Nightreign Director Says Studio Didn’t Start Out With the Idea of a Roguelike in Mind

While Elden Ring: Nightreign has launched to quite an immense reception, both in terms of reviews as well as player counts and sales, game director Junya Ishizaki has revealed that developer FromSoftware didn’t originally set out to make a roguelike game. In an interview with GamesRadar, Ishizaki revealed that Elden Ring: Nightreign turned into a title that could be compared to games in the roguelike genre over the course of its development.

“We didn’t start off by saying, ‘let’s aim to build a roguelike,’ or something, a game that features a lot of random elements,” said Ishizaki. “It’s not necessarily a jumping off point for the game design, is what I’m trying to say. It was more the result of a lot of feeling out the gameplay and the structure, and figuring out what the best solution to a certain problem was or what made sense in terms of where that particular gameplay element was headed at the time.”

“So these are, again, quite serendipitous elements, but they are more answers or solutions to problems than actual game design templates or axes, if you will.”

Elden Ring: Nightreign was released on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S just last week, and saw immense success almost immediately. The title managed to garner more than 313,000 concurrent players on its first day alone on Steam. Later on launch day, FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco revealed that more than 2 million copies had already been sold worldwide.

For the sake of context, the original Elden Ring sold more than 12 million copies in its first few weeks, and its DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, sold more than five million copies in its first week alone. Elden Ring: Nightreign is still currently sitting quite high when it comes to its concurrent player count on Steam, averaging at around 256,280 players at the time of publishing.

Despite the critically and commercially successful launch, however, Elden Ring: Nightreign is also facing its fair share of issues, especially when it comes to its online multiplayer components. Earlier this week, FromSoftware addressed some of the concerns that players have had with the game’s online matchmaking. While the studio’s statement was minimal, it did offer some troubleshooting steps that players could take to improve their matchmaking experience.

Ishizaki has previously also spoken about how Elden Ring: Nightreign is an experimental title for the studio, since it will be the first time FromSoftware has made a multiplayer-only game. As the studio is also working on the multiplayer-only Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods, Ishizaki said that Nightreign is “going to tell us how players feel about this kind of game and this kind of new challenge for us.”

For more details about Elden Ring: Nightreign, check out our review. Also check out our thoughts on whether or not this new multiplayer-only approach might be the right one for FromSoftware despite the game’s immense success. And if you’re having fun with Nightreign, here are our guides on how to level up quickly, and some tips and tricks to keep in mind.