Neva is the second-year album from Nomada Studio, who you may remember from their beautiful, dreamy platform game Gris. Neva isn’t a literal sequel to Gris, but it certainly seems to be one in a spiritual sense, as it’s also a floating, hand-illustrated platformer that revels in metaphor. Neva introduces some drama, with combat and a health system (if not a real commitment due to near-instant restarts), and while neither the platforming nor the combat are precise enough to be decent bedfellows, I think we should be prepared to most of the problems can be forgiven. rubbish.
The flavor of the day is environmentalism, an increasingly sharp subject for metaphor, and whose broad notes haven’t really changed since Tim Curry sang Toxic Love in 1992. Neva seems particularly unoriginal in this regard because it is so clearly influenced by Studio Ghibli. The crawling pot-bellied monsters that spoil the forest are obvious cousins of Spirited Away’s No Face. The way they take over giant totem animals and make them aggressive is very Princess Mononoke, and while we’re in Mononoke, I should point out that you play as a leaping, leaping woman from the forest and her mystical white wolf bestie – the titular Neva. So you know.
I actually didn’t mind, because if you’re going to rip someone off, probably better Ghibli than FernGully, and like Gris, Neva manages to be achingly beautiful in her own right. You travel through the forest in seasons, with each season changing the look and feel of the 2D levels (I especially loved the silent white blanket of winter). In either case, you are also witnessing the creeping destruction of the pest that is attacking your home. The black gunk enemies eat away at the core of trees and rock formations, turning the world into part fantasy, part sci-fi, zero-G dreamscape. The monsters merge into larger forms, and their secretions become large monochrome flowers in which they bury their faces, destroying the world and being lotus eaters while they do so. I wonder who that could refer to?
But as the girl who travels with Neva, you can fight back. You come with a dodge dash and a sword, which you can use to stab the blob monsters that pop out of the ground to swipe at you. A regular, legally distinctive No-Face will go down after about three hits, but they can also animate the bodies of former forest friends – birds, deer, and so on. This undead creature will then run towards you, and you dodge the attacks and AOE attacks until the zombie tires and falls over, exposing a weak spot. The process is largely the same for mini-bosses and giant seasonal bosses, which carry a source of the plague and must be dispatched before moving on to the next part of the year.
As the seasons pass, Neva grows in size and you gain more skills in your arsenal to assist in both combat and platforming. You get a ground pound, you can command Neva to attack from a distance (which has secondary uses like activating timed flower platforms), and you can even ride on Neva and attack or jump off their back. Of course you can also pet Neva whenever you want. And with the exception of the petting, it all comes together in complex balletic platforming around floating tree roots and the bodies of animals frozen in flight, while strange shapes pass by in the background. Every now and then you come across a built structure, all straight lines and angles that rise from the otherwise organic landscape, often offering a new and strange platforming challenge.
But the platforming, while dreamy, may be a little too dreamy for the more advanced challenges Neva presents over Gris. There are lily-like flowers you can find that light up with a little extra platforming, but they didn’t often feel worth the effort it took to master the precise jump angle required. But there’s little cost to this, while dodging at a slightly wrong angle in a boss fight can really bite you in the floating little butt.
This is made worse by the fact that there have been admirable attempts to make the enemies as beautiful – albeit in a twisted way – as the world itself, and these have been so successful that it can be quite difficult to tell which part of them you need. to avoid. Often the safe part to dodge past is a splinter between hoof and horn that you have to thread like a needle. Neva ends up feeling tougher than he has any right to, and not because he’s a Celeste-esque nail-biter by nature.
It becomes a bit of a vicious cycle, the gossamer splendor of the game obscures the diving and diving, and the extra tension this adds to the combat makes it harder to relax into an enjoyable flow state. There was a fight against a giant boar in the second stage that I almost got into because your life totals three hits, and several times I turned on invincibility so I could enjoy the world and story more easily.
I’m really in danger of sounding ungrateful, because danger was something I wanted more of in Gris. It has a presence in Neva, but the nuts and bolts need to be tightened before it reaches an Ori And The Blind Forest, game of the year, orchestral tour level of greatness. That aside – which is honestly a pretty big ‘that’ in an action platformer – I think Neva is a step above Gris. The experience as a whole is compelling and bittersweet enough that I’ll even forgive the “it was all a dream” switcheroo.
This article is based on a review version of the game provided by the publisher.
