For a game with virtually no dialogue, I’m almost at a loss to summarize Neva in a few words. I could compare this new title from Gris developer Nomada Studio to the mysteriously bleak world of Hollow Knight, the gameplay of Braid (sans time travel), or the emotional rawness of Life Is Strange. Yet, it feels like such a unique entity that feels like a disservice.
Neva is a simple game on paper. You play as Alba, a young woman who is alone in a dying world except for her wolf, Neva, and a seemingly endless horde of white-masked shadows who kill and corrupt the living. With only a few simple moves at your disposal—double-jumping, dodge-rolling, climbing, attack combos, and, of course, a dedicated “pet the dog” button—you must traverse this watercolour landscape, slaying shades and seeking safety.
Beneath this mechanical simplicity, however, is a much more complex landscape. Neva is a moderately challenging adventure in its own right, but it’s also one of the most beautifully bittersweet visual experiences I’ve ever seen.
To focus on the gameplay first, Neva does a masterful job of showing (not telling) the player how it works. The intro areas coax players into exploring its platforming sandbox with cleverly subtle visual cues and minimal on-screen prompting. Alba’s jumps and dodge-rolls can be strung together in a variety of ways, which will be critical in later stages, and the level design facilitates familiarity elegantly.
The better acquainted one gets with the jumping physics, the better, as boss fights and chase sequences will require efficiency if not mastery. Alba has only three segments to her health gauge and can only heal in combat by performing strings of attacks. Dodging via the roll or well-timed jumps is critical, as it takes quite a few hits to restore any lost health. Combat doesn’t get much more complicated than figuring out patterns and vulnerabilities, knowing when and how to dodge, and closing in to punish your foes, but it didn’t grow stale either.
“Neva does a masterful job of showing (not telling) the player how its gameplay works.”
Of course, there’s a story-focused difficulty that removes health and most causes of death, allowing you to drink in the aesthetics without fear of failure. The regular difficulty level is finely tuned and surmountable, though, so I recommend starting there to truly appreciate the whole picture.
Neva spends as much time in platforming and traversal puzzles as it does in combat. Like the intro areas, environments throughout the game subtly telegraph the route—for example, by highlighting climbable surfaces with white flowers. In one memorable set piece, Alba must climb trees while avoiding the darkness encroaching from below, except the trees themselves are splitting apart and beginning to float in defiance of gravity. Despite the panic of the approaching time limit, there were hints to be found in the environment, and it was empowering to identify new potential paths and use the natural phenomena to my advantage.
For the completionists, there are a handful of achievements for straying from the main path briefly. Most of these can be found holistically with natural curiosity, though the hidden flowers might require a little more tenacity. Otherwise, Nomada has done an excellent job of showing players the way forward without telegraphing or feeling like the experience is on rails.
Built upon this uncomplicated but robust foundation is an absolutely stunning feast for the eyes. Like the gameplay elements, Neva‘s audio-visual presentation is a masterclass in minimalism.
Alba’s journey takes her through the course of the four seasons, from forest oases untouched by civilization and other natural realms corrupted by shadowy monsters to eldritch ruins and nightmare landscapes and the very edge of cosmic horror. You also revisit a few areas in different seasons and see how they’ve changed.
Each area feels like a watercolour painting brought to life, with a distinct visual identity. It takes time for Alba to traverse many of these vast stretches of land, putting into perspective just how small one human (and her animal companion) are to the enormity of the natural world.
Indeed, all of Neva‘s storytelling is handled in this wordless manner. There are no grand lore dumps or opening crawls spelling out the stakes, the downfall of society, what the shadowy monsters are, or how Alba got to this situation. After an emotional opening cutscene, there is only a girl and her wolf, and the world that might consume them both.
Alba is voiced by Cristina Peña, and the only word she speaks is Neva’s name—but once again, beneath the simplicity is a vast emotional depth. There is incredible variety and situational awareness for the way Alba calls her companion. Generally, the wolf stays near but might stray based on the situation, getting distracted, seeking prey, or trying to assist. If you lose sight of Neva in a perilous situation and press the call button, Alba calls with purely authentic concern; in calmer scenarios, she might call her back playfully or chuckle at her antics. The game doesn’t need any other words to convey the strength of their bond, thanks to Peña’s powerfully raw and vulnerable performance.
It’s not clear what exactly Neva is—largely wolf-like, but with the antlers of a deer and the mystical powers assigned to foxes in many different mythologies, almost similar to Twig from Hilda. Nonetheless, he grows in size and skill as the game progresses, using a magical howl to restore special flowers found around the levels or restoring Alba’s health after big encounters. We only know that she is the goodest girl (and you’d better use that pet button often if you’re not a soulless monster).
Sure, it would be nice to have a little more narrative clarity—to know what exactly the cursed creatures are, where the rest of humanity went, or what’s up with the giant white ruins we traverse. Yet, Neva does a wonderful job of giving us all the pieces and letting us form our own interpretations of what drove this world to extinction. Whatever you think is the cause, from illness to industrialization, you might be right. Maybe it’s enough that the game gets us thinking in this way in the first place.
What was clear to me by the end of the story is that Neva is one of the finest indie games I’ve played. I was stunned several times by its haunting beauty and routinely engaged by its gameplay challenges. I was left feeling both supremely fulfilled and emotionally gut-punched. It doesn’t mince words, even if it doesn’t talk much, and I hope it serves as fresh inspiration for gaming’s storytellers and artists for many years to come.
