The Glitzy Cyberpunk Sim Nivalis Nights Needs Just One Second Off

Sounds really interesting, though.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up in the town of Newalis for the first time was that it was beautiful. My top-floor apartment there overlooks a neon-lit cyberpunk metropolis, and the way the rain pours down my windows and reflects the colorful glow of the neon looks stunning. I quickly learned that things weren't glamorous on the outside, though - there was a killer on the loose, a large corrupt corporation controlling everything, a mandatory curfew enforced by security robots, a barrage of loan sharks, and best of all, an NPC who threatened to "go fuck yourself."

When I booted up Nivalis Nights, a cyberpunk restaurant management sim and life sim that's also the ION LANDS sequel to Cloudpunk, I was immediately excited about it all. I put in a few hours this week and was really looking forward to finally playing a harder-edged management sim. Unfortunately, its ambition is uncomfortably compressed, resulting in a game whose first few hours feel incredibly tedious and undercooked.

The second thing I noticed after waking up was Ava, who quickly became my enemy. Ava is an automaton that lacks a physical presence and instead seems to exist in my brain somewhere to provide tutorials and chat with me. (Honestly, I forgot how he explains his existence. That's because I didn't want to listen to him at all!)

The problem with Ava, who is basically a part of me, is that she interrupts everything. Instead of being an NPC texting me on the in-game phone or even communicating telepathically through popups, Ava's dialogue randomly takes up the entire screen and prevents me from moving until I'm done talking to me. It's so hard I walk to the market and I'm about to restock my restaurant groceries, but again I'm stopped in my tracks without warning from Ava.

That being said, I'm kind of glad that Ava only exists in my brain because I can't force myself with the character models in this game. Despite almost everything else in the world of Nivalis being impressively voxel-made, its characters (and their outfits, some of which look deeply outlandish) are Fortnite -y 3D modeling that isn't as stylish as the world around them. Like, here's Newalis:

These character models are much more important than expected. Despite being marketed more as a restaurant sim, so far Nights of Newalis has been more of a visual novel filled with fetch quests, so you'll be staring at these characters a lot. There's a romance system here, but I... I think I'll stay single for a while. It's a shame I feel this way about these characters because their pixel art portraits that pop up occasionally but not nearly enough are great!

Fortunately, the management department of Newalis restaurant is good. I was shocked at how many ingredients are available, and there are quite a few recipes too. However, I found myself missing a few mechanics that seem common in most modern restaurant sims. Dave the Diver and KuloNiku: Bowl Up! For example, it keeps things interesting with lots of minigames - meanwhile, Nivalis just makes me stare at the same food processor animation over and over again whenever I jump in to help my employees.

However, I still enjoyed cooking at the restaurant, and unlocking new recipes and upgrades as I progressed was a lot of fun. But as soon as I got into the groove of running my own restaurant, my assistant told me it was time to buy a second restaurant. I was really shocked - my first restaurant was still barely making a profit, my customers were still giving their meals three stars, I literally owned two tables, and it hadn't even been three full days in the game yet! Nivalis' main story, which players have said takes about 20 hours, has 14 businesses to own, so I can't imagine players might have time to settle in other areas.

The rest of my time with Newalis was not as focused. Despite already being in the middle of several other missions, I was constantly being pushed to new missions, which made for a disorganized, ever-expanding quest list that ate up part of my HUD. I unlocked the boat almost immediately after unlocking the greenhouse, which seems like two very important features that should be given some time to marinate. Instead, they both went by so quickly that I never had a chance to get excited about these new locks. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning who crushes all his presents at once and doesn't think about each one enough to finish and then say, "That's it?"

Nivalis Nights obviously has good bones: it's gorgeous, has a really interesting premise, a lot of the voice acting is solid, and it's incredibly ambitious. But I couldn't help feeling that the developers could have given this one more time in the oven, mainly to adjust the game's breakneck pace and let its ideas run for a while (or just grind it out a bit).

As I write this, I can't help but think about how one of the first customers of my restaurant on Newalis nights came in wearing a thick mask and sat down, ordered food and tried to eat it, all without removing the mask. It was just a slightly silly animation oversight, but I was just like him for the first few hours of the game. Really, we were in the same boat: I'm sure there was a good meal in front of me, but I never got a chance to taste it.

An essential cyberpunk roguelike is back in 868-BACK

The namesake Broughlike retools all the old terminals, nodes and circuits for a more accessible port to a difficult classic.

After Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Convinced Field saved some of the best stuff for last

Sid and Vincent pull the rest of the cast out of the water

10 Hours With Jonathan Blow's New Puzzle Game Order Of The Sinking Game

Order of the Sinking Star is a twist and turn game

Star Wars: Galaxy Racer is out today and Amazon Prime members can check it out for free

However, there are much better ways to enjoy one of the best games of 2026

Sign of My Patience with Fire: Fortune's fabric is wearing dangerously thin

The first part is a rewardless slog saved only by incredible characters

Graveyard Keeper 2 takes the best part of Stardew Valley and somehow makes it much, much worse

Ocarina of Time's Navi has new competition for the title of most annoying NPC in a video game. The entire cast of Graveyard Keeper 2

ConcernedApe offers more action-RPG gameplay in Haunted Chocolatier: "It's for the people in Stardio Valley who go mining"

Vibe-Coders is coming to Nintendo, and it's obviously not going to end well

The new Oblivion Remastered patch fixed the issues that the old Oblivion Remastered patch broke on Switch 2

Avatar's voice actor responded to Haft Behesht's fanatical reaction with a big middle finger

Max Payne 3 wasn't a big hit, and former Rockstar VP and writer Dan Houser has himself to blame: 'I Failed'

After fan outrage, Bandai Namco will turn Ace Combat Zero into a standalone game

Danny Trejo's son claims the actor was tricked into working on Ben Shapiro's Pro-ICE ad.