Nightingale developer admits its “not happy” with game’s current state after disappointing launch

Inflexion Games, developer of Victorian fantasy survival crafting game Nightingale, has admitted there are several aspects of the game it’s currently “not happy with”, following disappointing player numbers at the game’s recent launch.

Nightingale launched on 20th February with a Steam peak of 47,569 players, but this has trailed off ever since, and this week has seen active player counts in the single digit thousands. Meanwhile, player reviews are listed as “mixed”. Studio boss Aaryn Flynn has said the team was now gathering feedback, and that the team was aware of several issues.

“We’ve been spending a lot of our time reading your impressions online, going through Discord, watching your streams and building our plans for the next phase of the game,” Flynn shared. “There are some things we are not happy with about the game,” he continued, acknowledging Nightingale’s network issues, missing quality of life improvements, and other aspects were “not quite where we want them to be”.

“We are working hard to address those things right now and to make sure you get the best playable experience possible,” Flynn continued, noting that a patch to help solve network disconnects was already live.

“To everyone who has been jumping in, giving us lots of feedback and your impressions, we really really appreciate and cherish your thoughts,” he concluded. “Your thoughts and considerations really help us prioritise where we want to spend our time, and help us hone and sharpen our vision for where we want to take the game.”

Previous issues were also addressed by Nightingale’s community coordinator, Maribel Diaz. Last weekend, a number of players found their Respite Realms had disappeared. The developer has managed to restore these estates now, thanks to emergency maintenance. “We are very sorry to everyone that has been impacted,” Diaz said. “We will continue to ensure that everyone gets as much progress back as possible.”

The team is now looking to the future, with updates for balancing and more on the horizon. Here are some of the upcoming features players can expect for Nightingale in the shorter term:

• Removing additional exploits
• Quality of life updates, such as storage quick-sort feature and the ability to craft from storage
• Crafting queues and the ability to purchase items from the guidebook after meeting essence traders

Medium to longer term, the Nightingale team is working on improving creature AI, adding more weapon types, additional recruitable NPC features, evolving building structure limits, new creatures and more. It is also working on Nightingale’s previously promised offline mode, which Diaz said falls into the “medium-term category because it involves a lot of work”.

For more on the game, be sure to check out our Bertie’s Nightingale impressions feature here, where he discusses why it has potential even though it’s not quite there yet.