The thrum of neon lights, the bustle of a pulsating metropolis, and the demands of a… noodle bar. As I awaken in Nivalis, I’m greeted by my Automata companion, Ava, urging me to a prompt meeting with Thaddeus Carminus at Ramen Noir. But, as I step out of my apartment, it’s hard to stay focused. I’m stopped in my tracks by what developer Ion Lands has crafted here. It hits me like a ton of bricks. Nivalis is beautiful.
It’s the strange child I imagined I’d breed if I took William Gibson’s Neuromancer with CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 and Mojang’s Minecraft in a slightly decaying, but wildly ambitious lab. A sweeping expanse of grit and electricity, of towering monoliths lit up with an electrifying pulse, it’s unlike any world I’ve ever experienced. I hop in a taxi to Meridian Market. I have to meet Thaddeus.
Despite my distraction, I’m pulled into focus when I learn that there’s a serial killer on the loose and, somewhat contrastingly, a noodle bar that needs my entrepreneurial prowess (of which I have, absolutely none). Nivalis is on lockdown, no-one can enter or leave the city district, unless you know someone who knows someone, as the Localized Unit Zone, the ‘LUZ’, is in effect.
And yet, from Ion Lands’ description, I thought I’d just be managing restaurants and nightclubs, making friends, decorating apartments and sitting on the docks fishing for treasures. Sure, those things are all here, but what I wasn’t expecting was the deeply woven narrative, detailing a much richer story with captivating dialogue that made every single conversation, no matter how lucrative, a worthwhile experience.
Nivalis runs on success, made insistently apparent by the rungs of society, the rich living in the daylight and beauty of the Spire, the poor dwelling in the Sewers and The Stacks, and everyone in between. And this serial killer loves to prey upon the poorest of them all. So, I think to myself, I better make my noodle bar a hit or I might find myself drowning in the well-seasoned stock of my own ramen.
Thaddeus’s advice: “Every day in Nivalis, you have to make a choice. You gotta lift people up, or you gotta step on them. Won’t always be a matter of right and wrong. But you gotta choose.” And choice is the tether I find myself tugging on desperately as I make my way through the murky water and bustling streets day in and day out. In Nivalis Nights, I’m prompted to forge my own path as the Cloudpunk vet hands the reins over to me.
The missions come thick and fast, in part due to my greedy socialisation, but also in part down to the clever time-triggered quests that weave their way throughout, missions chaining together, allowing you to pick them up and drop them off when you can. So, whether I’m busy hiring staff for my restaurants or working with the mysterious Edison Mattix (or against him), Nivalis keeps me busy. Deciding what you partake in is a simmering theme throughout, though Ava will be there to guide you on your way.
And I’m thankful for her. In fact, Ava quickly became one of my favourite features of Nivalis Nights, so thoroughly present and integrated, greeting me with a cheerful message of encouragement in the morning, offering up wise and data-driven opinions on my enemies or friends in the evening.
It turns out, she probably knows me better than I know myself. In Nivalis, I’m the ‘new Thaddeus’ taking over Ramen Noir to start my business empire, while Thaddeus goes to… well, that’s for you to ponder. But, I wish I knew who I really was. The best glimpse I get of myself is when I go to eat at rival businesses, seeing my slender arms picking at my better-than-Ramen-Noir meal, stealing recipes and plotting to topple the competition. Or, curling up my delicate hands under my chin at night, hiding impatiently from curfew.
It’s unusual for a sim to allude to the character rather than give you a direct protagonist to embody, and I’ll be honest, I missed it. I felt, at times, as if I was in some limbo emulating a go-between for all these characters that get their own names like Pilk Dane, my strange landlord, or Kai Golash, a hacker in a planet full of opportunity. Bare metal boxers, miso barons and cyberdelic deepgoth club workers all have more of a personality than me.
But, the streets needed me all the same and my omnipresence in the restaurants that I owned was lucrative to me, for the most part. Then came the realisation that I was a cog in a much wider machine, even if my own level of self-importance struggled to feel out exactly what impact I was having on it all.
My role became even more blurred when I began to struggle with deciding how to best divide my time. These time-triggered quests would lead to bigger and better things, but my growing multipreneurship also needed me to clean up trash, restock ingredients and serve customers. Sure, I could hire people, or robots, to do those things for me, but I’m nothing if not a grafter (plus, it was a lot cheaper when I did it myself).
Suddenly, I’m running four establishments all demanding more onions, more chicken, more RAMEN NOODLES. Yet, at the same time, I’m trying to navigate an existential crisis, solve the case of a serial killer and flirt with Ava, if she lets me.
There are suggestions of romance, thanks to the Relationship Matrix, levelling up my friendships, love and electricity (meaning, I believe, conflict) with everyone I meet in Nivalis. Any actual dating took a while to kick off though. I guess I should be focusing more with my brain than my heart if I want to not get murdered and still manage to succeed as a business mogul.
There’s not time for everything in Nivalis Nights. Despite the irony of the game’s name, the night-time is actually a whole new level of restriction, meaning it’s harder to do things during Nivalis… Nights. There’s a curfew in force, everyone inside by 1AM or you’ll find yourself under the heavy gaze of security cameras, hard to dodge and even harder to get anything done. Ducking into a shelter or your own apartment in Lowtown, or renting out other apartments if you’ve got the funds is your ticket to ending curfew without a fine.
Aside from a few missions directly related to doing things during curfew, the proposition of some stealing and getting up to no-good, it felt more like nights stood as a representation and reason to stop and take stock. Quite literally. You’ll see how much your restaurants are making (or losing), assess your progression and just reboot yourself ready for a new day. But, you’ll have to be quick, travel during curfew, like a lot of things, is strictly prohibited.
And it’s the travel around Nivalis that is an exceedingly interesting concept. Whilst Ion Lands have woven in taxis, trains and boats to connect you to each pocket of the planet, once you’ve visited a place, you can fast travel there. And while I’m not a huge fan of just popping in and out of places, it’s entirely necessary in Nivalis Nights and that’s because most of the time you’ll be to-ing and fro-ing between people you need to talk to.
For the most part, it’ll feed you navigation on exactly where you need to go. If anything, it felt a bit shocking when it wanted me to work things out for myself. What do you mean I need to solve something? Don’t you know my sake bar needs chicken!?
The boat offers a different opportunity – to fish and find treasure. And fortunately, there’s so many ports to recall your boat at, it’s an easy vocation to take up and a particularly lucrative endeavour if you pick the right spots. The same goes for the farming aspect of Nivalis Nights, adopting a network of greenhouses by the Docks to harvest crops from beef to bok choy. Two stalwarts of sims that managed to provide a welcome reprieve from the heavy-handed nature of some of the NPCs I was entangled in business with.
Ultimately, Nivalis Nights is everything I dreamed of… and more. Nivalis Nights’ true beauty is its breathtaking world and the richness of the conversations I had with residents far and wide, but I was also captivated by the sheer amount of things to do. Yes, at times, my PC groaned a little under the intensity, but I wouldn’t call my experience hampered by performance issues.
Instead, I was allowed to explore this captivating world for all its worth – and that worth is quite a lot of Lims, it turns out. I truly felt like my decisions were impactful, from burning bridges to selling all the furniture in my apartment to fund my struggling businesses, it’s a learning curve illuminated in fluorescent strobes and one I’ll happily continue to lose hours in. Maybe one day I’ll figure out the balance that I’m torn between. Am I an entrepreneur first, vigilante later, or is it entirely the other way around? Either way, I’m just happy to be here.
