Neva - Switch Review

Max Olds -

In Neva, from Nomada Studios, there is a button dedicated to interacting with Neva, your wolf cub companion—variously calling to her, petting her and hugging her. There are times where you will need to use this button for gameplay reasons, but you will be pressing that button a whole lot anyway. Such is the bond you’ll develop as you traverse and fight together across vast landscapes, trying to save a decaying world from an encroaching darkness. 

The Good

At the heart of Neva is the relationship between you, Alba, and Neva the wolf. Across the duration of the game, you’ll watch Neva grow—from encouraging a new pup across her first big jumps through comforting Neva after her first monster encounter all the way to riding a fully grown Neva through the woods. In return, as Neva grows, she’ll help you out in more and more ways, organically adding new gameplay mechanics that keep the game fresh and engaging. The story of Neva, both the game and the character, are told wordlessly but effectively. It is ultimately a touching story, beautifully told.

And that’s the word that comes to mind most of all when playing Neva: beautiful. The game is stunning throughout; you can see the art-style ancestry of Gris, Nomada’s previous game. With the layering of basic 2d elements, Neva achieves a wonderful sense of scale (playing in handheld mode, sometimes the characters are almost too small). Coupled with the lovingly crafted animal animation and the Miyazaki-esque enemy design—all black blobs, spider limbs and white faces—the game doesn’t really put a wolf paw wrong visually.

The puzzle platform gameplay is also reminiscent of Gris—most definitely a good thing, with the main additions being the aforementioned mystical wolf and combat. The combat is basic but solid; you’ll need to time your dodges properly and have control of your movement if you want to beat the later combat encounters, on regular difficulty at least. An easy mode is available for those who just want to experience the story and run around the forest with Neva.

TL;DR

  • Gorgeous visual presentation 
  • Charming story elegantly told
  • Puzzle-platforming and combat combine for engaging gameplay

The Bad

Neva is not a long game; it has 7 levels, and there is limited replayability (there are some hidden areas to find, but most won’t feel a need to search them all out). The game being short is of course not a problem in itself - it tells its story and does what it came to do. What it does mean is that some of the more interesting gameplay elements don’t really get time to breathe. For example, one section of a later level revolves around reflections and invisible platforms, and I could quite happily have played another 10 times the volume of gameplay than the one or two screens it had.

On a different and not-oft-enough-considered note, the visuals did lead to some accessibility issues. Our editor is colourblind, and while playing the game he found some colours were difficult to differentiate, even when the objects were integrally related to the gameplay. In the first level, you must follow around a flock of red butterflies, fluttering amongst a green forest—this proved quite challenging for him to do, and upon scouring the game's settings, there were no options for colour blindness accessibility. While this isn't going to be an issue for the majority of players, it still seems a shame that this wasn't considered, especially from a game so focused on art with the financial backing of a publisher as big as Devolver Digital.

TL;DR

  • Game’s length leaves you wanting more 
  • Lack of visual accessibility features

Final Score: 8/10

Neva is another great game from Nomada Studios, managing to take the formula of Gris and add in new gameplay elements, a beautiful art style, and a story and characters to match. When the main complaint is you wish it were longer, you know you’re onto a great game.

Thank you for checking out our Neva Switch review, thank you to Devolver Digital (via Powerup PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support: