Neva – breathtakingly beautiful

The sun’s shining, the forest’s a vibrant green and the flowers are in full bloom. Everything’s bursting with life. A bird’s flying through the sky. All of a sudden, it falls to the ground and dies. Black flowers grow out of it. A wolf cub, its mother and a woman approach it. They’re unable to inspect the bird closely as a large shadow starts looming and dark creatures attack them. Alba, the woman, falls unconscious during battle. Although the wolf mother’s able to stop the creatures, she dies a hero’s death. When Alba comes to, she’s shocked and heartbroken. She’s joined by the wolf cub, Neva, who’s also grieving. Now it’s time for Alba to be strong and take care of Neva.

In the intro to Neva, a parent-child relationship’s destroyed and a new one created.

Parenthood’s the central topic of Neva. This makes the game significantly less abstract than Nomada Studio’s first work Gris. However, the developers’ fingerprints are clearly recognisable, and not just in the aesthetics. In terms of gameplay, it now features combat elements in addition to the platformer elements and puzzles of the first game. But the focus still lies on the story. The result’s a game that managed to bring tears to my eyes on several occasions without using any dialogue.

Summer: young Neva discovers the world

After the intro, Alba and Neva set off in search of a new home. The game’s divided into chapters and sub-chapters. Each chapter’s set in one season. As the seasons change, Neva grows from pup to rebellious yearling and finally young wolf. As in Gris, colours also play a role in the game, albeit a subordinate one.

The game begins in summer. Everything’s vibrant with lots of greens. In colour psychology, green’s associated with happiness, hope, life, nature, contentment and regeneration, but also immaturity. Fittingly, Neva’s cheerful and playful. Alba needs to protect and teach her. Sometimes the wolf cub runs away and puts herself in danger. She needs closeness and attention. And, yes, you can even pet Neva.

In this chapter, you’re slowly introduced to the gameplay. It’s both simple and sophisticated. You control Alba. Her entire moveset is available right from the start. You don’t learn any new skills nor can you equip things. Jumping, including double jumps, attacking, dodging and climbing up certain walls are all part of her repertoire. The controls feel organic and respond reliably. It’s fun to control Alba and Neva on their adventure.

Your opponents don’t move at all at the beginning. It’s only after a while that you’ll have to start dodging them as they’ll start to attack you as well. If you’re a Studio Ghibli fan, the enemies and the world around you will probably remind you of Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away. Unsurprisingly, the developers mentioned these works as a major source of inspiration. Neva also has another thing in common with the former anime: the power of nature and the importance of protecting it.

Autumn: adolescent Neva becomes independent

As the gameplay develops over time, the enemies become much more aggressive and start taking possession of animals, just like in Princess Mononoke. While Alba’s moveset doesn’t change, Neva keeps growing – quite literally. By autumn, she’s an adolescent. She no longer needs to constant protected, has become more independent and takes part in battles. You can also order her to attack.

The autumnal game world is dominated by red and yellow hues, which fits the teenage years in terms of colour psychology. This is because not only the dominant colour’s changing, but also everything in the world. It’s literally starting to show cracks. Walls crumble as you climb them, the ground breaks apart as you walk. This adds additional components to the platformer gameplay from the summertime. The cracks also represent the crumbling mother-child relationship between Alba and Neva.

In one sub-chapter, for example, you’re plunged into the dark dream world of Alba. This is where she processes her fear of losing her daughter. Instead of red, black dominates at first, underpinning the fear of loss. Only over time does the colour palette change back to red, reflecting the love between the two. Alba realises that she’s not about to lose Neva, but must learn to let go.

Winter: fully grown Neva moves on

Neva’s grown up. Now, she joins Alba in battle and also lets her ride on her back. The two have become equal partners. In keeping with young adulthood, the colour palette’s now dominated by shades of blue and violet. The barren landscape through which they roam is a canvas for change. Neva makes use of this and it’s time for Alba to let her go.

The riding unlocks new platformer elements. Nevertheless, Neva’s not a game that focuses on exploration. The levels are linear. It’s rare that you can stray from the path. For example, to look for optional white flowers.

A new addition is the mirror worlds, in which the game world’s split down the middle and mirrored horizontally or vertically. However, both sides are different. For example, the enemies only appear in the mirror world, but can still attack you in your world. This means you have to fight them in the mirror world where left and right are reversed. Or in platformer passages, where certain platforms are only visible in the mirror world, but also present in the physical world.

The opponents have also learned a thing or two and have started to use blocks as weapons. As in autumn, when they started to take possession of animals, you have to adapt your fighting technique. This keeps the combat system interesting.

Spring: a new beginning

The cycle comes full circle in spring. Everything’s in bloom and coming back to life. The world’s displaying every imaginable shade. It’s a return to the beginning, even for Neva and Alba.

My journey with the two protagonists comes to an end after just over five hours. I couldn’t get enough of the landscape and sometimes stared at it for minutes on end.

The soundtrack’s just as beautiful as the visuals. As with its predecessor Gris, sound designers Berlinist are responsible for this. They’ve perfectly captured the moods of the respective areas. Particularly the soundtrack during boss battles is epic and made me turn up the volume as much as I could.

Speaking of boss battles: just like your standard opponents, they’re not very challenging. Once you’ve figured out their moveset, you’ll have no problem pulverising them. However, if you still find the game too difficult or you’d rather just enjoy the story, there’s a mode you can select for that. In that mode, you can’t die and the opponents are easier to defeat.

Neva is out on 15 October 2024 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series and macOS. The game was provided to me by Devolver Digital for testing purposes.