2018’s GRIS, a water-colour freefall through light platforming and feminine pain from Barcelona’s Nomada Studio, was a masterwork of a debut title. Some six years later, Neva flourishes onto screens with a joyous abandon, gleefully toying with visual concepts and tonal identities in a way that dazzles so brightly as to mask a hesitancy that ripples just below the surface. It’s daunting to build something in the shadow of what has come before and in hedging its bets on surer-trod ground, Neva walks a gorgeous but railed path.
Where GRIS found freedom in its expressionist momentum, Neva leans much closer to form and spins a tale of fantastical creatures and a young woman, Alba, trying to come to terms with an invasive black substance blighting the land. These are immediately familiar narrative building blocks and while Neva never quite submits to outright explicit storytelling, it does find itself more orderly than its predecessor. Neva, the titular wolf and driving emotional force of the game, makes for a strange companion in this space between metaphor and literal as Alba’s relationship with nature, life, and death are all filtered through her evolving dynamic with the creature.
Neva uses colour, space, and reflections in stunning ways
It’s not that Neva isn’t immaculately designed; the melding of lithe white wolf with tree antlers and ethereal magical abilities makes for an immediately arrested presence who you’ll want to protect and fight alongside as they grow stronger and more competent. And while something of an emotional shortcut, the inevitable rise and fall of action and drama that comes from tethering your protagonist to a charming animal companion is effective, if slightly routine in contrast with GRIS’ more interpretive emotional beats.
This is, in part, because Neva the character and Neva the system never feel independent of each other. As the game progresses, Neva and Alba will be able to join forces to break weakened structures, cast light into dark places, and eventually launch Neva like a projectile attack for platforming and combat purposes. This is all tied together with the Neva button, allowing you to call out and summon them at will. Outside of some minor early game puppy training, Neva will always respond, Neva will always be ready for the player’s needs.
Mechanically, this makes Neva’s combat remarkably sharp and satisfying. The three swing combo, effortless jump and eventual Neva seeker missile attack flow from one another with ease and precision, escalating from sparse encounters to climatic boss fights. Much like GRIS before it, Neva simply feels right to control, cementing Nomada as a team with a keen understanding of the parameters of both platforming and combat, the rise and fall of gravity and momentum and everything in between. Though even then, the game is best played on its most forgiving difficult which disables the game over state and prevents replaying heightened emotional beats at risk of being diminished.
Combat is sharp and responsive
But this precision also makes Neva, the character and in turn experience, less engaging. Unfairly maligned for its decision to feature organically minded animal AI behaviours, The Last Guardian fostered a relationship between player and Trico (that game’s own big dog) through erratic but deeply endearing traits baked into Trico’s explicit disregard for the player’s commands. It was frustrating and essential for crafting a bond that felt earned, the game’s inevitable tragedies hitting all the harder for it. Contrastingly, Neva’s behaviour is only ever superficially animal, their systemic uses too cleanly restricting to allow for richer player connection.
It’s an impulse felt throughout the holistic experience of Neva in ways that aren’t immediately problematic were they not in the shadow of GRIS. The game follows a seasonal chapter structure, the pivot to form leaving the experience in a less ephemeral place than its predecessor. This ripples through the game’s pacing and more explicit narrative choices too; the immediate visual influence of Ghibli less harmful than an effectively Disney three act structure only saved by the game’s closing moments where the maturity and tonal ambiguity befitting the studio’s talents find solid ground.
These choices aren’t overtly damaging to the moment-to-moment experience of playing Neva, Nomada’s otherworldly eye for art direction and Vibes remaining untouched by the game’s less confident choices. It feels almost redundant to try and express in words just how achingly beautiful Neva is to behold, the game’s vibrancy and texture entirely too surreal and immaculately constructed for text to adequately grapple with. There are long stretches in the game’s depths that will snatch the breath from your lungs with their creativity and refinement. It would be a crime to spoil anything but the use of reflections and silhouettes in particular lead to the game’s crowning achievements in visual storytelling and platforming.
Neva captures tone in ways most games could only dream of
Likewise, Berlinist return to weave a soundscape and score that surpasses the high bar set by GRIS. The game’s sonic composition befits is broader emotional scope in ways that are almost entirely to its benefit. Though much like the creeping influence of form and more recognisable beats, the score too can lean in with just slightly too much enthusiasm for defining the moment. This tension comes to ahead in the game’s closing act as it cycles through several climatic moments in quick succession, the score (while again itself stunning) fails to rise and fall with this cadence lending the final stretch of the game a flattening sonic profile.
Final Thoughts
It’s difficult to place in the face of the game’s overwhelming and evident visual prowess but there’s a quiet self-consciousness to Neva that leads it to places incrementally but mountingly less than it should be. There are moments and even stretches of ingenuity and beauty that paint a portrait of a developer entirely in control of their craft, coalescing into a richly satisfying emotional conclusion. Neva’s path to this place is less certain though, resting too neatly atop a pile of influences and structural choices that rob it of being more than its aesthetics or touchstones. Perhaps most simply, Neva is a good game from a studio capable of greatness.
Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher
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- Nomada Studio
- Devolver Digital
- PS4 / PS5 / Switch / Xbox Series X|S / PC
- October 15, 2024
One part pretentious academic and one part goofy dickhead, James is often found defending strange games and frowning at the popular ones, but he's happy to play just about everything in between. An unbridled love for FromSoftware's pantheon, a keen eye for vibes first experiences, and an insistence on the Oxford comma have marked his time in the industry.