by The successful survival games Palworld and Enshrouded contributed to the major update of Dragon Age and Mass Effect veteran Arryn Flynn’s own survival game, Nightingale.
Nightingale launched in February, just as a slew of other survival games were vying for attention in the genre. Palworld, Enshrouded and V Rising were just some of the plethora of games that launched around the same time as Nightingale, and Flynn argues that was still an advantage for Nightingale.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, he said that his previous claims that an increase in genre releases would benefit his game were “still true”: “I think we had a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ kind of thing, and I think we got some additional visibility because of that.” But while Palworld and Enshrouded found large audiences, Nightingale struggled. Flynn thinks that could be a result of “the earliest Early Access versions of those games. And that’s on us and me in terms of prioritizing and helping build Nightingale.”
With a major update on the horizon, Flynn says, “If I could go back in time and deliver this, [updated] version of Nightingale in February, I would do that.” However, he also says that this update was shaped in part by the success of those other games, telling PC gamer that his studio went through “Enshrouded, Palworld, V Rising” to assess player perception. He found that “it was really the structure that stood out as something they were offering that we weren’t. Players were telling us that they wanted to be creative and push the boundaries of the building system, but those boundaries were too small, too narrow.”
Personally, I found Nightingale’s ‘gaslamp fantasy’ style meant its building systems were far more interesting than, say, Palworld’s, though I’d point out that Enshrouded’s efforts – much closer to something like Valheim – may have left Flynn’s efforts trailing behind. But Palworld’s ideas made their mark on Nightingale in a different way – Flynn says that a Palworld-style automation system was in the plans, “but it was always a bridge too far for us.”
Nightingale’s Realms Rebuilt is set to launch soon, six months after its original launch. It’s a player-focused update, driven by the fact that “our player numbers aren’t where they want to be.” Whether it’s enough to turn the game around in a year still undeniably packed with survival games, however, remains to be seen.
Check out our list of the best survival games.
