Elden Ring: Nightreign is a Standalone, Co-Op Survival Spinoff

During tonight’s Game Awards (which should really be called “The Game Trailers”, honestly), the reveal trailer for Elden Ring: Nightreign debuted. We know from recent official press release that it’s a standalone game, that it’s co-op focused, and that it’s got “survival” tacked on to the action portion of the game’s genre.

For fans of Elden Ring, it looks like more of what we know and love, there’s no denying that — but one wonders how this choice is sitting with FromSoft President Miyazaki, who once said it was important for FromSoft to “be aggressive about doing new things.” It’s hard to be cynical when it comes to FromSoft gameplay trailers though, and this one has all the usual suspects: big gross thing, cool fire breathing thing, interesting new thing the player can do, and minor unimportant detail that fans will spend far too long speculating on the meaning of.

Nightreign takes place in the land of Limveld, AKA “totally not Limgrave, yes it has the same tile set but trust us it’s not the same place”. Many of the areas in the trailer look very familiar, due to what are clearly a ton of reused assets. A lot of the textures, color pallets, and even enemies will be familiar to Elden Ring players, but at least the gameplay loop sounds like it’ll be very different than previous FromSoft titles.

Limveld changes each (capital N) Night, and it sounds like much of the “survival” aspect of Nightreign will be in surviving said Night. Presumably, you’ll face tougher enemies and/or unique bosses each evening — there’s also a visual effect that takes place, visible below, that changes Limveld when night comes. If the enemies in the evening attack aggressively or hunt you down, that would be a cool way to incentivize players to quickly clear content and level up during the day time; we’ll have to wait and see how FromSoft ends up handling it, however.

On day 3, players will face the Nightlord(s), of which there are 8 in total — it sounds like you might face a different unique Nightlord each time you play through the game, but it isn’t clear yet. Interestingly, the press release says that there will be “new key locations, enemies and weapons awaiting you each time you play”. It’s perhaps the case that the map is procedural generated; however, I’d bet that there are 8 distinct maps, one for each Nightlord.

In facing the Nightlords, you’ll have an equal number of characters to choose from, from swordsmen and witches to “strange outlanders” — each character has unique skills and weapon arts, like the ability to create weak spots in enemies, or summoning a giant tombstone to rise up and smash your enemies earthbender style. Wall-running shows up in the trailer, which could be a unique character skill or simply a new mechanic for all the characters.

The co-op aspect of the game was highlighted in the trailer, with every action scene featuring multiple characters, sometimes with characters even comboing enemies. One boss splits itself into three, further demonstrating how important having friends (or friendly randoms) will be to survival in Nightreign. Presumably, this means that co-op will be seamless, unlike the disconnected and frankly jank way co-op has worked in previous FromSoft titles. The Seamless Co-op mod for Elden Ring was immensely popular, so it’s nice to see FromSoft finally giving the players what they want when it comes to tackling the series tough bosses with a pal or two.

There isn’t much else to say until we get more info, but there were a few interesting tidbits to get excited about. What appears to be the Nameless King showed up in the trailer:

I’m also pretty sure I saw Roundtable Hold. Let us know your thoughts on the Nightreign announcement in the comments below!