By creating portals in Nightingale players could "go all the way from realm to realm"

We expected to be playing Nightingale in Early Access by now, but the game's many interconnected systems needed better adjusting and introduction. That became clear to us when we witnessed a live multiplayer gameplay demo at Gamescom, and then we learned much more about the very special project with Inflexion Games' CEO, Aaryn Flynn. Here's a few excerpts on different topics after the full interview:

On Nightingale's spectacular bosses

"There's a few in there for early access bosses. So you'll go and you'll find them. We've shown you Ishmael before in our trailers, and then the Sun Giant here, and there's one more we haven't we haven't revealed yet. But they're definitely out there and they're going to take probably a number of hours and a lot of time to get there and find them, and then even to beat them after that. But I think they're going to represent really, really aspirational goals for our players. Something that's going to take a lot of crafting and a lot of building to just level yourself up to where you can confidently take that and probably also cooperatively. They are balanced to be something that is co-op. I'm sure there are players who will do it solo... but for regular players like me, you know, I'm gonna call my friends!"

On the Parametric crafting system

"Nightingale has what we call a parametric crafting system. So you don't get a recipe for a copper axe and an iron axe and a tin axe. You get a recipe for an axe at a certain power level, and then you can decide to put in one of those metals and you'll watch the attributes of the axe change there. And so the nice thing about that, and the benefit I think to players, is it lets them puzzle through and determine what's best for them. They learn about these various combinations and then they ultimately get to craft the gear that's best for them. But as you go further and further into the game, the combinations begin to get broader and broader. And so there's more and more ways to optimize, more and more things you can do. That will adjust and and min-max your builds if you want, and that's I think going to be a part of the long-term tale of the game, and the other thing is building".

On player-created Portals between Realms

"The building system is very robust and it's getting more robust every month, and every time we do a play test we add more functionality and we fix a few bugs, but the portals thing is really interesting. So the idea that players can craft their own portals, and build them, and then have them go to very specific places opens up a lot of opportunities. One of the ideas that the team had many, many years ago was to create what we called the Silk Road across the Realms. And so by keeping these realms, by exploring these realms and placing your own portals, you could theoretically run from one realm through the portal, to the next realm through the next portal, and go all the way, maybe ultimately your friend's realm, and then back then. And so creating this idea of these portals keeping continuous connections between my realm, and your realm, and someone else's realm really got quite evocative to us and got quite exciting to think about what communities of players can do hosting these realms, and having portals always on, and connecting you always there. I really think it expands the community potential for the game that way".

Nightingale "is pretty much content-complete" and the team at Inflexion is currently balancing the game's different sandbox systems for the early access to be ready in February 2024.

Play the full video for more on Realm Cards and procedural generation, environments and building, narrative in a survival game via Thriving, the Victorian setting, and of course using an umbrella, (ella, ella eh, eh).