Is Niche Officially Dead?

[Ivlet]

I know the developers are working on a new game, but is Niche (and by association, Nimbatus) dead? The community appears to be sparse and the screenshots/artwork tab still shows old media that people posted years ago. The forums seem to be somewhat active, but they've completely diverged away from Niche and Nimbatus. So, what's the status of the game? In its grave or simply postponed?

[Mickmane]

What's Nimbatus?

I still play Niche now and then, even right now, with screenshots and all.

Since it's a singleplayer game that doesn't need a public server, I don't know what you mean by dead. Anyone can play it whenever they want to, no company required.

[The Moth]

Originally posted by Mickmane:

Since it's a singleplayer game that doesn't need a public server, I don't know what you mean by dead. Anyone can play it whenever they want to, no company required.

They mean 'dead' as in 'abandoned' in this case. Niche is far from finished (at least I'm hoping this isn't all there is) and there hasn't been any meaningful updates in quite a while. Nimbatus is another game by Stray Fawn Studios (the people who made Niche)

[Kayava]

i hope not, but there hasn't been a huge update in a while...

[~HarrisoN~]

Originally posted by Luna Tenebris-Flos:

Originally posted by Mickmane:

Since it's a singleplayer game that doesn't need a public server, I don't know what you mean by dead. Anyone can play it whenever they want to, no company required.

They mean 'dead' as in 'abandoned' in this case. Niche is far from finished (at least I'm hoping this isn't all there is) and there hasn't been any meaningful updates in quite a while. Nimbatus is another game by Stray Fawn Studios (the people who made Niche)

Emm. For my opinion, Niche - full completed game. Devs made all features which was promised on Kickstarter campaign. If I not wrong, they made little more than promised in KS.

Now all team works for the new game.

[Philo [StrayFawn]]

Hey everyone

As ~HarrisoN~ said, all promised features + 2 community updates (in which the community voted for new features) have been released.

We are currently porting Niche to consoles. The Switch version was released in late 2020. The Xbox1 version will be coming out in the next few months and the PS4 version too hopefully. The final decision whether there will be more free updates or maybe a DLC for Niche will be made once we're finished with the console ports.

Meanwhile, we've spent quite some time and energy on making more Niche related things:
- Niche - Breed and Evolve (a new Niche game for mobile) is coming out in the next few months
- We are soon running a Kickstarter for Adam plushies
- We are writing a draft for a book with an author about the story of Adam's sister Nara
(though this is still very WIP and I'm not sure what will happen with it)
- And I even started programming a new Niche-related prototype ^^
--> https://strayfawnstudio.com/community/index.php?/topic/11545-tinkering-on-a-niche-prototype-thingy-once-again/

[The Moth]

Originally posted by Philo StrayFawn:

Hey everyone

As ~HarrisoN~ said, all promised features + 2 community updates (in which the community voted for new features) have been delivered.

We are currently porting Niche to consoles. The Switch version was released in late 2020. The Xbox1 version will be coming out in the next few months and the PS4 version too hopefully. The final decision whether there will be more free updates or maybe a DLC for Niche will be made once we're finished with the console ports.

Meanwhile, we've spent quite some time and energy on making more Niche related things.
- Niche Mobile is coming out in the next few months
- We are soon running a Kickstarter for Adam plushies
- We are writing a draft for a book with an author about the story of Adam's sister Nara
(though this is still very WIP and I'm not sure what will happen with it)
- And I even started programming a new Niche prototype ^^
--> https://strayfawnstudio.com/community/index.php?/topic/11545-tinkering-on-a-niche-prototype-thingy-once-again/

Neat, thanks for the update!

[Mystery Wolf]

Although the game hasn't gotten a major update recently it seems, but the community is far from dead by my standards and the possibility of a new DLC might give the community more substance to exist off of if it comes out. Either way I don't think it's dead quite yet.

[Ivlet]

So... postponed it is? I know the devs are working on a Niche mobile port and a new game entirely, though.

[Philo [StrayFawn]]

Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings:
- We are working on Niche console ports (Xbox, PS4)
- The mobile game is a NEW game in the Niche universe. It focuses less on survival and more on casual breeding :)

[Greystar]

Originally posted by Philo StrayFawn:

Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings:
- We are working on Niche console ports (Xbox, PS4)
- The mobile game is a NEW game in the Niche universe. It focuses less on survival and more on casual breeding :)

This game definitely needs mod support! With mod support I'd probably come back and try again. The fact that your critters only live 3 "years" is way to short and often by the time I get any nice genes my critters with said genes die off...

[Mickmane]

Originally posted by Greystar:

Originally posted by Philo StrayFawn:

Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings:
- We are working on Niche console ports (Xbox, PS4)
- The mobile game is a NEW game in the Niche universe. It focuses less on survival and more on casual breeding :)

This game definitely needs mod support! With mod support I'd probably come back and try again. The fact that your critters only live 3 "years" is way to short and often by the time I get any nice genes my critters with said genes die off...

Why not mutate them into your breeding couple? (Or breed them in if you want to spend the extra time and food.)

[Tarruvi]

Looking at the stats, the game has recently hit a weekly player count of under 100 concurrent players. The highest it's ever gotten was on Sep 27, 2017 with 1,046 players. However, since then it's been on a gradual decline with intermittent spikes coinciding with updates or other events.

[Derp]

for anyone seeing this, niche is pretty much dead, there likely wont be anymore updates and devs have moved onto the wandering village

[Ivlet]

Bummer. I had a really huge Niche obsession when I was younger and I even got to be a moderator on the Niche forum "Stray Fawn" (I am Goggles-kun (why did they let me become a mod? I was only thirteen years old)), so seeing the game die makes me a bit sad. I'm glad I got to play Niche when its fandom was super active, because I did make a lot of friends through that.