New Game Nightingale Is Probably Your Next Time Traveling Co-op Fixation

Time travel. A Fae realm. A shared world with all manner of gameplay elements, from crafting to shooting. Yes, Nightingale, the next game helmed by former BioWare vet Aaryn Flynn, is essentially Cool Game Yahtzee!, and I am here for it. Here’s an initial trailer, first shown at The Game Awards tonight:

Officially developed by Inflexion, a studio in Edmonton, Canada, Nightingale is a survival crafting game with first-person shooter elements. According to the official site, it’s a “shared world” game. Inflexion did not specify how many players will populate each play session, whether it’s “shared world” on the scale of something like Destiny 2 or larger (or, uh, smaller).

Regardless of how many people you’ll actually run into, Nightingale’s world crosses standard high fantasy creatures with Victorian-era vibes, billed as a “gaslamp fantasy.” You travel various worlds via portals in order to beat back, according to the game’s site, “the dark magic and nightmarish creatures of the Fae.” Tonight’s trailer showed a look at some enemies, including Fae creatures and giants (who seem to love stepping on just-crafted houses, the jerks).

Following the debut, Flynn took the stage with Geoff Keighley, host of The Game Awards, to detail when players can expect to play Nightingale: It’s PC-only and is targeting a 2022 release. Alpha and beta tests are scheduled to begin sometime next year.

Flynn, who worked at BioWare for more than a decade and a half, left the company in 2017, four months after the middling release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. In addition to Andromeda, he worked on other lightning-rod BioWare games, including Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and Mass Effect 2. Flynn’s resignation letter cited various reasons for departure, including the birth of his son and the return of fellow BioWare vet Casey Hudson.