Regardless of the rhetoric, there is a time and place for comfort in games. It’s nice to relax sometimes! I can admit it. I also prefer just a little friction in a game, something to put the advantage every now and then, even if there is comfort within. And according to Nivalis Nights lead writer Thomas Welsh, you can find some of that comfort, it’s just not a comfortable game and you have to work for it.
“The start of the match is intentionally overwhelming,” says Welsh PC gamer in an interview. “Nivalis doesn’t feature player deaths, shootings, or boss fights, but that doesn’t mean it’s a comfortable game. Life in a cyberpunk world shouldn’t be relaxing and stress-free – not at first anyway. If you want a comfortable existence in this city, you’ll have to earn it. We imagined a world in which every app on your phone sent you an urgent notification. Players could swim upstream and they might end up rich living on a farm. Or they might learning this success in Nivalis can look different for each person. You can even complete the story while being bad at business.
I really like the specific point of Welsh life in a cyberpunk environment that is not relaxing and stress free. This is what the genre is built on! It’s a kind of hyperbole, which is looking at what’s happening in the tech world, identifying how miserable it is, and blowing it up on a macro scale with holograms and flying cars and being inundated with ads in a way that is somehow even worse than it is now. Okay sure, from the sound of things you can find some comfort somewhere in the game with enough work, I’m just glad there’s an intention to not just hand it out on a silver platter like is a little too common these days.
Welsh also spoke to PC gamer about the game’s dating mechanics, noting how the team “wanted it to be complicated” and that they “wanted the player to have a ‘what did I say wrong?’ experience. When they botch a romance, they never really know why it didn’t pan out, just like in real life. We also wanted to avoid saying “I’ve been nice to you three times in a row, so can I have sex just once please?” Maybe when my schedule clears up in 2039.
