Guide

Your first day in Nivalis

Every review about the opening was written by someone who had just finished the tutorial. That makes it unusually honest, unusually narrow, and worth reading together rather than one quote at a time.

Reviews describing the opening: 21
Threads: 3
Mention the starting economy: 12

What players agree on

The opening is short, cleanly directed and thin, and players notice within hours. It does not explain much. What it does, it does well. The city, meanwhile, holds attention on its own — several people describe losing their first in-game day to walking around rather than progressing.

The other thing they agree on is the running. Running the shop, then running around to service it, is the loop the whole game rests on, and it is the most common early criticism in the mirror.

The tutorial

21 of 1,119 written reviews (1.9%)

Is the opening explained well?

Reviewers split, and both halves describe the same tutorial. It is short, visually polished, and does not explain much. Praise is about how clean it is to follow; criticism is about how little it covers. Several describe finishing it quickly and then having no idea what to do next.

Limit: Written by people who just finished it. First impressions are not the same as a verdict after fifty hours, and the mirror has no long-tenured sample of the opening.

“Already stuck on how to buy food and cook and serve. No one thought of a tutorial? After all this wait I expected this to be jaw dropping. So far, no.”

Steam review #236481668 · english

Getting lost on day one

21 of 1,119 written reviews (1.9%)

Should you rush the opening?

Several reviewers describe spending their first in-game day walking around instead of playing, and not minding. One says the game is stunning enough to explore that they had to restart. If you are deciding whether to slow down, this is the clearest signal in the mirror that the city holds attention before the systems do.

“So far I've only done the tutorial but its absolutely stunning. I got lost in the beauty walking around and looking at all the details that I had to restart because I wasted the first day looking around lol”

Steam review #236516116 · english

The early loop

21 of 1,119 written reviews (1.9%)

Is the first loop fun or tedious?

The most common early complaint is the running. Running the shop, then running around to restock it, is called out as repetitive by several reviewers, and the UI is separately described as unclear. This is the loop the whole game is built on, so it is worth knowing it is not clicking immediately for everyone.

“Started following the tutorial running the shop getting annoyed with running the shop and with all the running around and the little that I can do in the shop. End of day only made 100 basically so I'm down nearly half of what I started with oh then had to pa”

Steam review #236521397 · english

What this page will not do

It will not walk you through the opening economy. 12 written review mentions starting money, a first business, a loan or paying one off. That is not enough to describe how the money works, and a page that inferred the opening economy from one sentence would be inventing the part of the game a new player most needs to get right.

When the mirror has enough first-week reports to describe the economy, this page will grow that section. Until then it is absent rather than approximate.

Drawn from 1,119 written reviews in the mirror, fetched 2026-09-30T05:52:19Z (0 days ago). First-day reports age fastest of any thread on this site — if a patch lands, the opening changes too.