Neva review – touching platformer is one of the year’s best indies and a true work of art

Nomada Studio builds off the beauty and emotion it toyed with in Gris and dials both up to 11, creating a wildly evocative action-platformer primed to stay with you.

Neva is a beautiful 2D action-platformer that plays like a painting in motion, telling an emotional tale of loss and friendship that any fan of rich narrative stories shouldn't miss.

I would die for Neva. I know because I already have many times. Whenever the evil inky monsters we faced clenched her in their grip; whenever my sword swipes weren’t enough to keep her from harm; and whenever the few stone structures still present in this dying world began to crumble, forcing us to make a quick getaway. I never once lost the will to carry on because I couldn’t help but stay emotionally invested in the friendship at the heart of this touching action-platformer.

If you can’t already tell, I love Neva – both the game itself and the wolf-like companion it’s named after. Not just as a video game either, but as a true piece of art, and confluence of expert visual, audio, gameplay, and narrative design that renders it a masterpiece. Neva looks and plays like a continuation of the lessons Nomada Studio learned from its last release, Gris, but it does so with less ambiguity and much more confidence in its storytelling.

Proceedings in Neva start off, as most fairy tales do, with our protagonists experiencing the heartache of having a family member ripped away. From here, the bulk of the adventure focusses on the bond between the eponymous wolf and the girl charged with now taking care of her. This sets the scene for a wildly evocative tale that sees the pair progress on a journey that spans across the four seasons. It’s not our world they must traverse, but rather one suffering from a mysterious black ailment capable of infecting environments with its malice and corrupting nature’s creatures. As far as stories go it’s certainly an obscure one, yet while what you’re doing and where you are is always left for you to piece together, this human and wolf pairing’s fight for survival is always undeniable and worked to keep me hooked in.

From a gameplay standpoint, Neva doesn’t make things especially complex at all. This is very much a conventional 2D action-platformer in the sense that the girl you play as can thrust her sword to attack, dash and roll to dart out of the way of foes, and double jump to reach far-off platforms. The twist in this tale in terms of what you can do is, unsurprisingly enough, made possible due to Neva. Although starting out as a humble wolf cub, as every season evolves so too does Neva herself, alongside the ways you can interact with her. During the starting season of spring, for instance, your primary goal is to guide her through paths high and low while separated from one another, slashing vines that block her route and calling her from the other side of a large ravine.

Events play out simply enough, but it’s not long after this short, opening chapter that Neva’s capabilities grow as she gets bigger. Eventually she’ll assist you in battle and as part of puzzles, where with a simple tap of the shoulder button you can send her hurling towards enemies or an obstacle blocking your path. The way these skills double up as metaphor for how strong the two’s connection has deepened is nothing short of astounding, with Neva even acting somewhat independently much of the time. A good example is how health is handled; while at first your only chance to recoup it comes from landing successful blows against enemies, Neva’s nature to howl (and in doing so heal you) soon became crucial to my battle strategy. Slowly, over time, I learned I could depend on her more.

Hungry like the wolf

As in Gris, colour in Neva also plays a large role in this incredibly ambient and visually arresting story of love and companionship. Winter ended up as my favourite of the four main chapters due to the ways it plays with subtle blues, deep blacks, and harsh whites in order to communicate its theme of reflection. That said, one particularly spooky section that takes place around the halfway point of Fall had me in disbelief at Nomada Studio’s ability to create meticulously crafted platforming puzzles and combat scenarios using just silhouettes. Needless to say, as with the team’s prior game, Neva uses its watercolour art style to dazzle and wow in epic proportions, often looking like a painting in motion.

By the end, my connection with Neva grew so strong, I found myself pressing the dedicated shout button out of sheer habit. I’d been calling out to her since she was a wolf cub, after all, and though she may have not needed my guidance in later sections, I’d like to think that both of us felt a sense of comfort knowing that I never wanted to stay long without her. This one feeling makes sections that are particularly bombastic extremely tough to take at times, as I soon found out during one thrilling chase sequence at the end of the Winter chapter that I can only describe as part boss fight, part emotional rollercoaster. It shouldn’t be surprising that I had shed more than a few tears by the time I reached the end of Neva’s short but perfect runtime.

Neva is a Ghibli-esque adventure of torture, triumph, and friendship that won’t fail to tug on your heart strings. Combining beautiful visuals, with precise platforming and combat that coats every action you make with endless heart, it’s easily one of the best games of the year and by far my favourite indie of 2024. I’ve never felt so emotionally attached to an animal companion – which is thanks to the carefully crafted bond Nomada Studios built between the wolf and the girl, and by extension, the player; none of them made me want to take as big a leap as the ones I took to protect her. My only criticism of Neva is that I won’t be able to play it for the first time again; but the memory will stay with me forever.