Neva Is a Beautiful, Poignant Game About Grief, Growth and the Power of Connection

I've never encountered an indie game developer studio quite like Nomada Studio.

In 2018, I fell in love with their first title, Gris, a one-of-a-kind platform-adventure game depicting the process of grief across gorgeously rendered, watercolor-like environments. It's a game that's stuck with me for years, so when the team announced their second release, Neva, last summer, I knew it'd be a must-play. Neva dropped last month, and the team behind the game were kind enough to give me a review code to check it out on the Nintendo Switch. I'm happy to say it was well worth the wait.

The World of Neva

Within moments of beginning Neva, the game had me fully hooked. The game's presentation is second to none with its captivating art style, taking everything I loved about Gris's look and elevating it even further, and a sweeping, orchestral soundtrack with profound emotional weight.

It starts as our heroine, Alba, notices a dead bird falling from the sky. It's the first warning sign as a source of dark and deadly corruption begins to fall upon the land, slaughtering a fearsome antlered wolf and orphaning her cub, Neva.

(Neva via Devolver Digital)

From there, Alba and Neva form an inseparable bond, and the two will need to work together to move forward, traversing through the gorgeous world as they avoid the wrath of the ever-encroaching dark, dangerous creatures spreading decay through the world.

The story is powerfully told entirely through visuals and gameplay, with absolutely zero spoken words besides Alba calling out Neva's name, or text signifies besides button prompts and title cards marking the changing seasons. Each and every frame looks like a beautifully watercolored work of art, someone making even the hostility of decay hauntingly beautiful. The atmospheric soundtrack also perfectly sets the scene between quiet, ambient moments of exploration and epic, sweeping sounds during big fights and emotional beats, and really deserves to be enjoyed through headphones.

(Neva via Devolver Digital)

 

Navigating the World

Like Gris, Neva is an adventure platformer, consisting of navigating beautiful spaces and solving puzzles therein to move forward, with occasional combat sections to mix things up.

Alba's movement is relatively simple, allowing her to double-jump and dash, chaining her movements together to reach higher places, with the complexity of traversal growing as the game continues and introduces new mechanics, such as climbing walls covered in white flowers and teleportation portals, as well as finding and touching the right trigger points to activate structures to access new areas.

One of the things the game does most brilliantly is how it conveys the growing relationship between Alba and Neva through its gameplay. At the beginning, Neva is just a puppy, and much of your progress hinges on earning her trust so that you can both move forward together. However, as you move through the stories as the seasons change, Neva swiftly grows to her full size. While you once worried for her safety at the smallest sense of danger, there's a shift until she's your protector.

(Neva via Devolver Digital)

She goes from fully relying on you to survive being much more agile and powerful, gaining new abilities with time, and there's something incredibly bittersweet yet triumphant about her becoming more independent as her skills become increasingly critical to your success. This is especially true as you encounter another one of her kind and begin to wonder if perhaps Neva would be happier with a different fate.

(Neva via Devolver Digital)

Her abilities in combat are nothing to sniff at, either. Throughout your adventure, you'll be encountering creatures embodying the corruption that's taking over the land, at first feeling a bit underpowered with just Alba's sword and her dash to get her out of sticky situations. As Neva grows, however, she becomes your most valuable ally when evil forces arise, with sharp teeth, snappy movement and teleportation moves that allow you to target specific enemies and bring them down.

Though the combat doesn't seem too tricky at first, it can get seriously challenging, making each encounter that much more satisfying to master and overcome. Alba has three health points that can be lost very quickly if you're not being careful, and though making a lot of strikes in a row without getting hit yourself will help you regain one, that can be more easily said than done. Still, the game also has plenty of checkpoints, so you'll rarely lose much progress when defeated.

(Neva via Devolver Digital)

However, if you're not into fighting challenges, Neva won't make you survive these deadly encounters. If you ever get stuck, or would just prefer not to have your progress occasionally hindered by bad guys, you can go into the settings at any time (even mid-battle) and swap the game from Adventure mode to Story mode, where you won't take damage. This allows you to toggle the difficulty at your whim, or play in one mode all the way through depending on your preferences. I seriously appreciate that as someone who doesn't mind a tougher game, while having more casual gamer friends who'd prefer to witness the story come to its beautiful and heart-wrenching conclusion.

 

Bottom Line

It took me a little under five hours to complete Neva, and it kept me under its spell the entire time. The ever-changing seasons in the game kept things fresh both visually and gameplay-wise, and I appreciated how vague and open-ended the storytelling was, never quite explaining the origins of the corruption sweeping the land.

(Neva via Devolver Digital)

It's a story that toyed with me emotions in the best way possible, making me feel everything from joy and wonder to fear and grief as it tackled cyclical natures of loss, healing and perseverance in the face of adversity. Few games manage to artistically capture a mood with their visuals and ambiance quite like Nomada Studio's, and though I experienced some framerate issues and slow load times on the Nintendo Switch, I'd still recommend it on the system for those who (like me) prefer a convenient handheld over other gaming options.

 

Neva is available now on Steam, and Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox Series for $19.99

 

Curious about the developers' previous game, Gris? Click HERE to read our full review from 2018.