Watch A Preview Of Nightingale’s Key Features Ahead Of Its Early Access Launch

We’re now less than a month from the launch of Nightingale, one of the biggest and most anticipated games of the year. Surprisingly, there’s been a lack of gameplay previews that usually accompany big releases as the Victorian Gaslamp survival crafting game prepares to make its debut on February 22.

Fortunately, IGN has got the video game community covered with its own video preview of the survival sandbox title’s key features, core mechanics, and some of the other things that players can expect when they begin their long journey through the Fae Realms.

Developer Inflexion Games, a studio founded by ex-Bioware devs, also talked about how feedback was instrumental in the game’s development and how involving the community in the development process was way better than the old way of doing things.

“I don’t know how you go back and do it more old school like we used to do it,” Inflexion CEO Aaryn Flynn told IGN. “There’s no substitute for having players engage and them being so generous with their time. They’re extremely thoughtful, clever… They know what they want to play.”

Over the course of the game’s five-year development, its evolved from an MMO to a shared world multiplayer game. While that was a result of a change of vision on Inflexion’s part, most of the quality-of-life improvements introduced after the fact were in response from feedback gathered from last year’s closed alpha tests. That includes the game’s open-ended tutorial system, the ability to simply hold down a button to collect materials, improvements to the difficulty system, and the removal of a confusing Realm Card that inverted players’ controls upon entering the realm.

“If you look at Baldur's Gate 3, I think [Larian Studios] did something truly remarkable by launching their game and then having almost three years in early access, and learning from their players,” added Flynn. “I think they definitely showed that approach can work for any experience… It can and should be a valuable evolution for the overall culture of the industry.”

Nightingale will be playable on Steam and the Epic Games Store on launch.