Neva is a second-year student at Nomad, who you may remember from their stunning, dreamy platformer Gris. Neva isn’t a literal sequel to Gris, but it certainly feels like one in the spiritual sense, as it too is a fluid, hand-illustrated platformer fond of metaphors. Neva brings a bit of drama when it comes to combat and the health system (if not the actual stakes due to the near-instant restart), and while neither the platforming nor the combat are precise enough to be fun companions, I think we should be willing to forgive most of the mess .
Today’s theme is ecology, an increasingly poignant topic of metaphor whose overall tone hasn’t changed since Tim Curry sang Toxic Love in 1992. Neva seems particularly unoriginal in this vein, as it is clearly influenced by Studio Ghibli. The crawling, pot-bellied monsters destroying the forest are clear cousins of Spirited Away No Face, the way they take over giant totem animals and make them aggressive is very Princess Mononoke-esque, and since we’re on Mononoke, I must point out that you play as a bouncing, bouncing forest creature a warrior and her mystical friend, a white wolf – the titular Neva. So you know.
In a way, it didn’t bother me because if you’re going to fool someone, Ghibli is probably better than FernGully, and like Gris, Neva is achingly stunning in her own right. You travel through the forest through the seasons, each changing the look and feel of the 2D levels (I particularly liked the mute white blanket of winter). In each case, you also witness the progressive devastation of the plague affecting your home. Black, gooey enemies devour tree cores and rock formations, turning the world into a part fantasy, part science fiction, weightless dreamscape. The monsters merge into larger forms, and their secretions become enormous monochromatic flowers in which they hide their faces, destroying the world and becoming lotus eaters in the process. I wonder who this might concern?
But as a girl traveling with Neva, you may struggle. You come with a dodge and a sword that you can apply to stab the blob monsters that pop out of the ground and swing at you. The regular legally distinct No-Face will go down after about three hits, but it can also revive the bodies of former forest friends – birds, deer, and so on. This undead creature will then run at you and you will dodge charges and area attacks until the zombie tires and falls over, exposing a faint spot. The process is largely the same for mini-bosses and giant seasonal bosses, which carry a source of plague with them and must be eliminated before moving on to the next part of the year.
As the seasons progress, Neva becomes larger and you gain more skills in your arsenal that will lend a hand you both in combat and platforming. You get a ground pound, you can command Neva to attack from a distance (which has additional uses like activating platforms with timed flowers), you can even ride on Neva and attack or jump off their back. Of course, you can also pet Neva whenever you feel like it. With the exception of petting, it all adds up to an intricate ballet platforming around floating tree roots and animal bodies frozen in mid-flight as strange shapes pass by in the background. Every now and then you come across a built structure, all the straight lines and angles growing out of the organic landscape and often presenting a recent and strange platforming challenge.
But the platforming, while dreamy, is perhaps a little too dreamy for the more advanced challenges Neva poses to Gris. There are lily-like flowers that can be found and brightened up with a bit of extra platforming, but they are often not worth the effort of mastering the exact jump angle required. It doesn’t cost much, though, while dodging at a slightly wrong angle in a boss fight can really bite you in your floating butt.
This is made worse by the fact that an admirable effort has been made to make the enemies as stunning – albeit in a twisted way – as the world itself, and has succeeded so well that it’s quite challenging to tell which part of them you need to avoid. Often the protected part to bypass is the bit between the hoof and the horn, which needs to be threaded through like a needle. Neva feels tougher than she has any right to, and it’s not because she’s a Celeste-style nail biter by default.
It’s a bit of a vicious cycle, the game’s gossamer awesomeness obscures the dodging and diving, and the extra tension this adds to combat makes it challenging to relax into a pleasant state of flow. In the second stage there was a fight with a giant boar, which almost exhausted me, because your life is a total of three hits, and I turned on invincibility several times to make it easier for me to enjoy the world and the story.
I’m in real danger of sounding ungrateful because I craved danger more in Gris. It’s present on the Neva, but the nuts and bolts need to be tightened before it hits Ori And The Blind Forest, Game of the Year, a tour of greatness. That aside – which, honestly, is a pretty huge “it” in an action platformer – I think Neva is a step above Gris. The experience as a whole is so engaging and bittersweet that I can even forgive the “it was all a dream” shift.
The article was based on the review version of the game provided by the publisher.
