Mini Review: Neva (PS5) - A Stunning Masterwork of Art and Animation

Time to stock up on tissues

Version Reviewed: North American

GRIS made waves in 2018 for its stunning, painting-like visual style and story, and when it came to PS4 a year later, we thought it was great. Now Nomada Studio is back with Neva, a game that builds upon the strong parts of GRIS and vastly improves the other areas to create a gorgeous, emotional, and captivating tale of loss, love, and life.

Alba is a young woman bound to a curious, spritely wolf cub named Neva following an encounter with mysterious dark forces corrupting the land. Embarking on a journey across all four seasons, you platform your way between cliffs, landscapes, and structures to fight off the darkness and survive to the next season.

Neva holds nothing back in the art, animation, and sound department. The experience is full of excellent uses of colour and shadows, each scene brimming with life in the backgrounds, character movements, and even small flourishes like Neva howling or Alba sitting down to rest. The soundtrack and pacing are also perfectly aligned with the story being told. They intensify the emotional story moments, particularly in the second half, and reinforce the fight for survival during the combat and platforming.

Those more involved moments are surprisingly strong for a narrative-focused adventure, and a vast improvement upon GRIS. Well-designed, enjoyable combat, puzzles, and platforming are constantly throwing new ideas at you as you try to destroy the dark, amorphous creatures plaguing the land. The game even has boss fights that are memorable, challenging, and visually impressive.

There's a whole 10-15 minute gameplay section in the Winter season of the five-or-so-hour adventure with one of the most impressive and fascinating platforming mechanics we've ever seen in a 2D game. It's brief but incredibly memorable, and visually stunning in the way it presents its platforming challenges to you.

These gameplay moments and the parts where every aspect of the experience comes together to work in harmony aren't quite common enough. We wish some mechanics stuck around for longer, but it does keep the experience fresh and consistently exciting, making Neva another hit from the small Barcelona-based studio.