Revision 3

Daily Life and Routine

Nivalis is structured around a daily rhythm that shapes how you play. Each day starts in your apartment, gives you a limited number of hours to work, explore, and socialize, and ends with a mandatory rest at 2 AM. Within that framework, you decide how to spend your time: running your businesses, cooking, fishing, building relationships, or simply walking the streets and soaking in the atmosphere. There is no combat, no weapons, and no survival mechanics. The game does not tell you what to do each day. It gives you a city full of possibilities and a clock that keeps ticking.

The Day-Night Cycle

Nivalis has a full day-night cycle that affects the city in ways that go beyond just the lighting. During the day, foot traffic patterns follow commuter rhythms. Workers head to their jobs, shops open, and the streets buzz with people running errands and going about their lives. As afternoon turns to evening, the character of the city shifts. Shop lights start to flicker on. The food and entertainment districts get busier as people look for somewhere to eat and unwind.

At night, the city transforms. Neon signs come alive against the dark. This reflects off wet surfaces and cutting through the fog. Bars, nightclubs, and late-night food stalls see their peak hours. Energy demand spikes as heating systems and entertainment venues draw power, creating opportunities for black-market energy trading. The night is also when certain dangers become more present; the lower levels get quieter, and the people who stay out late tend to be either working or looking for trouble.

Weather

The weather in Nivalis is not cosmetic. It is a gameplay system that affects your businesses, your movement through the city, and the behavior of the NPCs around you. Rain drives foot traffic indoors, benefiting businesses with indoor seating while hurting outdoor stalls. Snow reduces outdoor movement significantly and spikes heating demand, raising energy prices for traders. Fog makes boat navigation trickier and gives the lower city an even more enclosed atmosphere.

Weather changes throughout the day and between days, adding variety to your routine. A week of sunshine followed by a three-day rain spell changes how your businesses perform, which ingredients you can source, and how you plan your fishing trips. Learning to read the weather and adapt your plans accordingly is part of the strategy.

The 2 AM Curfew

Every day in Nivalis ends at 2 AM. When the clock hits that mark, you return to your apartment and rest. There is no way to push through and keep working. This curfew is the game's core time-management constraint. It means you cannot do everything in a single day, and that is the point. Do you spend the evening cooking a batch of dishes for tomorrow's restaurant service, or do you head to a bar to build a relationship with a contact who could open doors for you? Both are valuable, but you can only pick one.

The curfew also serves a narrative purpose. Nivalis is not a safe city after dark, and the 2 AM limit reflects the reality that even in a place where danger is constant, there is a time when it is simply too risky to be out. The gangs that operate in the lower levels are more active late at night, and Corps Sec patrols thin out as the hours get later.

The Morning Newspaper

Each morning when you wake up, you receive a newspaper summary of what happened in the city overnight. This is not a passive lore dump; it is a briefing that can affect your decisions for the day. The newspaper might report on market price changes, new business opportunities, crime in your neighborhood, factional movements, or story developments.

The newspaper also reflects your influence on the city. As your businesses grow and your decisions ripple outward, the stories in the paper start to reflect what you have done. A successful grand opening might get a mention. A deal gone wrong might make the crime section. Reading the paper is a quick ritual that grounds you in the world each day and reminds you that the city keeps moving even when you are asleep.

Your Apartment

Your apartment is your home base. It is where you start each day and where you return each night. Apartments in Nivalis range from minimal studios to cozy lofts to standalone houses. The starting apartment is modest, but as your income grows, you can rent better spaces. Standalone houses are available on Calypso Island, the warm port area, offering more room and a different atmosphere from the dense apartment towers of the main city.

You can rent multiple apartments if you have the money. Having an apartment near your primary business and a second one in a different district saves commute time and gives you flexibility in how you plan your days. Some apartments have balconies or terraces with skyline views, which adds to the sense of upward mobility as you climb from the lower levels.

Furniture and Interior Design

Decorating your living space is one of the game's more relaxed activities. Furniture vendors are scattered across the city, each with unique assortments, styles, and materials. One vendor might specialize in industrial metal pieces while another carries warmer wood furnishings. Shopping for furniture doubles as exploration, since finding new vendors in unfamiliar districts gives you more options.

Interior design is not limited to your own apartments. You can take on side jobs furnishing NPC homes to their taste. These are paid contracts where an NPC tells you what kind of look they want, and you select and arrange furniture to meet their expectations. Completing these contracts earns money and builds relationships with the NPCs who hired you. It is a quiet, creative gameplay loop that provides a break from the pressure of managing businesses.

Photo Mode

Nivalis includes a photo mode with extensive customization options. You can adjust focus distance, aperture, focal length, field of view, and apply creative filters to capture the city exactly as you want to see it. The photo mode is accessible at any time during gameplay, letting you pause the action and compose a shot.

Given the game's visual identity, with its voxel art style, neon lighting, rain effects, and atmospheric fog, photo mode is well-suited to the setting. The lower levels of the city are full of photogenic scenes: neon signs reflected in puddles, steam rising from food stalls, the silhouettes of towers disappearing into the clouds above. The adjustable aperture is particularly effective for depth-of-field shots in the narrow corridors of the lower city, letting you isolate a subject against a beautifully blurred background of neon and rain.

A Typical Day

While every day in Nivalis is different, a typical day might look something like this. You wake up in your apartment and read the morning newspaper. Based on what you learn, you plan your priorities for the day. Maybe ingredient prices dropped, so you head to the shops to stock up before they bounce back. You stop by your noodle bar to check on Banor and make sure the morning shift is covered. Midday, you head to the docks for a fishing trip, catching a few fish that you cook into dishes that evening.

In the afternoon, you handle a meeting with a contact from one of the city's factions, negotiating a deal that could open up a new business location. Evening arrives, and you open your bar for the night crowd, keeping an eye on customer flow and adjusting staff as needed. Around midnight, you make a quick energy trade on the black market, buying low from the grid and selling high to a contact who needs power for an off-books operation. At 1:45 AM, you head home, passing wanted posters for the Aseptic on every other wall. You make it to your apartment with minutes to spare, and the day ends.

Tomorrow, the newspaper will tell you what happened while you slept, and the cycle starts again.