Neva Review
A girl and her wolf
While sequels are a common occurrence and a sign that the original game performed well enough, smaller developers tend to stay away from them. It's perhaps especially true for developers whose previous title was known for something specific – a gameplay mechanic, a memorable narrative, or striking visuals. Typically, the teams move on to something different with the profits they've made, though of course there are exceptions such as the Telltale games and The Banner Saga. Developers Nomada Studio broke through with their artistic 2018 platforming title GRIS, and for a follow-up they've served something of similar quality with Neva.
As a typical artistic indie adventure, the game doesn't have any dialogue or explicit narrative elements. We only observe, as a young woman and a white magical wolf-like creature are venturing through a lush forest, with a young white wolf pup alongside them. Suddenly, birds literally begin to fall out of the sky and some kind of evil darkness appears on the horizon, quickly sweeping across the land. The trio try to put up a fight, and while they manage to repel some of the enemies, the adult wolf perishes. The young woman Alba and the cub named Neva are able to escape, but they realize that they must eventually return and cross the land again, to fight against the evil force and try to expel it from the land.
Platforming adventure games being light on story is nothing new, and indeed the developers' previous title GRIS largely focused on the inferred themes rather than explicit events. Neva continues with this trend, but tries to inject some drama into the proceedings, and it unfortunately feels forced and unearned. When the marketing materials and store page describe the game as "emotionally-charged" and "moving", you know it's not going to be very natural. Indeed, Neva goes for the cheap tear jerkers, and because they are so predictable and binary, they fail to land. The ending will also likely be divisive among players.
The narrative as a whole lacks good pacing, as the pair traverse the region for a brief adventure, before returning to their home. They clear some parts of the forest and defeat a boss, but then seemingly turn back and some time passes. This allows for gameplay growth, from the wolf pup being a helpless companion at first to becoming involved in combat and platforming directly with the woman's control in later chapters. But it also means there's never a sense of urgency or impending danger, as the forest seems to be fine waiting for the pair to venture out every once in a while, to mop up some of the dark roots and creatures that overrun it. But hey, at least you can call out for Neva (who seems to mostly ignore you) and pet them.
Neva is a fairly typical 2D platformer, where you traverse across a series of platforms and do a lot of path clearing and occasional combat. The ledges and platforms are easy to identify, and the linear progress through the chapters keeps the gameplay engaging enough. Your jumping is a bit short and feels heavy, but there is a double jump and a dash ability, which the game begins to require fairly often and rather quickly. Many dark roots block your way, which can be dodged through or hacked away at. Eventually you'll be jumping between platforms and needing to attack weak spots suspended in mid-air, thus requiring the frequent combination of jumps and dash in a different order. It's never particularly challenging, but may require the occasional pause to consider the sequence of movements necessary. The game keeps the platforming varied enough with the later introduction of the wolf Neva to your moveset, allowing Alba to reach remote platforms and perform ledge grabs of sorts.
The levels eventually adopt a similar design to GRIS, where they remain linear but offer more than one path that needs to be completed, in order to retrieve some artifact and bring it back to the center. This design is fine, but is a little repetitive, like the game's combat. Alba has a basic melee attack that is used for some environmental challenges, but mostly in combat, to hack away at dark creatures that appear at certain set pieces. It requires quite a few hits of her sword to defeat singular enemies, and it doesn’t feel particularly impactful. Later when Neva is able to join combat, you get some ranged options, but it still never really clicks in a satisfying way. Dodge is used here just like in platforming, to evade attacks and get behind or closer to foes.
In addition to the platforming and scripted enemy encounters, there are also the occasional escape sequences and boss battles. The boss fights are engaging, though it's mostly about learning the signs of the incoming attacks and getting out of the way in time. Taking damage removes one of three lives that Alba has, and perishing means restarting from a checkpoint. Health can be restored in combat by landing successive hits, as well as at various checkpoints. The game's combat is simple enough and not particularly tough, but there is an option for an easy adventure mode if needed.
Like GRIS, Neva focuses on its visuals, and they are indeed quite wonderful. The painterly art style is the title's most impressive feature, creating striking vistas as the camera zooms in and out depending on the scene and situation. From the initial starting areas on the forest floor, to the later floating islands and dark underground caverns, the visual variety is plentiful and it all looks rather striking. The blend of different colors and settings creates surprisingly atmospheric levels, which are supported by excellent background music as well as detailed and immersive sound effects, from dark enemy creatures scurrying and climbing around, to the idle sounds of nature. The animations and visual effects are also fitting, if not as impressive. As mentioned, the game also dips into the art style of GRIS, which is honestly a bit off-putting and dilutes this game's world setting.
Thanks to its great art style, the game is not very demanding on hardware. The options are fairly limited – just resolution and some nondescript quality setting of three stages, which can make it look almost like a pixel art style game. Mouse is supported in menus, but the game itself is keyboard-only. It works, but a controller is definitely recommended.
Neva is a solid 2D platforming adventure with a great presentation quality. Its emotional beats may be far too on-the-nose and undeserved, but the platforming keeps the flow of the gameplay intact, even as the narrative stalls for time to pass between chapters. The combat is also serviceable if a bit dull and repetitive. The game can also be completed in under 3 hours, which seems fair for its $20 asking price, and it allows it to cram in plenty of variety and keep things progressing in both gameplay and visuals. If you've enjoyed GRIS and other art-showcase platformers, and wanted a bit more gameplay in the form of combat, Neva makes for a good continuation.