The City of Nivalis: Layout & How to Get Around

A city built on water

Nivalis is not a street grid — it is a vertical city above the ocean, constructed layer over layer after the ice caps melted, running from sea level to the clouds. That verticality is the setting’s signature: your customers, friends, and rivals are stacked in tiers, not spread on a map.

The city is older than this game — it debuted in Cloudpunk in 2020, and the shared-universe story is worth a read if you care about the lore.

The three ways to travel

Official Q&A materials confirm exactly three transit options:

1. Taxi — the workhorse for moving between districts quickly.
2. Metro — the city’s rail layer, for longer hops.
3. Your own boat — the relaxed option; head to the docks and explore the waterways, which doubles as the start of any fishing trip. The October 1, 2026 patch also made the ride itself kinder: better visibility from the cockpit and less cause for motion sickness, per the official patch notes.

One official caveat since Update #2: fast travel to certain locations can hurt performance on some systems. The studio’s workaround is to save after arriving at your destination, then reload that save — performance should then reset, and a proper fix is already in the works.

What you cannot do is drive — there is no car handling in the game at all.

Which places have been officially named?

For a long time Meridian Market was the only officially named place in the city — until September 11, 2026, when the studio’s “Your Tourist Map” brochure published the first official city map. It puts three area names on the record, two of them for the first time:

• Seaside Boardwalk — the pier district: seaside views traded against crowded streets, with restaurants and hidden alleys to climb into as you leave the water behind.
• Skyhigh Gardens — the green tier high above the city: well-tended hanging gardens suspended between tranquil greenery and glowing neon, wooden bridges beneath traditional torii gates, and refined dining with a view of the clouds.
• Meridian Market — the starting district, already known from earlier official materials as where Thaddeus Carminus retires and hands his noodle business to you.

The map also marks the Docks — where your boat and fishing trips begin — and your first home. Launch week added more names, straight from the official patch notes: the October 1–2 updates reference home-furniture retailers at Hive Mall, Central Canyon, and Eastern Residential, place player-ownable venues in Central Canyon, and fix the counters at Odin’s Pub. Update #3, on October 5, works with even more: three new greenhouses in the Industrial District, a decorated neighbor’s apartment in Lowtown, the path to Deeala cleared in Mountain Town (where the Sunset Hour venue also levels properly again), unreachable Fusebox components removed from Metro Hub’s underground, visual fixes to the greenhouses at the Docks, snow that no longer clips through the ground floor at Fusion Point, and a scene-memory performance fix for The Stacks. A complete district list is still unpublished; each name will be documented here, with dates, as the studio confirms it — and, now that the game has launched, as in-game exploration pins the rest down.

Districts, weather, and curfew

Three systems shape how the city feels day to day, all officially confirmed:

• Districts — the first official names arrived with the September 11, 2026 brochure (Seaside Boardwalk, Skyhigh Gardens, Meridian Market); the taxi network implies more discrete districts than that, and the full list will be documented here, with dates, now that the game is out.
• Weather — a realistic weather system rolls over the city, changing the mood and the view from real-time simulation rather than scripted set pieces.
• Curfew — after dark, security systems and the serial-killer case make the streets a different game. The beginner guide covers what the night hours enable.

Why the layout matters for your business

Where you operate affects everything: foot traffic for your venues, access to ingredients, and how far what you grow yourself has to travel to reach your kitchen. The feature overview ties the city systems to the business loop.