Gris become a mega-hit with critics and fans alike, yet it never seems like a safe retread. Anchoring an eco-themed fairy tale with simple but satisfying combat, movement, and puzzling, publisher Devolver Digital’s latest is an easy recommendation, a crowd-pleasing platformer several shades simpler than Gris, but no less elegant or engrossing. Neva's sweetly melancholic adventure is fairly short and can be completed in an afternoon, but that will be one amazing afternoon.

Gris explored the topic of grief with environmental puzzle-solving powers and a painterly style, ittedly in an era when acclaimed “sad platformers” had formed a recognizable trend. Nevertheless, Barcelona's Nomada Studio – originally founded by two Ubisoft alums and artist Adrián Cuevas – delivered a fresh and appealing addition to this niche that cut through the noise, a trend which Neva confidently continues, along with another immersive soundtrack by returning composer Berlinist.

Like Gris, this game's absence of dialogue never feels like a hindrance, nor its ittedly simplified mechanics. This is largely thanks to a visual style which, while considerably different to its predecessor, takes comparable care with color usage, character movement, and seasonal themes to uphold its emotional storytelling, manifesting its own vibrant personality. Simpler in scope but sharper overall than Gris, Neva presents a visual high-water mark for this style of game, with a fluid pace that flows quickly through each new idea.

Wolves in the Blackening Woods

Neva's Gorgeous Forest Is An Immersive Backdrop For Its Environmental Tale

Alba lives with a pair of magical wolves in a dark verdant wood. She keeps a quick blade hidden in her cloak against any perceived threats, while the young wolf Neva has Alba for protection, as well as a massive wolf parent with spidery elk horns protruding from their brow. The trio lives in apparent harmony with nature, until the day a dead bird plummets from the sky before bursting with black flowers in the meadow below. A parade of inky masked creatures soon coats the valley in darkness en route to the woods, but Alba and the wolves react as if this grand conflict has played out before.

One of Neva’s strongest qualities is its legibility, with every busy screen instantly readable and every short puzzle clearly spelled out at a glance. The first challenging enemy you find is a perfect example; when this mask-covered abomination readied its slam attack, I instinctively dodged it perfectly, understanding its rhythms right away. It was something about the flinch of its arm, the way it reared back and teetered, as if its movements were entirely sensible and natural. This speaks to the game’s keen audiovisual design, from the measure of Alba's perceived jump distance and timing to the gentle crunch sound upon taking a step on a breakable floor.

This standard also ties in with the story and how it is told. A lesser game would stutter the tale with constant hands-off cinematic interludes, but Neva threads the bulk of its plot and character development directly into gameplay and traversal. ittedly, the game’s imagery and themes borrow hungrily from Miyazaki films in ways that will be immediately obvious to most, but these references never obstruct the game’s sense of character and inner life.

Fighting The Corrupted Hordes

Neva's Constant But Simplified Combat Hides A Few Cool Surprises

It should be stated that Alba’s combat abilities are few, and her jump/double-jump/slash/dash basics are nothing we haven’t seen before. Several new mechanics do develop over Neva’s 15 or so levels, but the basics remain somewhat minimalist throughout, and the frequent combat rarely drags out or demands constant retries. Enemies are mostly composed of glob-like black phantoms with No-Face masks from the intro, sickening amorphous parasites who pervert the flora and fauna of the forest into new foes.

Alba can directly interact with Neva in a few different ways, whether it's calling to the wolf from afar, istering pets and hugs at will, ing her to renew corrupted wildlife, and incorporating them more directly into combat later on. I’m careful here to avoid explaining how their relationship and abilities develop over time because it’s one of the game’s most wonderful and affecting features, and its manner of reveal is worth keeping secret. Suffice to say, anyone who loved Fumito Ueda’s trinity of PlayStation classics will adore what the game is trying to communicate about man and nature surviving in tandem.

An early encounter saw Neva temporarily pinned against the ground by black hands as I sliced through the vile creatures around us, and I it that I never wanted her to stray very far from my side ever after. The bond between these characters is mustered so quickly and masterfully, but in a way that never comes off as outright cheap or saccharine. It’s a careful tightrope to walk, but I never felt like Neva's character development takes the easy path, even though sacrifice and renewal are key themes throughout the game.

One Of The Best-Looking Indies Of The Year

Every Screen Is A Painting In Neva

Neva’s visual design is spectacular, from the grotesque animations of its monsters to the careful camera work that freely pans, tilts, and zooms around, often expanding the landscape and shrinking Alba to a miniscule sprite on the screen. There are signals and scenes here that could genuinely form the basis for an entire game’s visual identity, and Neva will simply tap these ideas for a few minutes of gameplay before hustling on to the next beautiful set piece.

This is exemplified in how Neva's use of color communicates the terror and splendor of the duo's journey in a manner virtually unmatched in recent games. Finer details are available everywhere you look, like the thousands of creature husks mutated into hostile architecture, the multilayered parallax backgrounds filled with woodland beasts and subtle storytelling hints, and Neva’s adorably drawn-out doggo yawns. With a runtime of approximately four hours, a replay could be easily encouraged, if not just to gaze at the world more closely once you know what to expect.

It's no exaggeration to say that nearly any screenshot is worthy of framing, and it’s inspiring to see how far Nomada Studio has come from Gris, which was its own visual marvel at the time. The screen detail in Neva is exponentially greater, but players should be aware that the interactive complexity has been scaled down as well, even though the simpler mechanics make a good fit for the new world and its cast.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

A Must-Play Adventure

Both a "story" and "adventure" mode are available as options at the start of the game, with the former intended as a more accessible and gentler experience. I’ve played many games of this ilk, but rarely saw a challenge here that prompted repeat attempts on the adventure setting. There are also some optional flowers to track down for 100%-ers, and I’ll surely play through Neva again to clear these out and unlock whatever secret they reveal. Some flowers are well-hidden and others lie out in plain sight, but the precise method of reaching a few of them eluded me.

After completing Neva, a chapter menu offers players the opportunity to jump into individual areas of the game and scoop up any flowers they may have missed. Aside from these, there are several other gameplay objectives that fill out the game's 18 achievements.

Overall, the game’s challenge felt pitch-perfect, with nary a spongey boss or unfair battle to be found, even while Alba’s base health remained at a mere three pips from start to finish. Checkpoints and healing options are generous, though, and there’s a comfortable flow maintained between action, puzzling, and just gawking at the landscape during long jogs between obstacles.

It must be a challenge to thread inspiration’s needle in a game like this one. Critics and players might point to Neva’s most obvious references as thematic shortcuts, but the game’s personality and careful sense of craft always shined through. I’m tempted to compare Neva to Playdead’s influential duology of Limbo and Inside, even though the tonal qualities remain quite different, primarily for the impeccable quality of its design and richness of its world, dialogue-free as it may be. It's a brief experience overall, but most players should feel compelled to happily Alba and Neva in starting the seasonal cycle anew, their screenshot key on a hair trigger.

Neva releases on October 15 for PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X|S. A digital PC code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.