Tomorrow will see the release of Nightingale’s Realms Rebuilt update, which hopes to revive the ailing Early Access gaslamp survival craft ’em up. It’s aiming to do that with a new handcrafted campaign, which now sits alongside the procedural worlds already present, along with new weapons, spells, boss battles, dungeons and much more, as the developers outlined yesterday in a new blog post.
“The core questline of Nightingale has been completely recreated thanks to the incredible feedback we’ve received from the community,” starts the post. “Realmwalkers now embark on a more immersive and substantive quest, as Puck guides players across gravity-torn deserts, corrupted forests, and beyond, on a journey to reignite the ancient Crossway portals. Each of the new Storied Realms has been handcrafted; packed with challenging enemies, ancient discoveries, and all-new puzzles and dungeons.”
The update will lift some of Nightingale’s build limits, allowing for the creation of “bigger and more elaborate” constructions. It also includes a new tileset for building with.
Players can also now adopt up to 20 pets, an increase on the original release, with several new pets now included. That includes cats, as per the bonnet-wearing chap in the screenshot above.
There’s also claims of an overhauled progression system, clothing customisation, simplified crafting, and UI improvements, according to the post.
These changes do seem to take aim at many of the elements Ed criticised in his Nightingale review back in March. He criticised it as “an awkward marriage of survival game and live service loot grind”, calling it both confusing and tedious.
I’m glad that the developers are attempting to address those issues, although I’m skeptical that it will do much to attract players back to the game. Speaking for RPS, we won’t be re-reviewing it before any potential 1.0 release, because there are simply too many games for us to write about them all – and I imagine many players feel similarly about their own precious time.