Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Nightwater
Studio Ashty · Published by Irox Games, Studio Ashty
Very Positive — 86% positive (138 reviews)
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
Forage, craft and automate to grow your factory, unlock new technologies and expand your island to discover new biomes. Progress through the ages from sticks and stones to the Bronze Age, the Industrial Era and into the future to uncover the secret of the Lighthouse and escape this reality.
Adventure, Indie, Simulation, Strategy, Casual · 2026 · More free games
Explore Nightwater, where you forage, craft, and automate to grow your island factory. Progress through ages and biomes, unlocking technologies and expanding your realm in this unique indie simulation from Studio Ashty.
About this game
A new reality materializes. You find yourself on a solitary island, floating on a sea of liquid void and starlight, ringed by impassable mountains. This world is a mysterious place, yet strangely familiar.
Welcome to Nightwater, where you must master a new reality. Transform raw resources from simple sticks and stones into an industrial factory. Progress your technology through the ages, from primitive tools to modern machines and beyond. Expand the island by manifesting new biomes into existence to harvest their unique resources. Master multiple minigames to unlock powerful buildings and receive strong buffs.
All your efforts serve a single purpose: to reach the Lighthouse and uncover its secrets.
Nightwater is a game about gathering, collecting, and managing resources. There are multiple unique biomes, each with its own resources and secrets to unveil. Every resource features its own progression: gather by hand or automate with machines to hit each resource’s milestone goals and unlock new buildings, crafts, and powerful buffs. Explore every biome to discover 20+ resources and gain access to 100+ buildings, crafts, and buffs.
It’s fun to gather resources yourself, but it’s even more fun to build machines that do the work for you! Choose from 60+ buildings to construct farmers, assemblers, and storage units, link them with pipes, and automate every part of your production chain. You can build as many machines as you want and move or deconstruct them at any time without losing items. Automate all resources and their crafts, and unlock powerful late game buildings to make your factories faster, more efficient, and even bigger!
Use the time while your machines handle the work to progress in one of five unique minigames. Each minigame features its own gameplay loop, items, upgrades, and progression, unlocking new buildings, crafts, and buffs you can use outside the minigame to grow your factory and boost efficiency. The minigames are optional, but they offer fresh variety, their own sense of progression, and powerful rewards.
Nightwater tells a deep, personal story that is never handed to you. You’ll need to uncover hidden secrets, read between the lines, and piece together the clues to learn what Nightwater truly is. The story is fully optional, anyone can reach the end without engaging with it, but only players who search for the truth behind Nightwater and the Lighthouse will uncover all four endings and secret areas.
Nightwater is a game full of variety and unique content. As you play, you’ll uncover many secrets as well as experience a story that will make you question what Nightwater truly means to you.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 or later (64-Bit)
- Processor: i5-3570 3.4 GHz 4 Core
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1650/GTX 1050-ti, or AMD RX 470/RX 570, or equivalent performance & VRAM
- Storage: 10 GB available space
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 11 or later (64-Bit)
- Processor: Ryzen 5 5600X or i5-12400 or equivalent performance, 6 physical cores minimum
- Memory: 12 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2070 or RX 5700, or equivalent performance & VRAM
- Storage: 10 GB available space
Supported Languages
*languages with full audio support
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Release date reveal
Nightwater releases on September 18 at:08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 16:00 BST / 17:00 CEST / 00:00 JST (Sep 19)Wishlist now so you don't miss it, and see you on release day!Read full article on Community Announcements (Studio Ashty)Community & EventsOfficial
Steam Next Fest & Publisher Announcement
I have some news to share. Nightwater is part of Steam Next Fest June 2026, running now through June 22. If you haven't tried the demo yet, this is the perfect time to jump in and see what the game is about. All feedback is welcome and genuinely helps shape development.On top of that. Nightwater is now being published by Irox Games, an independent studio based in Munich, Germany.This means more support behind the game and a better shot at reaching players who love automation, incremental and open world exploring games. Development continues exactly as planned, and the partnership lets me focus on building the best version of Nightwater I can.Thank you to everyone who has wishlisted and followed along so far.Read full article on Community Announcements (-)Community & EventsOfficial
Steam Next Fest Announcement & Incremental Dev Friends!
Hi everyone, I’m excited to announce that Nightwater will be part of Steam Next Fest: June 2026! Next Fest runs from June 15 to June 22. The demo will receive a small update before Next Fest, including typo corrections and localization/translation fixes. Since thousands of games will be available during Steam Next Fest, I wanted to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to a few other devs who are also participating in Steam Next Fest and working on awesome games! If you’re a fan of incremental games, you shouldn’t miss these:IGTAP: an Incremental Game That's Also a PlatformerIGTAP is one of the games at the top of my must-play list for 2026. The game combines speedrunning with rewarding incremental elements to create an incredibly unique and addictive gameplay loop! The game is easy to understand, hard to master, yet accessible to everyone thanks to its incremental elements. Check the demo out and wishlist it!Kin and ConquestThe Fox Knocks has announced a new project, Kin and Conquest! It’s an idle action-adventure game featuring combat, dungeons, equipment, boss fights, and mining. What I particularly like about this project is that you can play it actively as an incremental game or casually as an idle game. Play the demo and give it a wishlist!FleshbornIn Fleshborn, you destroy fleshy growths with a flamethrower! It’s an addictive time-based incremental game. Start your run, farm as much as possible, progress through the massive tech tree, and get stronger each time. The demo is live, check it out!Read full article on Community Announcements (-)AnnouncementsOfficial
The Nightwater Demo is Out Now!
The Nightwater demo is now live on Steam.In the demo, you can explore the full first biome, play the first minigame in full, and also get a preview of the second biome and second minigame.The demo takes around 1 hour to reach the end, or around 4 hours if you want to explore everything currently available.Thank you so much for all the support so far, it means a lot, especially since Nightwater is my first commercial project!Play the demo now and let me know what you think!Discord: https://discord.gg/NBwsXYVq2gDon’t forget to fill out the Feedback Form :)Read full article on Community Announcements (-)AnnouncementsOfficial
Demo Release Date - May 8, 2026
The Nightwater demo will be released on May 8, 2026!The demo includes the first area, “The Woods,” with all milestone items and unlocks, as well as the first minigame, “Dark Thicket,” with the full progression and unlocks! You'll also get a sneak peek at the Mountains biome and the Mountains minigame, though you won't be able to unlock the milestone items.If you find any bugs or notice any issues with the localization/translation, please join the Discord to report them. I’m just a solo developer, but I’ll try to fix them as soon as possible!Discord: https://discord.gg/NBwsXYVq2gThank you so much for all your support, and I hope you’ll be able to enjoy the demo soon!Read full article on Community Announcements (-)
