Grade: A-
There’s a very faint echo of Jeff VanderMeer’s unheimlich Southern Reach Series in the new indie side-scroller Neva. You’re plonked at the start of the game into a pleasant dreamlike landscape of pastel foliage, benign fauna and the gentle twitter of birds. But as you progress you start to encounter something darker – literally. An unexplained corruption is infecting the land. Black patches on the ground send up spooky alien tendrils. Birds fall out of the sky.
Soon you’re guiding the story’s protagonist, Alba – a little-red-riding-hood figure with a darning-needle blade – through a deepening nightmare. Patches of black petals spawn demons whom you must dodge and dispatch with your sword. You’ll find yourself running before a giant black beetle.
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