Sarah started as a freelance writer in 2018, writing for PCGamesN, TechRadar, GamingBible, Red Bull Gaming and more. In 2021, she was offered a full-time position on the PC Gamer team where she takes every possible opportunity to talk about World of Warcraft and Elden Ring.
Games and umbrellas don't usually collide, but I've thought more about umbrellas in the last few days than I have in my entire life. It all began when I found one inside a chest in Nightingale's tutorial area, though I only discovered how useful it could be much later. This kind of sums up Nightingale, which launches on Steam early access next week. Let me expand.
Just before the game opens, the Pale, the space you travel through between portals, becomes unstable and surrounds the Earth, freezing it. Some Realmwalkers were able to open portals and escape but were transported to unknown and faraway realms, which leads us to one of the unique mechanics of Nightingale: Realm Cards.Realm Cards are one of the requirements for opening a portal to a new realm, and they give you some control over what you can expect when you get there.
I've already seen how useful these Minor cards can be: during the preview, I was searching for a quest objective which wasn't marked on the map, so I had a lot of ground to cover to locate it. Activating a card that increased my travel speed was invaluable for covering ground quickly. It wasn'tBefore you can start exploring card effects or create portals, you'll need to make your realmwalker. The character creation goes into a surprising amount of detail.
The creatures you see aren't always your normal run-of-the-mill survival fare either. Sure, you can find deer and boars to hunt, but you'll also see little oddly-shaped automated workers hovering around some realms, like metallic pawns from a chessboard.
You can play Nightingale with up to six friends, though everything in the game can be done solo or as part of a group so it's up to you how you decide to play. There are Vaults to explore, which are basically dungeons with a mixture of enemies and puzzles to overcome, generally with a boss at the end. And you can always try your hand at taking down an Apex creature, providing you have a Hunt Major card to create a realm that contains one.