Ion Lands has announced that its cyberpunk slice of life RPG Nivalis, set in the same world as Cloudpunk, will not be making a 2025 release date. Last year, the development team was aiming for a Spring 2025 release but that passed. However, the team did want to get the game out this year. However, there is still work to be done, so Ion Lands has made the decision to delay Nivalis to 2026.
In a blog post, Ion Lands said, “As you know, our goal over the past year has been to launch the game within 2025. The progress we’ve made in recent months has been both steady and substantial, allowing us to refine every aspect of Nivalis – our unique take on the slice-of-life genre – including all the intertwined, dystopian, and mysterious stories unfolding throughout its streets. However, there’s still one final piece of the puzzle missing.
Right now, we’re deeply focused on the voice over: we’ve just completed the casting process for over 100 new voice roles after our first casting of 32 roles for our demo 2 years ago. We have received more than 8,000 auditions this time. In Nivalis, there will be around 135 primary and secondary fully voiced characters, for a total of about 200,000 words. They will bring to life the multitude of complex personalities you’ll meet in the game. It’s a massive undertaking that we’re carefully overseeing, because for us this is a key element: as we’ve said many times before, we want the Nivalis experience to be as immersive as possible. So – as some of you correctly guessed after last month’s devlog – between casting, recording, and implementing the voiceover, releasing the game in 2025 would risk compromising its quality.
For that reason, we’ve made the decision to officially move Nivalis’ release a few months ahead into 2026. This will also allow us to dedicate all the time needed for additional testing, optimization, polishing, and balancing, to ensure the smoothest experience possible. We’re currently working closely with our publisher to determine a specific launch date – which we hope to share before the end of the year. Soon, we’ll let you know when we’ll be able to celebrate ‘Nivalis Day’. Thank you all for your patience, understanding, and incredible support – it’s what gives us the strength and motivation to push through this final stretch.”
In Nivalis, you begin with a small business, such as a noodle stand or a small nightclub. Your goal is to grow from these modest origins into a huge enterprise that Nivalis’ citizens will rave about and want to spend their time and money at. However, there’s more to Nivalis than just building up a business. You can get to know some of the city’s inhabitants, go fishing, or just dedicate time to home decoration. Delving into the underworld of Nivalis is also an option, if you want to go that route.
Source: Steam
