The Streets Of Nivalis

 Remember those dog days of summer, when I was complaining I was barely playing any games at all? Yeah, well that's over. Now the problem is trying to fit them all in...

...and at here there used to be several paragraphs about time constraints and game rotations. But when I came to read them back, even I didn't want to hear it. So let's forget all that and get straight to a game, shall we? 

And that game is Nivalis Nights.

As I said in an earlier post, I haven't experienced any of the performance issues that caused the game to be poorly received in some quarters at launch. I put that mostly down to playing on GeForce Now, where I'm guessing the servers are better configured and maintained than the average home PC. Certainly better than any of mine ever have been, at least.

For players who may have had a less pleasurable experience, there's some good news. There have already  been three patches just in the first week, all of them correcting improving or fixing various issues that were slowing the game down or causing it to run poorly; all generally aimed at improving the shaky optimization seen at launch. 

There's also been a host of bug fixes for all kinds of reported issues, everything from serious gameplay setbacks, like NPC store managers not doing their jobs, to cosmetic oversights, like player footprints left in the snow not swapping between left foot and right. There have been so many fixes and tweaks, in fact, it does make me wonder why more of them weren't caught in the testing process. I know releasing a game does suddenly expose it to thousands of highly motivated, unpaid QA people but even so, I'd have thought some of the things that are only now getting attention would have been pretty obvious to anyone play-testing the game, long ago.

Still, as No Man's Sky proves, you can still just about get away with banging it out and fixing it up later if a) you have a really solid game underneath it all and b) you do actually fix it. And Nivalis Nights is a good game already. If  Ion Lands keep working on it the way Hello Games have stuck with NMS, it could one day be a great one.

At the moment, though, the reviews are mostly split between enthusiasts, who've been jonesing for a cyberpunk city they could really live in and professionals, who look at it as a game rather than a virtual city. The former are running around 9 out of 10, the latter closer to 7.5. 

And that's probably fair. As a virtual incarnation of a futuristic, dystopian city, it's superb but as as game, not only does it have those optimization issues and bugs but it's not entirely clear what sort of game it wants to be. I'm not wholly convinced that the really excellent world-building and depth of sociopolitical commentary fit entirely comfortably around the framework of a business sim, let alone one where the business in question is "hospitality".

I was speculating before about whether it would be possible to sidestep the entrepreneurial gameplay and just sink into the city and be there. At some point I definitely want to test that out to see if it can be done. For now, though, my impression is that the game wouldn't stand for it. And even if the game did, CorpSec wouldn't.

CorpSec is what passes for government in Nivalis. Government and law enforcement. The name is a portmanteau of Corporation and Security but don't run away with the idea the corporations are providing security for the citizens. It's the opposite. CorpSec makes sure the corporations remain secure in their dominant position. Everyone else is left to live in the cracks that leaves.

One of the ways stability and compliance is assured is through a law that says any owner of a business is legally required to try to make that business grow. It's the inevitable corollary of the infamous "line must go up" ethos that's wrecking the global economy today. Just giving good service or providing a useful product isn't enough. You have to grow and the unspoken coda is "or die."

In a society operating by that principle, running one small, successful noodle bar might be seen as a criminal offense. Ironically, failing to run one wouldn't. I had an enlightening conversation with a CorpSec official in which I asked what would happen if I failed to grow my business. He told me failure was fine. I was obligated to try but no-one cared whether I succeeded.

The implication is that owners of failing business would be swept away, lost in the undercurrents of Nivalis society. Someone else would take over my business and I'd be on the streets. Perhaps surprisingly, being homeless doesn't appear to be a crime in itself. Just a death sentence.

As yet, I don't know if it's even possible for a player character to become homeless. I got an eviction warning today but the landlord, when questioned, couldn't explain why. Nor did he seem to want to do anything about it. 

Next day, he sent me a memo (A memo!), asking me to come talk to him. When I did, he told me there was a new rule about pets in the building I wasn't compliant with. But I don't have any pets, I told him. No, he said, but the rule now is that you need to get one. 

I was quite excited by that. I didn't know there were pets in the game. Sadly, I don't believe there are. Ava, my Automata, tells me the landlord's a fantasist and I ought just to ignore him. She says he'll forget what he said by tomorrow and even if he doesn't, the last thing he wants is to have to actually do anything about it. 

On that basis, it seems my apartment is secure but even if I did get kicked out, there's a free flop-house in every district that you can use if you get caught out by the curfew. And if all else fails, I can sleep on my boat.

Given that this isn't a survival game and I don't have eat or drink, either, if I did run out of money, I'm not sure anything bad would happen. I do keep getting fines of 50 or 60 Lims for breaking curfew, so I guess there might be some consequences if I couldn't pay those and there's that massive debt I inherited from Thaddeus that I'm supposed to be paying off, from when he gave me the noodle bar but...

I guess what I'm saying is that at this stage, I don't know what a Game Over would look like for Nivalis Nights, or if there even is one. I'm pretty curious to find out, though. Almost curious enough to stop stocking my noodle bar and give up on paying my bills, just to see what happens.

The reason I keep getting fined for being out after curfew, by the way, is because when the lockdown comes I'm usually skulking in the bar down the street, waiting to steal their equipment and drag it back to my place. I was wondering in the last post , whether the way you can just steal furniture from other businesses was a bug or a feature. I can now confirm: it's a feature.

Not only can you do it, you're supposed to do it. Another business-person comes up to you at one point and clues you in on how to go about it and why you should. It's because of another CorpSec law I didn't mention: it's illegal for businesses to co-operate with each other in any way. Business must be competitive and if that includes sabotage and theft then it's all perfectly acceptable. Just don't get caught or they'll fine you about two hours wages.

I stole a coffee-maker the first night and sold it. The next night I stole a refrigerator. I needed one of those so I just put it in my noodle bar and now it's full of food. The bar I stole the fridge from replaced it immediately so the next night I stole that one as well. I didn't need three fridges so I sold it. 

Before I started my one-person crime-wave, I sold the treadmill from my apartment. I was broke when I did it but I got over 3k Lims for it and that kept me going for a few days. I think selling the furniture might be what got me the eviction notice but I just lied about it and it all seemed fine. 

Lying's another thing you're probably meant to do, at least if you want to get ahead. Several times, near the start of the game, various NPCs tell you you'll have to make a choice between being nice to people and clambering over them to get to the top. You can't do both, they tell you. I thought that was rhetoric at first but now I'm pretty sure it's game design. That's tutorial advice, right there.

I haven't made any hard decisions about it yet. I'm just taking each choice as it comes. How that's going to work out for me in the long run is going to be very interesting to see. I suspect it'll end with me going nowhere and the whole game stagnating as I run out of options by hedging my bets. I don't think the game is fond of stasis.

But Nivalis is big. Really big. There might easily be ten thousand stories in this naked city. I'll have time to hear quite a few of them before my indecision drags me under. I'm looking forward to it a lot.