaryn Flynn, CEO of Inflexion Games.
“It’s made for a really fun time. I think our developers now look forward to playtests, because they want to show off to players, what they’ve worked on and at the same time, engage with them and say, ‘What did you think of this? What are your thoughts?’ And I think that’s just been a wonderful process.”
From reworking the onboarding experience to including the much-requested third-person perspective, it is clear that Nightingale continues to be a product of love from both sides of the equation. While the core idea of the game is still to “reward players for their curiosity” and provide “interesting puzzles to solve” as part of the adventure, everything else around that can change. One of those reasons is the increasing familiarity that the Inflexion team has with Unreal Engine 5, but also, having a good grasp on things.
“How we prioritize everything is a combination of ideas from the dev team, and then we validate those ideas, first and foremost, against the vision of the game. Is it consistent with the vision? Does it require an expansion of the vision? Have we had any confirmation from our players that they would appreciate this or not? So it’s a bit of both, but it always starts with our developers,” said Flynn.
Knowing what the players want warrants less risk in implementing such ideas, and the collaborative environment created by the development of Nightingale has only boosted the confidence of the people working on the game. This leads to more engagement with the same, brilliant community, and starts the cycle all over again.
“I’m a big believer in the phrase ‘We like because, and we love despite,’ And what that means is that when you ask somebody why they like something, they generally list off specific things that they like about something. But when you love something, you tend to love it, despite its flaws, and you accept it for its flaws, but the criticism can be equal,” added Flynn. The input from a player with hundreds of hours in the game is as valuable as the one that drops off only after a few; such is the willingness of Inflexion to take in feedback and ensure Nightingale is as polished as can be.
This may be a debut title from the studio that is Inflexion Games, but much of the journey has been made even better with the help of its community. For all Realmwalkers hoping to make their mark across the mystical Fae Realms, that is truly the spirit that should power all the adventures beginning in early 2024 on Steam and Epic Game Store.
