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Cloudpunk Connection

Nivalis takes place in the same universe as Cloudpunk (2020) and its expansion City of Ghosts (2021), both developed by ION LANDS. The three games share a setting, a city, and a body of lore, but Nivalis is not a direct sequel. ION LANDS has described it as a "separate spin-off" that stands on its own. No knowledge of the previous games is required to understand or enjoy Nivalis. For players who have experienced Cloudpunk and City of Ghosts, though, the connections add depth and context to the world.

Cloudpunk: The View from Above

Cloudpunk was a story-driven game in which the player took the role of Rania, a delivery driver new to the city of Nivalis. The gameplay centered on flying a HOVA (a hovering vehicle) through the rain-soaked skyline, picking up and delivering packages while navigating the city's complex social and political landscape. The game played out over a single night, with Rania encountering a wide cast of characters, making moral choices, and uncovering layers of conspiracy and corruption.

The perspective in Cloudpunk was primarily aerial. Players spent most of their time high above the streets, weaving between towers, flying through clouds, and looking down at the city's lights below. When you did land and explore on foot, the on-the-ground sections were relatively contained areas, more like rest stops between flights than fully explorable neighborhoods.

Cloudpunk established the rules of the Nivalis universe: the vertical class structure, the corporate power dynamics, the existence of android citizens, the underground economy, and the pervasive sense that the city is held together by duct tape and willpower. These elements carry directly into Nivalis.

City of Ghosts: Expanding the Lore

City of Ghosts, released in 2021, was a major expansion for Cloudpunk that continued the story and expanded the world. It added new areas to explore, new characters to meet, and new storylines that deepened the lore of the Nivalis universe. The expansion was large enough to feel like a standalone game, and it gave ION LANDS an opportunity to refine their narrative techniques before taking on the much larger scope of Nivalis.

City of Ghosts explored themes of memory, identity, and what it means to live in a city where technology can blur the line between human and machine. These themes resonate in Nivalis as well, particularly in the presence of android characters and the question of AI autonomy that the Aseptic storyline raises.

The Shift in Perspective

The most fundamental difference between Cloudpunk and Nivalis is the perspective. Cloudpunk was about flying over the city. Nivalis is about living in it. This is not just a camera change; it reshapes the entire experience.

In Cloudpunk, the city was a spectacle viewed from above: a glittering, sprawling mass of lights and towers. In Nivalis, the city is the space you inhabit. You walk its streets, ride its trains, navigate its waterways, and know its neighborhoods by the vendors on the corners and the characters who greet you by name. The density and detail that ION LANDS packed into the lower city comes alive at street level in a way that Cloudpunk's aerial perspective could only hint at.

HOVAs still exist in Nivalis. You can see them flying overhead between the towers. But the player cannot pilot one. This is a deliberate design choice that reinforces the ground-level perspective and creates a separation between the life you live and the world above you. The HOVAs represent a mode of existence (fast, disconnected, transient) that is the opposite of what Nivalis is about (slow, rooted, relational).

CORA

CORA is the master artificial intelligence that manages the city of Nivalis. In the Cloudpunk games, CORA was a significant presence: an AI system that controlled infrastructure, made decisions about resource allocation, and had its own agenda that sometimes conflicted with the interests of the city's human residents.

In Nivalis, CORA continues to oversee the city's core systems: power distribution, transportation networks, climate control, and communications. But CORA's systems have been experiencing malfunctions that cause infrastructure failures across the city. Power outages, train delays, heating system breakdowns, and communication disruptions are all consequences of CORA's declining reliability. Whether these malfunctions are random degradation or something more intentional is an open question that connects to the broader mysteries of the city.

Ocean Lore

The ocean beneath the city of Nivalis is more than just water. In the Cloudpunk games, hints were dropped about what exists below the surface and beyond the city's boundaries. Nivalis continues this thread through characters like Salt Pete, who claims the ocean contains "sentient slime, junk HOVAs and ancient, God-like AIs dreaming dark dreams."

The image of God-like AIs dreaming in the deep ocean is one of the more evocative pieces of lore in the Nivalis universe. It suggests that the city sitting above the water is perched atop something vast and unknowable, something that was there before the city was built and will be there after it falls. The junk HOVAs in the water are more mundane but equally atmospheric: the wreckage of the city's flying vehicles, sinking to the bottom and accumulating over decades. The sentient slime is harder to categorize and may be connected to the biological experiments or AI research hinted at in Cloudpunk's narrative.

Whether Nivalis will let players encounter these deep-sea elements directly or keep them as atmospheric world-building remains to be seen. The fishing system gives the player regular contact with the water, and the persistent sense that there is more beneath the surface than just fish adds a layer of unease to what is otherwise one of the game's most peaceful activities.

What Carries Over and What Does Not

Playing Without Cloudpunk

ION LANDS has been clear that Nivalis does not require any knowledge of Cloudpunk or City of Ghosts. The game introduces its own characters, its own storylines, and its own take on the city. Returning players will catch references and appreciate the continuity, but new players will not feel like they are missing context. The shared universe is a bonus, not a prerequisite.

This approach makes sense given the shift in genre. Cloudpunk was a narrative delivery game about a single night. Nivalis is a life simulation about putting down roots. The two games appeal to overlapping but not identical audiences, and making Nivalis accessible to newcomers was a smart choice for broadening the player base.

For those who want the full picture, playing Cloudpunk and City of Ghosts before Nivalis will give you a richer understanding of the city's history, its power structures, and the technology that shapes daily life. But it is not required, and ION LANDS has designed Nivalis so that the city feels complete and comprehensible on its own.