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Anyone who has seen “Princess Mononoke,” Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 masterpiece about a young warrior and her wolf who battle to stave off an ecological disaster, will almost certainly discern its influence on the video game Neva. Both open against the backdrop of a once pristine natural environment that has been overrun with a dark, squirming substance capable of infecting and turning animals into maniacally focused killers.
Neva parades its Studio Ghibli influence to the point where the word “homage” becomes strained, but its visual presentation, mechanics and level design lift a fairly typical adventure title into something thoroughly satisfying to play.
Like Gris (2018), the first game by the Spanish developer Nomada Studio, Neva is particularly notable for its ravishing use of monochromatic colors. Running through a green field near the start of the game, I was entranced by how the foreground called to mind the simplicity of late 20th-century computer graphics, while the more detailed mountainous landscape in the background hewed to a level of detail that one would expect in a modern game. The harmonious marriage of simplicity and lush details gives Neva a powerful aesthetic punch.
The game begins in medias res with a woman, a wolflike creature with antlers that is blinded in one eye and a cub; the trio comes upon a recently deceased bird that has been transformed into a dark flower. Soon after, a dark mass from which thin-limbed beings emerge.
The woman falls to the ground and eventually loses consciousness while the elder wolf struggles valiantly to fend off the tide. When the woman wakes, she finds no sign of the menacing threat but discovers the giant wolf lying nearby, unresponsive. The cub nudges up against her, and the two find consolation in each other’s presence.
Neva then cuts to a summery landscape where the woman and a young cub are relaxing in a glade. The woman stirs and calls the cub from its slumber. “Neva,” she says.
It’s the only word players will hear uttered for the duration of their journey.
The game’s creative director, Conrad Roset, said the woman’s name is Alba, based on a character in the science fiction novel “Mecanoscrito del Segundo Origen” (“Typescript of the Second Origin”). Early in its development process, Roset noted in an email, Neva was “about two children who meet but speak different languages, exploring that relationship and addressing themes like communication.”
Not long after the game cedes control of Alba to the player, who with the press of a button can call Neva to her side, the characters encounter a blighted tree. Its top half breaks off and is suspended in the air. Passing that, they’re confronted with hazardous shoots that spring out of the ground, which can be felled with a swing of Alba’s sword.
Neva does an excellent job easing players into its systems. At first, I found the combat fairly rudimentary as new enemy types — fat-bodied, thin-limbed, shadowy creatures or possessed animals — are introduced. But then players are confronted with them in greater numbers and different combinations. Eventually, you must raise and lower platforms while fending off enemies scampering from one elevation to another.
The game’s platforming challenges also gradually scale. An early scenario requires one to double jump and dodge in the air to avoid environmental obstacles and enemy blows. Late in the game, players must cross a mirrored landscape in which platforms are invisible on one side and visible on the other. It requires looking at the side with your reflection and reversing joystick inputs — pressing back to move forward and vice versa. It hurt my brain in a fabulous way.
Roset, the creative director, said the game’s visual influences included the sculptor David Umemoto, whose “geometry inspires my architectural designs”; the work of the artist Zdzislaw Beksinski, whose work served as a touchstone for the game’s enemy designs; and “the landscapes of the illustrator Pascal Campion.” The overall visual approach, he said, is “drawing without outlines, without lines, relying solely on shapes.”
It’s extraordinarily effective. Neva is top-drawer eye candy by a developer whose flair for visual language stands among the best in the industry.
Neva was reviewed on the PlayStation 5. It is also available on the PC, PlayStation 4, Switch and Xbox Series X|S.
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