After the launch of Grisa beautiful game exploring grief, the team at Nomada Studio in Barcelona needed a long break. For about six months they didn’t even think about what the future would bring, avoiding words like “Unity” or “sequel.” Eventually, director Conrad Roset, who was aging at the time, came up with the idea of a similar experience that would introduce a new companion, allowing players to connect with and care for another character.
“I told him, no problem, as long as it’s not a four-legged animal, you can do whatever you want,” says lead producer Roger Mendoza, noting that animating critters with many legs can be “quite painful.” But the director could argue for a game called Neva about a young woman who goes on an emotional journey with a magical fox creature. “I think it was worth it,” Mendoza admits.
Neva launches on October 15 (it’s coming to PC, Switch, Xbox and PS5) and the like Grisit’s a stunningly animated 2D adventure. Players take on the role of a young woman who cares for a young fox pup named Neva, and tries to guide him to safety in a world full of dark forces that seem to have been ripped out. Ghostly away. It only takes about five hours to complete, but the game covers a long period of time; each chapter is a different season, and you see the fox grow over time. At first he is a relatively helpless pup, but towards the end he becomes your protector.
Neva And Gris have a lot in common: short length, accessible gameplay, incredible art and animation, and a story told almost entirely without words. (Neva does have some voice acting, but it’s multiple variations of the heroine calling out Neva’s name. “I think we recorded 500 different ways to say Neva,” Mendoza jokes.) But the new game also introduces two key features: not just a second character, but combat as well.
“When she’s not with you, you really feel it.”
According to Mendoza, the latter was inspired by the former. “[The addition of Neva] was in a way where the fight came from – we thought it would be a good mechanism to bring together the fact that there is a companion now,” he explains. At first you have to fight to protect the fox, but as she ages and changes, so do those dynamics. “Now she’s the one who takes care of you,” Mendoza says. ‘When she’s not with you, you really feel it. Combat felt like a good way to tie everything together.
This posed a number of design challenges, particularly in terms of accessibility. One of Gris‘The biggest strengths were how easy it was to pick up and play; it even worked well on a smartphone touchscreen. But the extra layer of complexity that comes from combat and a companion meant that Neva “is not as approachable as Gris” said Mendoza. “We knew that early on; the moment you add more controls, it becomes more difficult.” To take this into account, the developers designed the game from the start with a story mode, where you cannot die in battle. “That was a way to find the right balance,” he says.
The success of Gris – the game has sold more than 3 million copies to date – gave the studio the confidence to move in these more ambitious directions, but also to continue pursuing its strengths. One of the most important lessons from that game, according to Mendoza, was that “you can tell a strong story without using words. It’s something we had no idea if it would work Gris.” Neva takes it a step further, with a more direct storyline that covers a number of topics simultaneously – not just the developing nature of a parental relationship, but also overt themes of environmental destruction. Again, this story is conveyed almost entirely through art, sound, and animation.
The other big lessons from Gris was more practical. One of the main reasons the game’s development was so stressful and required such a long post-launch vacation was that the team was relatively small. In fact, only two programmers worked on it Gris not at all, requiring many late nights and long hours. Now that many Nomada members are older and have families of their own, work-life balance is a much bigger priority. And so one of the most important changes between Gris And Neva was seemingly simple: “we hired more programmers.”
