Developer FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco shocked with the reveal of Elden Ring Nightreign at the Game Awards 2024, and now, this new game that's geared around co-op has a release date. Elden Ring Nightreign is slated to launch on May 30, 2025, making its way in as the first half of the calendar year comes to a close.
You can see a bit more of the game in the preorder trailer below, with new gameplay footage showing the enemies and bosses players have to team up against:
While Elden Ring and its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree naturally included co-op play, it was just an option, and the gargantuan role-playing game could be completely entirely solo if you were so inclined. That's not the case in Elden Ring Nightreign, which requires players to join up in squads of three in order to take on the Night Tide.
This new mechanic slowly constricts the playable area over time, like the circle closing in a battle royale game. Each session is concluded with a boss fight, and the limited time means figuring out the right upgrades are key. Players have some important advantages over the original Elden Ring though, as they can summon a ghostly bird to glide through the air, as well as sprinting extra fast on the ground. Maybe most important of all is a complete lack of fall damage, something that seriously changes up how you move through FromSoftware's level design.
A surprising change of pace for FromSoftware
Truthfully I'm still surprised this is a thing, but I'm definitely curious about playing it. Co-op in Elden Ring is fun, so I wonder how gearing an entire game around that aspect (as opposed to slow, methodical exploration) is going to turn out. The asset reuse from across FromSoftware's history is amusing, and it's going to be fun seeing what kinds of bosses have returned from the world of Dark Souls.
One full run is expected to take around 45 minutes to complete, which is a decent bit for a multiplayer or co-op experience, but likely not so long as to be extremely annoying or frustrating.
I am disappointed that there's no cross-play functionality. I'm aware it wasn't in Elden Ring before, but still, we're long past the days of cross-play being a novelty. In 2025, it's more an expected standard online feature for any sort of multiplayer or co-op game.
Elden Ring Nightreign is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4.
