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Building the Nightingale Website — A Victorian Gaslamp Survival Adventure Comes to Life Online
When I first saw Nightingale, I knew it was something different. A survival crafting game set in a rich gaslamp fantasy world — with portals, towering Fae, and sweeping environments? Visually stunning and atmospherically dense. So when I had the opportunity to build the official website, I was genuinely excited.
This wasn’t just about launching another game site. It was about building a portal (pun fully intended) into the world of Nightingale — a central hub for players, press, and a growing community of survival fans.
The Mission
The website needed to:
Introduce Nightingale’s world, mechanics, and genre-blending setting
Showcase trailers, platform info, and feature highlights
Support ongoing marketing updates, news, and media drops
Provide easy access for press and creators looking for assets
Capture the game’s distinctive tone: Victorian, mysterious, otherworldly
It had to feel grand and immersive without getting in the way of clarity and performance.
Visual Direction
The art direction of Nightingale is one of its standout features, and the website needed to reflect that. The design (from Mike Heald at Fully Illustrated) leaned into the ornate, layered aesthetic of the game — elegant borders, antique flourishes, rich color palettes, and ethereal lighting touches.
It had to feel like a cross between a survival journal, a portal guide, and a fantasy novel cover. We kept the interface clean but full of atmosphere, with room for large visuals and clear navigation.
The Stack
To keep things fast and scalable, I used my standard stack:
Nuxt 3 for a flexible, modern frontend
Storyblok as the CMS — allowing the client to manage game content, updates, and future expansions
Netlify for deployment and performance stability
This stack gave the team flexibility to roll out new content (like trailers or dev updates) quickly and reliably — especially useful for big event pushes or patch launches.
Key Features
A cinematic homepage featuring trailers, artwork, and CTAs
CMS-powered Features and World Overview sections, expandable as new content is revealed
A Media & Press Kit area with downloadable logos, screenshots, and videos
Platform availability info and wishlist links
Responsive layouts and subtle scroll/hover animations to preserve the site’s immersive feel across devices
Everything was built to scale with the game — from Early Access through post-launch updates.
Why It Mattered
What stood out about Nightingale wasn’t just the visuals — it was the tone. There’s a specific kind of tension and curiosity the game creates, and translating that into a website experience was a creative challenge I really enjoyed.
It’s also a site that supports both function and atmosphere — something that not every project allows room for. That balance made it one of the more creatively fulfilling builds I’ve done.
Final Thoughts
Nightingale is a game that invites you into another world. Building a site that acts as the first step into that world — and sets the tone for the journey ahead — was an honor.
Check out the site here: playnightingale.com
If your game has rich lore, a striking visual identity, or a community that deserves a proper home, I’d love to help build the site that brings it all together.