It’s International Women’s Day! So, for this Developer Spotlight, we chatted to Brae Stoltz, one of Nightingale’s highly skilled programmers. This time, along with the usual blog format, we are attaching a short video where we join Brae at Inflexion Games and ask her a bit about her experience as a developer on Nightingale.‍

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Q: What is your name and job title?

A: Brae Stoltz, Gameplay Programmer

Q: When did you join Inflexion Games?

A: May 8th of 2022, 10 months exactly when this is out!

Q: What was your background before Inflexion?

A: A mess. Graduate school research in a cross-disciplinary field of compsci-music-psychology, then I worked as an analyst for healthcare, for some reason. Then I started working on my own games and now I'm here.

Q: Tell us what you do on Nightingale?

A: I work in and around systems involving player-built structures.

Q: What was the last game you played?

A: If I'm honest, Dorfromantik. I love indie games.

Q: What excites you most about working on Nightingale?

A: I love making games and the people at Inflexion are lovely. But also the game itself. I've been interested since I first saw it at the game awards and ended up gushing about it to our Head of People at the time and she offered me an interview. I'd like to think my enthusiasm for the game helped.

Q: Can you give an example of something you’ve contributed to Nightingale that you’re most proud of?

A: Structure traits. It nicely ties structures and their interactions with crafting and other structures. I love the design so it has been an absolute blast to work on.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your role working on Nightingale?

A: Wrapping my head around the Unreal Engine. I'm used to the Source Engine which is heavyweight C++. Unreal is C++, but, has a more C# vibe to it.

Q: What are you going to be working on in the coming weeks/months for the game?

A: Mostly what others would call the boring work: Tech debt, performance, and bug fixes for early access launch.

Q: Tell us an interesting experience you’ve had whilst playing the game.

A: Playing with a larger group in one of the tougher realms. That really opened my mind to just how fun the game is to play (development included!).

Q: You're lost in the Fae Realms. What is the one item you need to survive?

A: A maul. I'm a bit of a psychopath, chasing wildlife around with a giant mallet...I'd rather be a bound actually.

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