Nivalis delayed again, to 2026

Well, I wanted to be talking about Nivalis as excitedly (if not more) than I have about PowerWash Sim 2 or generally speaking (because I can’t give a review yet) on FM26; however, the latest update on development put pay to that. I included Nivalis as part of my list of Most Wanted games of 2025, simply because every time I see it, I get a little more excited. Yet with every delay, I’m a little disheartened, a little saddened, but I get it. To basically quote Siobhan Beeman, studio director of Wing Commander dev, Origin Systems: “A game is only late until it ships, but it’s bad forever.“

No longer entirely true in the age of Steam updates and Early Access, but the idea is still there until many others do a No Man’s Sky. Well, it seems that Nivalis developer and publisher ION LANDS and 505 Games agree, providing a small update late last week that almost went under the radar.

“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,” the Steam news update notes.

I won’t give the full quote on the reasoning; you have the link now. You can see the news for yourself, but I will say it is a good reason. At least in my opinion. The team’s note of having a relatively small number of fully-voiced roles they had planned on 2 years ago, which has now expanded to “over 100 new voice roles.” Moreover, the team also notes, “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.” So not only is it a big job to sift through all those auditions, hand out scripts, implement the lines correctly, fix any bugs that pop up, and release.

So, with that said, the team noted, “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.” With a further note on pinning down an official release date with 505 Games, “which we hope to share before the end of the year.“

As I say, I’m beyond excited for Nivalis, as it came to the attention of many people in the aftermath of Cyberpunk 2077‘s disastrous launch. Like most kids of the 90s, The Fifth Element and Blade Runner take hold of those sci-fi styles I love, with Nivalis having that exact same look, as well as the well-lit voxel look I’m never going to turn down. Hopefully, this is the final delay for this weird, wonderful, and utterly beautiful game, and we get Nivalis sometime in early 2026.