"It’s a diverse genre" - Nightingale's team undaunted by Palworld and other survival competitors

It's been quite the year for survival games so far. Not even two months have passed in 2024 and not only have we had Palworld skyrocket past all expectations as one of the biggest releases in years, but we've also got Nightingale coming to Early Access in a matter of days, while older games like No Man's Sky, Rust, and Valheim continue to thrive. In spite of steep competition, Aaryn Flynn, the CEO of Inflexion Games - the developer behind Nightingale - believes the pool's big enough for everyone.

"I’ve said this to a few folks," Flynn told me, "one of the things that is so remarkable about survival crafting is that there is no set template right now. With shooters, it was Capture the Flag for a long time, then came Battle Royale, and that became the template. Survival Crafting doesn’t have that - within a month you would have had a pokemon-esq capture game where you automate your base with their work, to a really cool fantasy action adventure game where you’ve got voxels to build with, to our Victorian fantasy game where you jump through portals in first person combat."

When asked specifically about Palworld, and if the team at Nightingale had learned anythring from or had thoughts on Pocketpair's underdog hit, Flynn offered praise to the team, as well as expression his own personal uncertainty regarding the matter of Palworld's originality.

"Good for them. It’s their third or fourth game they’ve released, so clearly they’ve been taking lessons learned from games like Craftopia and then folding them in. I can’t speak to any of the questions around whether the game violates someone else's IP - I’m no expert [on] that - but so long as it can be out there and smarter people than me figure that stuff out, great! It’s a diverse genre."

The problem of oversaturation is one that's core to video games, especially during periods of time when massive releases have been popping up left right and centre. Last year alone, we saw gargantuan hits like Elden Ring, Armored Core 6, and Baldur's Gate 3, and games scaling from indies to full on AAA releases can often be squashed between those kinds of successes.

The same is true of genre saturation! Too many popular games in the same genre can lead to a drought of curious players willing to hop into your new games, whereas when a genre like FPS games is in a slump, you can see quick hits like The Finals swoop in and provide entertainment to a hungry audience. There are currently plenty of popular survival crafting games out there - many of which have retained a dedicated playerbase.

In spite of the scary time we're currently in when it comes to video game development, Flynn remains confident, pointing to the lack of firm templates within the survivial genre he alluded to earlier. "What I hope is the case is that fans aren’t really choosing along those lines. There are some for them, some that aren’t and that’s great. There’s space in this genre for all kind of different survival crafting games." To his credit, there's data to suggest Nightingale does have plenty of interest to merit such a stance, as it current ranks at #8 in Steam Wishlists.

It also helps the game is dope too! If you want to know why, you can check out our Nightingale preview here!