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. The simple controls are applied to an imaginative depth of gameplay: a puzzle-platformer enriched by combat sequences.
But where the game really excels is in the development of your relationship with the titular Neva, a baby wolf/deer creature who accompanies Alba. At first, you have to whistle the timid cub to your side or help her on to ledges. As the game’s four chapters unfold season by season (you start in summer) Neva grows up, becomes bolder, starts to charge ahead and even butts horns with the demons of his/her own accord.
You really start to feel invested in Alba’s relationship with Neva, and in the bits where your paths separate and Neva yelps piteously from some unreachable platform, you feel anxious for the little critter and look forward to your end-of-section cuddle. This is a lovingly designed, touching and immersive game which, just a few hours long, doesn’t outstay its welcome.
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