Nightingale is off to a strong start but it's also got a 'mixed' user rating on Steam, and once again server problems are largely to blame

The alt-Victorian survival game Nightingale launched yesterday, and after a full day of release on Steam it's now laboring under a less-than-stellar «mixed» user rating. Reasons for the complaints are varied, but the main culprit seems to be one we're all familiar with by now: the servers.

The frustrations with Nightingale are exacerbated by the need to be connected to play, even if you're going solo. Quite a few user reviews on Steam are actually positive about the game overall, but throw it a thumbs-down anyway because of server wonkiness.

«I REALLY like a lot of this game so far, but this is getting a negative for one giant issue,» one Steam user wrote. «Being always online, even when playing solo, is absolute nonsense. There is no reason a game like this has to be online at all times. Which is only compounded by the servers being a trash fire currently.»

«Absolutely no need for a survival crafting game to be online only,» another wrote. «Once again we're all at the mercy of server stability and an inability to pause… Fantastic. Why even have 'played solo or cooperatively' or 'alone or with friends' written anywhere, it's misleading to the point where I can only think it's intentional.»

Nightingale is off to a fairly strong start: Just over 37,000 people are playing right now, according to Steam Charts, and its current peak player count is more than 47,500. That's nowhere near the infuriatingly-impossible-to-get-into Helldivers 2, but it's not too far off the other big survival game of the moment, Enshrouded, which launched into early access in January and currently has about 46,000 people playing.

That's good news for developer Inflexion Games, but how those numbers hold up over the coming days and weeks will depend an awful lot on how quickly the studio can rectify Nightingale's server headaches and offer players a smooth, stable experience. It brings to mind the obvious example of Payday 3, which suffered a disastrous launch driven in part by its requirement