Nightingale offers an intriguing Victorian survival fantasy with a Mary Poppins umbrella

Little is known about Nightingale, the first game from studio Inflexion Games led by ex-Bioware boss Aaryn Flynn, but that’s soon set to change.

First revealed at last year’s Game Awards, the Victorian-era “gaslamp fantasy” survival game is now set for an early access release in the first half of next year.

For PC only and developed in Unreal Engine 5, it’s a game aimed at co-op PvE gameplay with no plans for PvP. Really, though, it’s the setting of this shared world that’s most intriguing.

Nightingale is set in an alternate history Victorian period, with humans sharing their world with the Fae – magickal beings whose power has merged with science and industry. At the heart of the world is the city of Nightingale, the centre of magickal studies. Human adventurers, known as Realmwalkers, use Fae portals to travel to distant realms.

All of that crashed in 1889 when a deadly miasma called The Pale collapsed the portal network, leaving humanity lost across realms and desperate to survive.

That’s where players come in, tasked with rebuilding the realm network and surviving, eventually seeking out the city of Nightingale itself.

Inflexion has absorbed plenty of Victorian culture in its vision, with factions based on both fictional and historical figures. That includes Ada Lovelace, the British mathematician who here heads up the game’s science division, and Henry Hyde, a distillation of both Jekyll and Hyde.

Outfits are all Victoriana, from sharp waistcoats, tophats and beards, to soldiers and utilitarian chimney sweep looks. And just to complete that Mary Poppins fantasy, players will gain a magical umbrella with which to glide over realms.

Outfits tie into Inflexion’s desire for players to re-create their authentic selves – its character creator promises a variety of skin colour and ethnicity options, and those lovely outfits aren’t locked by gender. “We want to make sure that players don’t feel limited,” said Flynn.