Nivalis Nights Launches On Steam With 7,000 Peak Players
Nivalis Nights arrives after ION LANDS paused marketing from around October 2025 to resolve an undisclosed legal issue, renamed the project from Nivalis in June, and settled on a September 29 local release, so the launch is the end of a disrupted production timeline rather than a clean debut.
Key Facts
- Nivalis Nights launched on Steam on September 29, 2026, from publisher 505 Games and developer ION LANDS, priced at 3,150 yen with a 10 percent discount to 2,835 yen through October 14.
- Nivalis Nights passed 1 million Steam wishlist registrations before release and recorded a peak concurrent player count of 6,822 as of September 30.
- Steam user reviews for Nivalis Nights stood at Mostly Positive with 73 percent of about 1,000 reviews positive.
- Nivalis Nights is set in the same cyberpunk city of Nivalis as ION LANDS' 2020 game Cloudpunk and supports Japanese display and subtitles.
- An Epic Games Store version of Nivalis Nights is planned, but no release date has been announced.
Reporting from 4 sources: 4Gamer.net, Automaton, Denfaminicogamer, Game Spark.
505 Games and German developer ION LANDS released the cyberpunk life and shop management sim Nivalis Nights on Steam on September 29, 2026, priced at 3,150 yen with a 10 percent launch discount to 2,835 yen running through October 14. The game is set in Nivalis, the same city as ION LANDS' 2020 adventure game Cloudpunk, and has players start with a small ramen shop, then grow into restaurants and high-end nightclubs. ION LANDS says the city holds more than 130 characters, over 100 quests, 240-plus ingredients, 190 dishes, and 620 furniture types, all rendered in voxel art with day-night cycles and weather. An Epic Games Store version is planned with no release date set. The game supports Japanese display and subtitles.
ION LANDS had already run optimization work in a May development update, describing a "Ghost system" that switches NPC processing based on their position relative to the player and whether they are on screen, plus "Object Pooling," which reuses preloaded templates instead of building characters from scratch. The studio said the city holds more than 10,000 objects that keep state, such as tables, chairs, and plates.
Performance complaints followed the launch. Users with high-end GPUs reported frame rate drops, including the RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090, and some said the game runs slower than Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing enabled. Other players reported no problems. Players also asked for changes to staff behavior, inventory management, quest and inventory UI, and in-city navigation, and said the systems are explained poorly.
Steam user reviews sit at "Mostly Positive," with 73 percent of roughly 1,000 reviews positive. On Discord, ION LANDS said it is gathering feedback, bug reports, performance reports, and suggestions, and is planning quick responses.
Nivalis itself is structured around CorpSec crackdowns and a serial murder case. Players travel by rail, HOVA taxi, or boat along the waterways, and relationships can turn into friendships, rivalries, work connections, or romance. Ingredients come from markets, greenhouses, or fishing. A weekly chess tournament is available.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 4 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- 4Gamer.net サイバーパンク都市で自由な日常と店舗経営を満喫できる「Nivalis Nights」がPC向けに配信開始。ラーメン屋から夜の街の覇者を目指すシミュレータ
- Automaton サイバーパンク商売人生活シム『Nivalis Nights』さっそく盛り上がる。厳しい当局はいるが戦いはなし、一人の住人として世界に没入できる、ラーメン屋からの“成り上がり”
- Denfaminicogamer 「サイバーパンク都市」の住人として生活するゲーム『Nivalis Nights』本日9月30日にリリース。“ラーメン屋さん”の店長にもなれる
- Game Spark サイバーパンク都市で日々を過ごす生活シム『Nivalis Nights』リリース！小さなラーメン店から成り上がり、時には恋愛も楽しめる