Revision 3

Apartment Customization and Housing

Your apartment in Nivalis is more than just a place to sleep. It is your home base, the space you return to every night before the 2 AM curfew, and it reflects how far you have come in the city. The housing system gives you a range of options depending on your budget and your taste, starting from bare-minimum studios and scaling up to standalone houses with ocean views. Every apartment can be furnished and decorated to your liking, and the game even lets you turn your eye for design into a source of income by taking on paid interior design contracts for NPC clients.

Apartment Types

Nivalis offers several tiers of housing, each with different sizes, locations, and features. Your starting apartment is modest. It gets the job done, but it is small and undecorated. As your businesses grow and your bank account fills up, you can move on to more comfortable spaces.

Some apartments also include balconies and terraces with views of the city skyline and its inhabitants below. These premium features add character to the space and serve as a visual reminder of how high you have climbed, both literally and figuratively, within the vertical city.

Renting Multiple Apartments

You are not limited to a single apartment. You can rent as many as your wallet allows, across different areas of the city. The practical advantage here is strategic positioning. If you operate a noodle bar in Meridian Market and a nightclub across the city, having an apartment near each one means you waste less time on commuting and more time on the things that matter. Having a residence in a strategic location makes your daily movements more efficient, which becomes increasingly important as you juggle multiple businesses and social obligations.

Furniture and Decoration

In apartments, just like in business venues, you can place a wide variety of furniture and decorations to create the look and feel you want. The placement system lets you arrange items freely, covering everything from functional pieces like tables and chairs to purely decorative items like paintings, lights, and accessories.

Furniture vendors are scattered all around Nivalis, and each one offers a unique assortment of items. What sets vendors apart is not just the furniture they sell but the materials their pieces are made from. One vendor might specialize in sleek, industrial metal furniture that fits a cyberpunk aesthetic, while another carries warmer wood furnishings for a cozier feel. Shopping for furniture doubles as exploration: finding new vendors in unfamiliar districts unlocks more options and gives you a reason to wander into parts of the city you might not visit otherwise.

Some apartments come with basic furnishing already in place when you rent them, giving you a starting point. But the real appeal is making the space your own. Whether you want a clean minimalist studio or a cluttered loft packed with personality, the furniture system gives you the tools to do it.

The furniture catalog is sizeable. The game supports 620 furniture items in total, spread across the various vendors and material styles found throughout the city, which gives the placement system a deep pool to draw from whether you are furnishing a starter studio or a standalone house. As part of the run-up to release, the team has put significant work into polishing these furniture assets, which doubles as a memory-management improvement: cleaner assets mean the game can keep large, heavily decorated interiors running smoothly.

Interior Design Side Jobs

Once you feel satisfied with how your own homes look, the game opens up a way to put your interior design skills to work for other people. Walking the streets of Nivalis, you may encounter NPCs willing to pay good money to someone with an eye for aesthetics who can take their home to the next level.

These are paid contracts with specific requirements. The NPC client will tell you what kind of look they want, and you need to furnish their space according to their taste and meet their specifications. This is not a matter of just dumping your favorite furniture into someone else's apartment. Each client has preferences, and leaving them satisfied means listening to their instructions and making choices that match what they asked for.

Completing interior design contracts earns money and builds your relationship with the NPCs who hired you. It is a quieter, more creative gameplay loop that provides a break from the pressures of running restaurants and nightclubs. For players who enjoy the decoration side of the game, it is a way to turn that enjoyment into a steady income stream.

Strategic Considerations

Housing choices in Nivalis tie into the broader gameplay in several ways. The location of your apartment affects your daily routine. Living close to your businesses means less travel time, leaving more hours in the day for other activities. Living in a premium apartment with a balcony or terrace is satisfying on its own, but it also signals your progress in the game, moving from a cramped studio to an oceanside house on Calypso Island is a tangible marker of success.

The furniture you choose is purely aesthetic and has no direct stat bonuses. The same goes for apartment size. The game does not penalize you for staying in your starter apartment forever. But the housing system is designed to reward players who engage with it by giving them spaces that feel personal and lived-in, which fits the broader philosophy of Nivalis as a game about building a life, not just building a business.