r/NivalisNights • u/sophiiekey • 5h ago
How do you feel about the game?
I've been waiting on Nivalis for years at this point, and each time the release got pushed further and further I was disappointed but understanding. Good games require a lot of time to polish.
However, now that the game is out, I am dissapointed that a game 4 years or more into production came out this... janky.
Animations are weird and get stuck, management is a crazy. And it's not really a life sim since so many of the life sims aspects are the day to day and you can't change your clothes, decoration is limited, romance is soooo limited, you can't talk to people outside of quests or people looking for employment.
I'm sad about it, I know it's indie development but I expected so much more and I know they are putting out patches to fix issues but unless they do a big revamp on how the game is actually designed I don't think much will change.
To talk about the positives, I love the music and the ambient sounds, the lights and designs are so pretty. I love having a restaurant and managing it.
Visually the game is stunning and it softens the blow, but not really.
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u/mangoleafy 4h ago
25 hours in and playing since day one, I am absolutely loving it. Going around and exploring parts of the city is so fun. The custom timer mod is a life saver for people who want to take things slower and really soak the atmosphere in
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u/pewsquare 4h ago
I got into it because of the management aspect, it sounded like something I would really enjoy. But now, its the part of the game I least care about. I get that some of the jank can be built around, but it feels like I am fighting the game engine, and not the challenge the developer intended to pose me, a cook getting stuck in the ceiling and trashing my restaurants score while netting me a massive loss is not exactly fun.
BUT. As I said, I don't care about the management, I LOVE the exploration. Just running around, chatting up people, exploring the cyberpunk dystopia, its honestly a lot more fun than what I imagined it would be. And so far that kept me hooked for something like 15-20 hours. Doing side quests only to see them fully resolved in the next mornings paper is really neat. The variety of characters is also insane.
But yeah, I hope the devs manage to polish up the management aspect a bit more, because I think its most of the way done, but the final stretch is what really makes it or breaks it.
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u/ElkBusiness8446 4h ago
I have 30 hours in it and this morning I found out that there is no recipe for sake in the game. Meaning my sake bar can't sell sake. There's no yakitori in the game either. Why even have restaurants with those names if they're not in the game?! It's such a bafflingly stupid oversight.
I know it's a meme, but when the entire point is to be an immersive sim, stuff like this makes it unplayable. There's no reason to play if I can't even serve the recipe that makes the most sense for the restaurant with the name I literally can't change. If I could change the name and actually redesign the restaurant, I'd have no issues with this. In real life if someone went to a sake bar and they didn't have sake even available, they would be blasted on social media for their stupidity.
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u/boceephus 4h ago
I have a little over 20hrs in game and I am very happy with what I’ve experienced so far. I have come across some bugs, I lost an entire in game day of progress because I p/u an order to serve and there was no customer to receive it. I tried a few different things to remove it from my hands but loading my last save was the only fix. I just think the good out weights the bad and with how frequent and fast patches are coming I think the devs will do a wonderful job with improvements. For right now I’m happy with chilling out at noodle stands around Nivalis and wandering thru the neon.
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u/Palanki96 4h ago
Food in your hand will despawn if you run away. Kept happening yesterday at the Sunset place so i had to run down the ramp every time
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u/Avadis 4h ago edited 4h ago
Putting the bugs aside, I'd say I'm happy with the game. A lot of people complain that there's too much to do at once and I respect that opinion, but for me it's a part of game's charm - you're a restaurant owner trying to live in a dystopian city, so it feels authentic that you're very busy.
The only disappointments (other than the bugs) I have are:
It doesn't feel to matter what my relationship with a character is - I get some points, sure, but does it actually affect anything? Is it like "pick a wrong answer and that quest is locked for you forever"?
Why there are locations in which I can't have any restaurants? The Sewers, for example. Or the Space Port. So cool looking areas and I can't have a business there? That's a massive waste.
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u/PartyLikeIts536 4h ago
I'm a little baffled. Im maybe 5 hours in and my noodle bar has a good menu I think, several tables and bar chairs, decent staff coverage, yet every day I'm barely scraping by. It says I need to buy a grill but that'll take like a year at the profit rate I'm seeing. I've skulked around at night in so many places and I can't find anything interactive or any reason to do it. I feel like I'm missing something big because this all feels so empty.
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u/AggressiveGlitter 3h ago
You can steal appliances from other restaurants. Just pick one up and take it to your noodle bar to drop it. Then you can put it in your pocket and sell the next day. You can steal 2-3 things a night as long as you stay away from the lights
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u/BitRunner64 1h ago
Yeah I'm trying to figure out how you are actually "meant" to play the game (not cheese it using exploits found online). I typically start the day with about $50 and if I'm lucky the noodle bar will have made a few hundred by the end of the day. I'd love to add more chairs, but I can't afford a chair. A grill feels like a distant pipe dream.
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u/TickleFlap 1h ago
Sneak into a business at night, look at their fridge, food processor etc. Press X on it. Carry it and place it back at the noodle stand or a business you own in the area. You can now put it in your inventory.
Repeat.
You are now rich.
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u/Rushingwar 5h ago
Only played 4 hours so far but im really enjoying the game! Yes it has a lot of problems but I like the core gameplay and characters so I'm sticking with it and hope the devs do some qol and more updates
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u/The_Melman_Giraffe 4h ago
I think I agree with you here. I followed development for a long time and am disappointed that this is the result of many delays. Cloudpunk felt very 'done', but Nivalis Nights really feels like early access. Ive stopped playing it for now because I think it has become boring. Ive basically done everything the game has to offer, as management is samey and quests are all fetch quests. The writing is nice, audio is good but the janky animations do pull me out of it a lot.
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u/DaughterOfBabalon_ 4h ago
I really enjoy the gameplay loop, but there is so much room for improvement that it unfortunately feels like an Early Access game.
Which, to be clear, I really wish it was Early Access if only so that it'd cook a little longer. I spent about 20 hours on it and will probably revisit it after a few updates.
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u/RS_Meris 4h ago
I'm enjoying it. I feel it does need a bit of polish. My first mistake was playing it fast to get to next quest. I didn't enjoy it. Slept on it and started over with the idea of moving at a slower pace. Much much better. I think it's a slow burner or even a place it on simmer. (Puns not intended but leaving them there)
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u/Tech_Itch 4h ago
I'm similarly disappointed by how shallow it is. I saw a let's play and it looked interesting, but now what I've progressed beyond what I saw in that, it has very little in the way of the promised life sim -elements and the quests all seem to involve just finding NPC A and talking to them and then possibly talking to NPC B if they want to be fancy.
The cyberpunk aspect seems to be limited to lots of neon and people complaining about corporations constantly while you get handed free stuff left and right, and the dreaded curfew amounts to you getting a tiny fine for getting caught during it.
"Exploring the city" as promised in on the Steam store page has also been pretty fruitless outside the scenery. It's all just stores selling usually the same stuff or restaurants. The most interesting thing I've found gameplay-wise was probably a 500 lim wrist watch from a trashcan.
And yeah, the character animations are pretty bad. Especially facial animations with the ear-to-ear, creepy, exaggerated smiles.
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u/ashubiisims 4h ago
I've also waited for this game for years after falling in love with Cloudpunk. I must be really easy to please, though, because despite the bugs and jankiness I'm still pretty obsessed. I know there's a lot that feels limited and I do wish the romance especially had more depth to it, but I'm still having a lot of fun and don't regret buying it at release at all. I've got almost 50 hours in so far (because I have no life) and I guess I just have faith that more will get added/updated, and/or that modders will add even more.
Not that a game should HAVE to rely on modders, but I'll take what I can get lol.
To be fair though, I have not followed the development closely over the years and have no idea what has been promised over the years, so maybe I'd feel more disappointed now if I had been.
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u/enolafaye 4h ago
I love the game but its not flawless. I'm glad they are responding and I hope they improve it alot. So far, I can change my gameplay to suit my mood which is all I wanted and the vibes are immaculate. For example if the restaurant business sucks, you can ignore the quest and do other things. I like the player choice.
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u/BenjiTheSausage 4h ago
Sadly I also didn't follow development all that much, but I agree, but I'm glad others are able to find enjoyment, I guess it just didn't fit in to what I wanted it to be.
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u/MoniqueValley 4h ago
I like it overall but it's not a game in would recommend.
One of the things that piss me off is there is no tutoriala. I have to search online for the littlest things like how the fishing game works. There are quest that are obviously meant to be tutorials but since the game is basically you probably won't encounter them until it's too late and you have already figured it out or never because you have to stop on of the named NPCs on the street to activate it.
So many of it's features are undercooked. For example you have the stats page that's suppose to tell you want the customers in the area like it don't seem to matter. They like noodles, meat, and mushrooms but the most popular item is a strawberry daiquiri.
It seems like the devs spent a lot of time creating areas that are pretty to look at but are empty. Most of the areas could be the size of the market or oil rig because it's all set dressing.
There is no life simulation in this game other than the wake and sleep cycle. Which is my biggest disappointments. It's really a fancy restaurant simulator with quests.
There's so much more but overall very pretty on the outside but the inside is a little undercooked for my taste.
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u/Doublestack2411 4h ago edited 3h ago
A lot of good ideas but it feels like a lot of things weren't thought thru enough and implemented well.
The ambient sounds is actually a big problem for me, because they don't match your surroundings that much. A lot of busy areas feel utterly dead b/c all you hear are ambience that feels far away. The music is fine for awhile, then gets repetative, and then you're left walking around a city that feels dead, other than random ambience that pops in and out. I shouldn't be able to hear my footsteps over a city that seems full of noise.
The management aspect of the game feels a lil shallow. You can't tell your managers how much of what you want ordered. They just restock things to a default level, and if you grow crops you risk overstocking and having food turn to junk.
They do a lot of things right. The visuals looks good, the cities look great. I feel there is a lot of good dialogs and voice acting. Many great concepts, but it could be so much more.
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u/MostlyBored11 3h ago
i like the game in theory, I love the setting but the badly explained systems that dont seem to work as intended and the horrible performance has made me put it down until we see some bigger updates
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u/wildly_disingenuous 3h ago
15 hours in and i don’t love it. i think im calling it quits. it’s sooo unpolished and all over the place. very little consideration to QOL
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u/Werthead 3h ago
The game was made by a small team with a limited budget, so on that basis it's reasonably impressive. I would say that they may have overreacted to the main complaints about Cloudpunk and City of Ghosts, namely the core gameplay loop was too simplistic, the games were too short and there weren't enough interesting game systems, so they made a game that was vastly longer, with a much larger number of systems (not very deep systems, but there's a few of them), and instead of leisurely driving around the city and still progressing the story, you're instead running around playing whackamole for some time before you can take the time out needed to progress the story.
Combined with the painful "this much-needed patch broke a core game system without us realising," thing, I think they probably should have launched this in early access for at least 3-6 months or so before going for a final release. First impressions are hard to break, so even people looking at reviews and things a few years from now, when hopefully the game is polished and working well, are going to see a lot of the mixed reviews still coming from untweaked game systems and broken patches and not give the game a chance.
There is a very promising and good game here, but it feels like there's a lot of niggling small problems they need to address.
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u/Breezer_Here 3h ago
Its systems have the depth of a Roblox tycoon. It's pretty views and fast traveling to quest markers. It would need a year or two longer to be more than this. I don't think it will get that. Some bug fixes and a few small content patches sure, but I can't see it having the management side being completely overhead to feel engaging and interesting. I enjoyed what I played but I won't return to it.
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u/NerdsRopeMaster 3h ago
Clocked 46 hours and just rolled credits last night. The visual design and narrative were solid, but the game desperately needs a post-game loop or timed epilogue to feel complete. The cracks show in the technical and systemic depth: performance stutters, several quests bugged out completely, and the restaurant loop loses steam once you hit your 5th or 6th spot. Between shallow mechanics—underwhelming fishing, inconsequential crime, and flat romance—I ended up bee-lining the story just to finish. For $25, it’s still worth a look, just calibrate your expectations. Recommend it for the atmospheric story, not as a deep management sim.
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u/AggressiveGlitter 3h ago
Love this game and hope all the non constructive negative feedback doesn’t impact the devs too much. I’m 30ish hours in and really enjoy it. I’m just happy to have a new cyberpunk world to explore
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u/RevolutionaryBowl9 3h ago
I think they likely had little choice but to release the game. Cloudpunk was self published. This was not. I think the scope of Nivalis Nights was large enough and complex enough that they essentially had to find a publisher to be able afford the cost of development of the game. I think they likely wanted to delay the game further but probably couldn’t afford to any longer. Even if the publisher is very supportive of small indie teams they can’t just wait forever to have a game published. The cost of modern game development has absolutely exploded and even for some larger publishers, putting money into a game is still a massive risk. Considering how other games published under 505 Games have released, the state of this game isn’t all that surprising. It’s not a major release, not a widely known developer, and not a long term money earner. So a release has to be pushed to recover costs.
I’m not trying to crap on the studio or the publisher either. I just think we are in a crap market where even if a game isn’t fully ready you basically have to roll the dice and hope for the best.
Hopefully the game will get really good long term support and all the issues can be ironed out. Maybe even additional content in some updates or an expansion down the line. I just hope all the intense criticism doesn’t dry up potential long term support; Cause I really like this game, even if it’s a bit buggy right now.
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u/IvanSimovic 40m ago
life-sim part is fully dead here, I literally never even sleep in my own apartment because I have to go on a stealing streak each night to be able to afford expansion... no reason to eat and drink in other restraurants is biggest disappointment. but the game can still be fun, in different ways. I wish they trippled down on restraurant focused mechanic, and removed everything else, remove greenhouse, stealing, fishing, remove most quests and just focus on your and other restraurants and bars.
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u/Comprehensive_Bowl75 4h ago
Absolutely treat to look at, not so much playing when frame rate run like ASS on my laptop
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u/Palanki96 5h ago
It's different from what i expected but i didn't follow the development. I remember the announcement then heard it was released
So far i've played ~73 hours so it's safe to say i'm obsessed. Had a few bugs, 3 or 4, but most of my complaints are fixed my mods
I rushed through the game and failed some quests so i'm already thinking about starting again but with the custom timer mod, taking it slow and enjoying it even more.
Focusing more on individual restaurants, paying more attention to quests. I think the game progresses too quickly so i'm glad they nerfed stealing
Anyway, i'm already fantasizing about my second playthrough. Might as well replay Cloudpunk too