After Palworld and Enshrouded, will Nightingale be the third survival game hit of 2024?

GamesActionNightingaleAfter Palworld and Enshrouded, will Nightingale be the third survival game hit of 2024?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Inflexion Games)

A screenshot from the Nightingale stress test.

The year’s only just started, and the tree-punching genre is dominating. Palworld’s astonishing19 million playersmakesEnshrouded’s millionlook modest, but both can be called 2024 early access survival crafting hits. Can the genre go three-for-three?

Nightingale, out in early access on February 20, is yet another survival game on lots of people’s Steam wishlists, I think largely due to its neat-looking “gaslamp fantasy” setting—think Dishonored, bowler hats, twirly mustaches—and cool premise, which sees players stranded in Myst-like fae realms.

I played a bit of Nightingale during a server stress test last week, and I’ll say first off that it’s an unambiguous example of the genre: You’d better believe that I hit trees, rustled up twigs, and whacked rocks to make tools and crafting stations and build a cute seaside house.

The test gifted me about 10 hours worth of materials and unlocks, though, so I was able to skip the typical stone-to-iron age technological progression (I observed a dozen crafting and refinement stations in my list of blueprints) and get right to building my first fae realm vacation home, which was pretty smooth work.

With so many resources—I was encumbered with sticks, wood bundles, lumber, poles, shingles, stone blocks, bricks, hides, bones, foods, and more—it looks like devising and executing a gathering and crafting workflow is going to be a substantial task in Nightingale.

I mixed “desert” and Tudor-style blueprints for this in-progress house.(Image credit: Inflexion Games)

A screenshot from the Nightingale stress test.

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That’s where my time ended, though—I didn’t make any real excursions into Nightingale’s story, which would’ve taken me beyond the forested realm I started in, and I suspect would’ve shown off more of the features and creatures that make Nightingale stand out from other survival crafting games.

Watch out for hail.(Image credit: Inflexion Games)

A screenshot from the Nightingale stress test.

Nightingale didn’t run especially well on my RTX 2070 Super at 1440p, either. It was playable and all, and the shoreline my cottage overlooked was beautiful in the right light, but don’t expect a mildly-aged PC to push 60 fps without noticeable compromises.

Even if it’s not as glossy as its competition yet, I still think Nightingale could land in the top-half of Steam’s most-played games list later this month. I’ve learned never to underestimate the PC gaming public’s appetite for a new early access survival crafting game—so far, we’ve been insatiable.

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