Nightingalehasa lot of worlds to explore— seemingly endless ones, in fact, thanks to the base concept alone. Portals send you to vastly different procedurally generated locations, from swamps to deserts, all with radically different flora and fauna.
The presence of enemies should be no stranger to fans ofsurvival games, and even simple ones likeMinecraftneed tomake sure their creatures have a bit of menace to them, being something players both dread running across while also instantly loving the look of. Nightingale’s release date trailer alone shows the uniqueness of some of the game’s creatures, as the beasts range from slightly familiar to absolutely alien.
Nightingale Offers The Solution To My Obsessive Item Hoarding
Freeing up precious backpack space for other useless junk.
The Art Of Creating The Unknown
Surreal horror comes to mind when looking at, well, whatever this being is supposed to be. From a glance, I can see thorns, long gangly legs, and… well, there aren’t any other tangible things I can place in my mind from that glance. It’s something both arachnid and tree-ish? If I had to try and give a real-world equivalent, it looks a bit like a dead and dried-out rose bush, something that should not move, and something that needs foliage and roses to be considered alive. And yet this monstrosity is just walking around.
It’s surreal and a tad unexplainable, which to me are two of the most important adjectives when talking about monster design. It’s not some Elder God either. From the look of the land, this might well be a common enemy type, something you might have to contend with several times despite how towering it is. It evokes a real sense of dread, despite the fact the trailer didn’t even show it attacking.
The Art Of Recreating The Known
A fairly common monster design is to take two real animals and mash them together and see what happens. There are a few examples in Nightingale. One that caught my eye was this combination of elephant and, well, I see both possible connections to rhinos and dinosaurs thanks to the spine and technicolor skin. It’s familiar enough that my mind filled in the blanks. It’s almost inviting.
This is a great use of a base animal. It’s an elephant, but not in any way that makes it derivative or less threatening. Until I know it’s friendly, I don’t want to go near it. Yet I can still picture myself stalking it from afar like in a wildlife preserve.
Like with the “rose bush,” a lot of the creepy factors are the same for this tree. It looks too dead to be alive, it’s just as gnarly and gangly. These monsters feel at home with each other.
When creating multiple monsters, the ideal situation is to stick with a theme or an art style, and Nightingale does just that. Different design philosophies are allowed to clash, but the art style still makes them look like they could share the same plane of existence. It keeps everything fresh, making it feel like around any corner, you could see something brand new, but also not so jarring that it feels like you opened a different game. And this is something Nightingale looks like it’s nailed. I can’t wait to start exploring its realms on February 20 and see what other mysteries await in its weird, surreal realms.
Why Nightingale Uses Real People as Characters
Nicki Minaj in Call of Duty. Mr. Beast in Fortnite. Lyndon B. Johnson in Metal Gear Solid. Why do games use real people? Let’s talk about it.
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