Nivalis Nights

The game isn't really what it promises on the store front. The life simulator and business management aspects are all really shallow and not the star of the show. Instead, it's more of a VN Lite that centers around dozens of side quests. An overwhelming number of them. Talk to a person, they offer you a quest. I don't like it. They went for quantity over quality here - many characters are shallow and you churn through them quickly, and after they've had their quest(s) done, they literally have nothing else to say to you ever again. The dialog is also nonsensical at times, and some dialog options seem to lead into responses tailored for the OTHER dialog option or have nothing to do with any option. There's also a rather distractingly large number of typos. Your main character also seems wildly inconsistent - sometimes you can be kind, or ONLY kind, other times you can be a jerk, or ONLY so, sometimes you're smart, sometimes you're dumb. How other characters treat you also seems to vary at times between quests, perhaps because there's building in relationships in some quests that aren't reflected in others depending on the order you do them in. Some quest steps even contradict others, or even claim you did things you didn't, like using items you instead sold. The writing really needed a major editing pass, given all these issues. The quests aren't very enjoyable, either. Many quests have objectively "correct" and "incorrect" solutions, many of which require you to know ahead of time what the developers were thinking because you simply have not been given enough time with that character to reasonably guess what the game wants you to say. It calls to mind the era of gaming where you really wanted either a strategy guide or to save before every major decision. They're also by and far primarily fetch quests - either fetching items, or bouncing between NPCs, all whilst they only ever do talking heads at you standing in place, without even doing things to break it up like sitting down. It makes the city feel like it goes to waste, and it doesn't even make use of the fact you own a restaurant(s). One example that stands out to me is a early game quest, where a food critic comes by your noodle stand and asks for a particular dish. Do you get to serve it to him, watch him sit down and eat it? No, not at all, you just put it on the menu, then go back and talk to the NPC. In fact, you can just put it on the menu, and immediately take it back off again, and the game still counts it. It's also one of the surprisingly few number of quests that involve cooking, further making the business management side of things feel like a side show rather than the main attraction. The systems are all as opaque as a glass of milk and all seem very shallow. What do my worker stats do? What does 'luck' for fishing do? What is the benefit of customers being happy with the menu? With matching the tags that the statistics tell me to? What does putting down comfortable furniture, decorations, or plants do? I don't even care about any given worker because their Number is all that matters. Most of them don't say anything, and they don't have any other traits for me to care. Like even things such as "this worker makes noodles dishes worth 20% more" might go a long way. There's also seemingly a affection mechanic with NPCs with four different symbols but as far as I can tell it does absolutely nothing. What the player can actually do is also rather droll. Cooking and serving and what have you are all one button affairs, with canned animations that have nothing to do with the food being made. Fishing is also really basic and kind of dull, and trying to engage with finding the fishing spots is ruinously expensive - it costs many more times what you make from fishing to buy your boat's fuel. The balancing is also rather miserable. You earn money at an absolute snail's pace, and the end-of-day debt payment, whilst thematically appropriate, doesn't help matters either. Even as a power gamer, I've been struggling to expand. Customers also get upset wildly fast for how slow your workers are (and I'm not sure what the bigger issue is, the speed of the workers, or how fast customers get upset). Ingredients are very expensive, and expire way too quickly. Quest pacing is also wildly breakneck for how slow the economy is. I might be struggling to grow financially, but I've already been thrown into a dizzying number of what would pass for 'main' quests in any other game, including several major mysteries already been resolved (and frankly in really unsatisfying and sudden fashion.). The game also can't quite seem to make up its mind about urgency, either...many of the quests are 'go go go do this now or you're dead or homeless or in deep danger!' in tone, but there's no time limits as far as I can see and the game wants you to take your time? The UI is really bad. Quest log's too big with no resize, only hide, and I can't choose what's being tracked, only what's focused. A total lack of a mini-map or any sort of navigational aid for maps that are sprawling. It completely grinds to a halt if you try to use any search function. Your fishing rod WILL be buried underneath 30 items because it's way better to hold onto non-decaying assets to sell only when you need the cash because of the debt. You can't zoom in and take a better look at the food or any other item. I understand why we can't open them up in a 3d viewer, they might not have the undersides modeled, but can we at least get a zoom in? Mandatory quest dialog will also pop up mid fishing and cause you to lose your catch. The life sim elements are, as said prior, really shallow. You can sit down and eat...but it has very canned animations and no benefits. You can't do things like...Buy fashion, and the number of decorations for your house are both very limited and insanely expensive (some of them are also strange, like computer monitors act as TVs...?). There's a lot of stores I would've loved to go into, but they're barred off. Many of the buildings you can go into aren't decorated at all, and seem to have no clear function, or just seem half finished, and the repeated ones just make this worse (There's an area of the Hive Mall that has the same store three times next to eachother like they're Starbucks locations, for example). Merchants all have similar if not the exact same stock between the type, and sometimes they're just unceremoniously plonked down in the open. You have a boat, but it doesn't really seem to be useful besides taking you to fishing spots? You can clean up trash, I guess. It doesn't do anything, and you use a mop to clean everything from bottles to papers to messes with the same animation, but you sure can. I haven't run into any of the minigames that have been promised either so far? If they're in, it's because I've missed them due to already being at over 40 quests and not wanting to talk to any more NPCs lest I trigger a quest mine. Minor complaints I don't know where to put: The number of venues you're allowed to purchase are very limited, and you only get ONE option per tier. There's no upgraded cooking equipment, you just have a station or piece of equipment or you don't. The voice acting for some of the characters is very...Gross? It's like they're smacking their lips and tongue near microphone. Ava is particularly bad about this. There's a lot of lower res vs high res textures that clash horribly, with some that just look bad. On the plus sides, the city is pretty, the soundtrack is good, and some of the NPCs are a bit charming. If you just wanna walk around and gawp at a cyberpunk city, the game has that going for it. Overall, it's a bag of chips. Lots of bite sized experiences. But it's not the flavor that was on the bag, none of it lasts for very long, the flavor isn't what was listed on the bag, and some of the chips are burnt. Maybe get it on discount.

This game is.... rough. And rougher to review. Especially because I was genuinely looking forward to it, massively so. Ever since it was announced, I would check its Steam page constantly and everytime they would push back the release date it would hurt me. Let's start with some hard facts. As mentioned by a lot of people, performance is not great. Now typically I roll my eyes at early performance complainers, especially when they complain about ultra high settings not working on their high end computers. In this case however, yes, the performance is a very noticeable problem, and due to the game being very visually cluttered, low frame-rates can cause, not really "motion sickness" but definitely along those lines. I played for about 7 hours at the time of this review, and during those moments of low frame rate my eyes started to hurt. Second fact, the world is definitely captivating, I genuinely did not notice those 7 hours go by... however, I'm not exactly sure if that's a good thing. Here's where I get into the nitty gritty... Nivalis, from what I've played so far, is not a great game. It's a very beautiful digital space to explore, and yes, though I hate this line of thinking and I'll get into it later, the "vibes" are immersive, captivating, put whatever buzzword you want. But that's not a game. The game side of Nivalis is undercooked to say the least. To put it plainly, the game isn't fun. Managing your restaurant, isn't fun. Decorating, isn't fun. Fishing, isn't fun. The RPG-like story, isn't fun, hell I have a lot of things to say about the story later. The problem is that this game feels like this game was created moreso to please the people who look for "vibes". People who don't care that what they're doing is mind numbingly boring, because they like just turning off their brains and getting lost in the world. I don't consider that to be a good game. The game design just... confuses me. The game tells you, you can "use inspiration" for dishes, or add ingredients to dishes to make them unique, but it doesn't tell you how, hell I have a feeling that's a throwaway line from the dialogue. You can play one of the most basic and bland restaurant owner sim ever, or attempt to automate it with workers and managers, which also is pretty unclear because even though I am getting good reviews, managing my workers well, I still end up losing money if I leave the workers to run the store without me. Working in your restaurant is just rough. It feels like a tech demo. The animations are janky yet stiff. Cleaning dishes requires you to pick up one dirty item at a time and bring it to the sink. It just feels cheap. I don't know how to describe it better than that. It literally feels like it was tacked on. A last minute inclusion into a totally different game. Fishing requires you to follow a sonar to fishing points, or places you can get treasure. Though a lot of the time you're unsure what you're doing wrong. For example. I fish in a holographic circle that has a fishing rod icon above it... I get nothing. I fish right outside the circle, I start getting bites? Decorating. Bruh. Don't make a decorating feature in a game without the option to snap items to a grid. It's such a basic thing to leave out. Not to mention, again, there is no indication of whether or not you're doing good or bad. I had a story NPC threatening me because my tables suck apparently. But did he tell me, why, what I can do better? WHICH OF THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TABLES? Because spoiler alert, there are different styles of tables, and I had 2 styles at that moment. Nothing. No bar, no banner next to your restaurant name telling you if it's pretty or ugly, or what style it's considered. You know, like in other games? You may even ask me "Are those even mechanics in the game?". I HAVE NO CLUE. You tell me why the furniture has tags like "Art Deco" or what type of tables that NPC wanted. Here's the thing about me. When I start a life-sim game, I like to explore around looking for all the things I can do. I like to know what activities I can take part in, so I can find one I like and focus on it. Nivalis, doesn't have that. It's bare bones. The game mechanics are shallow and never have that hook that grabs your attention like "YES, this action is satisfying and rewarding, I want to do this." Think of Stardew Valley, in it, you can farm, that's the basic thing, but if you don't like that, you can go into the cave and fight monsters, you can fish, you can work your way to animals and start that, or you can focus on getting closer to villagers. Here's the thing, all those actions feel satisfying, they feel like there's a point, a merit for investing time in them. I don't feel that from Nivalis. Not yet at least. But if the hook is so deep into the game that even after 7 hours of me playing, I haven't found it, then that's bad design. Speaking of bad design, the world, Jesus christ. Look, it's pretty to look at, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ me, it's a ♥♥♥♥♥ to navigate sometimes. Doesn't help that if you talk to as many NPCs as you can, like I do, you start getting a load of quests, problem is, you can't turn off the quest markers, or select which quests you have active. So half your screen is covered by a list of quests that goes from the top of your screen to the bottom, and the rest is cluttered in icons. Making finding your desired quest location a ♥♥♥♥♥ to find. Finally, let's get to the thing I am the most mixed on. The story and characters. Other reviews mentioned their love for Cyberpunk 2077 and how this game reminds them of it. I for one mention my disdain for 2077, its fans that consider it the second coming of Christ, and its bad story that shares a lot of its issues with Nivalis'. Primarily the characters. Almost everyone you meet for lack of a better term is an A-hole. I don't understand this obsession with writing people that are just such ♥♥♥♥♥ to you, and expecting you to put up with it and help them, with hopes that they start being nicer. That's not good writing, nor is it "quirky", that's an abusive relationship. And if you are going to try telling me that "that's realistic" then you genuinely need to get out more and meet better people. This problem also extends to your character. Your nameless protagonist has the option to be a business obsessed douchebag, a whiney ♥♥♥♥♥, or a nihilist. Why is it so rare for a character to just BE NORMAL. I swear, half the time he just sounds like one of those spineless henchmen archetypes you see in cartoons, like Starscream, the type to act like a little ♥♥♥♥♥, only to stab you in the back. How am I supposed to relate to a character like that. Why do writers have this antagonistic view on player characters. The only character that you end up actually caring about is Ava, your AI companion. She is genuinely the best part of the game, even though the cynic side of me wants to say "she's programmed to be nice to you". But genuinely, so far, she's the only character that I care about and actually want to be friends with. I typically am the type of guy who avoids mean responses in RPGs, and trys to help and be friends with everyone, but honestly I'm starting to go down the douchebag route cause ♥♥♥♥ these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Story focused RPGs NEED good characters. Final Fantasy 7, you CARE about Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, Barret and the rest of your party. You need that connection, otherwise what's the point? I want to like this game. No, lemme rephrase. I really, REALLY, want to like this game. But again, this isn't a game at this point. It's a pretty simulation with some really bad mini-games attached to it. It's shallow. And while I can see all the passion put into the world and the art direction. The game part clearly suffered for it. I don't know what to hope for in this case. Sadly, there's a lot of what I consider toxic positivity from the "vibes" crowd. And all of the criticism is focused on the performance and not the game design.

Its just sad. The game itself seemed fun, i liked the atmosphere so far and the shop manegement also seems fun. The performance kills it for me. idk.. At least there could be framegen or something, but the options are very limited. The game looks like it should run fine (no offense, i really like the style) but FPS dropping so much with many NPCs around that it becomes unenjoyable. I suggest waiting if you are interested.. because there is a good game there.. hopefully it can get some better optimization (on the other hand its a mystery to me how this even happens.. I know gamedev is really hard BUT if you look at the marked and i were about to sell a game.. i would double or tripple check that it runs fine with soooo many performance issues games lately. And you cannot tell me you didnt knew about this - I start to feel fooled by devs lately.. and im glad i can get a refund. But in the end i really wish this can get patched and we can enjoy this game, but after releasing a game like this, its hard to gain one's trust again.)

Nivalis Nights is one of the games I’m most hyped for in 2026. That’s why it’s tough for me not to recommend the game in its current state. First of all, I absolutely love the gameplay loop. You’re managing a business while completing side quests, all under time pressure. This gameplay loop is quite addictive. The city is also gorgeous. The atmosphere, the design, and the overall aesthetic, I love it all. Now for the issues: Quality of Life -Navigation: The game only has one map for the entire city, but there are no individual maps for each district. Because of how dense the areas are, it can be difficult to find a specific person or location. -Time Speed: The in-game time moves quite quickly, and you also cannot pause the game. This can make it difficult to plan your next move or decide which mission you want to prioritize. This is made worse by the navigation issues, since you can end up spending a significant amount of your limited time simply trying to find the point of interest required for a mission. The fact that there is already a mod available to control the time speed on Day 1 tells you a lot about this issue. -Income Statement: The income statement is surprisingly difficult to find. This is especially important for a game with a business simulation mechanic. -Manager Restocking: Managers don’t fully restock your supplies. As a result, you can get an annoying reminder that you need to restock your ingredients even though you’ve already hired a manager to run your business. -Ingredient Management: For some reason, the chef doesn’t seem to prioritize the oldest ingredients. Instead, they use the newest ones, which can result in older ingredients eventually going to waste. -Mission Tracking: There should also be an objective or mission list where you can choose which mission you want to actively track. This is especially important because the game has a lot of side missions. -Item placement: Placing items in tight spaces can be very tricky and in my experience can cause a bug. I think an auto align or auto placement mechanic will help this. Performance -Frame Drops: The frame drops are very noticeable and can be difficult to ignore. I opened Task Manager and noticed that my GPU utilization wasn’t consistent, sometimes dropping to only 30–40%. I’m not sure if this is directly related to the frame drops. Overall Overall, Nivalis Nights has a wonderful gameplay loop wrapped in a beautiful and atmospheric cyberpunk city. Most of my issues are related to quality-of-life features and performance, which I think are very fixable. Right now I refunded the game but will 100% buy it once the issues have been fixed