Elden Ring: Nightreignis an epic RPG squeezed into delicious bite-size capsules

At this point, Elden Ring is well-known for its epic sense of scale, offering players dozens of hours of meticulous exploration, gradual character progression, and unforgiving enemy encounters that require deliberate care and strategy. On its face, this doesn't seem like the best basis for a semi-randomized multiplayer action game spin-off with strict time limits and an ever-encroaching physical border in a tightly constrained map.

Somehow, though, Elden Ring: Nightreign makes the combination work. The game condenses all the essential parts of Elden Ring down to their barest essence, tweaking things just enough to distill the flavor of a full-fledged Elden Ring playthrough into zippy runs of less than an hour each. The result is a fast-paced, quick-hit shot of adventuring that is well suited to repeated play with friends.

Fort-elden Ring-nite

The initial moments of each Nightreign run draw an almost comical comparison to Fortnite, with each player dropping into the game's singular map by hanging off the talons of a great spectral eagle. Once on the ground, players have to stay inside a circular "safe zone" that will slowly contract throughout each of two quick in-game days, forcing your party toward an eventual encounter with a mini-boss at the end of each day. If you survive both days, you take on one of the several extremely punishing Nightlords you chose to face at the beginning of that run.

If you've played Elden Ring, you'll definitely recognize the general fallen world aesthetic here, as well as many specific enemies and items taken directly from FromSoft's previous epic. What will be less familiar is the general pace of play, which is guided by that encroaching circle of deadly blue flame. Instead of taking your time and exploring every nook and cranny for hidden secrets, you end up dashing between points of interest highlighted on the map in a madcap attempt to farm enough experience points and powerful items to have a chance against the big bosses.