Nivalis Nights

A just-enough shop sim that's elevated by a beautiful city design populated with over a hundred fascinating and tragic weirdos.

Nivalis Nights redefines first-person life and management simulators, transporting us to a fascinating cyberpunk city. With deep restaurant mechanics, forays into the black market, drone evasion, nighttime missions, a network of NPC contacts, maritime transport, and an immersive audiovisual atmosphere, it is a tremendously addictive, must-play adventure.

Nivalis Nights captivates with an intense cyberpunk atmosphere, a fantastic soundtrack and lots of freedom, though its mix of restaurant management, life sim and open world doesn't always work and a flood of quests can be stressful.

If you’re attached enough to its ideas and world while tempering expectations then perhaps there’s something more to glean here, but Nivalis Nights is a dish with all the appetizing beauty but little of the everlasting flavor or texture.

The game Nivalis Nights can be described as an experience with a beautiful appearance but a shallow and scattered essence. A title that presents a visually delightful world where the player can simply enjoy being present in it, but whenever they want to do something, they encounter numerous weaknesses. A work that is ambitious and wants to be both a life simulator and a restaurant management simulator, but fails at both. Perhaps the experience of running your own restaurant in a beautiful cyberpunk-themed world could be inherently appealing and even entertain you for a while, but very soon its small and large weaknesses reveal themselves and will likely discourage you from continuing the experience.

It’s a strong contender to be one of the most intriguing ‘hidden gems’ of 2026. As long as you set your expectations right, you’ll really enjoy getting lost in the streets of Nivalis.

Nivalis Nights is an excellent game with incredible attention to detail in the design of its world and a gameplay loop that will easily draw you in, leading to long play sessions. However, its poor technical performance and terrible optimization prevent us from recommending what would otherwise easily be a must-play.

Nivalis Nights is a decent business management sim, but it fails to really build on its cyberpunk setting and gets a bit boring after a while.

With Cloudpunk, IONLANDS introduced us to a cyberpunk city just trying to get by. Unlike other cyberpunk titles, the emphasis was on the people stuck in this reality just trying to get by and build a better, brighter future. Nivalis Nights expands on that concept in some of the best ways. By shifting the focus to a business owner, you get to be part of the street-level economy in ways you don’t often get to participate. Building your own engaging and rewarding experience, though sometimes too engaging. The city is a character in its own right, bigger than you expect and with more life than you needed it to have. As a player, Nivalis can frequently have the issue of you getting lost in it; as a game, you probably don’t even care.

Nivalis Nights is a long-awaited life sim of growing a restaurant empire in a cyberpunk world. It isn’t without its problems, but it’s still an enjoyable experience, even if only for wandering around and talking to people.