I’m not someone who’s ever been on board with the “Can You Pet The Dog?” craze that swept and/or still sweeps video games. As a heartless individual, I am more concerned with whatever the dog’s capable of: general savagery, a howl that replenishes my HP bar, letting me climb atop its glorious mane as it strides across the barren wastes. If it’s none of these things, I would much rather have a shiny turret on spindly steel legs skitter besides me.
Nomada Studios have, incredibly, thrust their hands into my chest cavity and given me a blood-pumping mechanism. Having spent some time with upcoming action-platformer Neva (the game) and Neva (the dog from the game), I have to admit: I did enjoy petting Neva (the dog).
One more thing I have to admit: our James was – and is always, to be fair – right. The Neva demo I spent an hour with was, I believe, largely the same as the one James played not too long ago, albeit with some more polish and perhaps some other sections. Go and read his piece for the lowdown, basically, but I’ll quickly offer my own thoughts.
And those thoughts are of a similar note: Neva’s opening hour is a good time. It’s beautifully presented, as you’d expect from Nomada Studios, who worked on the very pretty Gris previously. Protagonist Alba has strong platforming chops, with a nicely weighted jump into double jump. And I like how you can mid-air dash, too, which adds just a little complexity into the mix when you’ve got to string together these moves in sequence.
I wouldn’t say I found any of the actual platforming all that challenging, or particularly novel, but it’s compelling enough and likely to evolve later down the line. What I mean by this, is that you’re hopping onto platforms or through gaps and maybe dodging through a gooey tendril in the process – nothing out of the ordinary, really, which is fine! What’s different, though, is the emotional charge fizzing behind each of these challenges.
As a lil’ pup, Neva isn’t able to fend for herself and gets scared easily by the game’s Ghibli-esque fiends, who are a bit of a cross between Spirited Away’s No Face and a Minion crawling on all fours. And because Neva’s behaviours are so damn adorable, in that she chases after butterflies and gets distracted by puddles and fireflies, you unthinkingly adopt the doting mother figure role as you press a button to call her over and pull her away from a moment of childish innocence. So a lot of the platforming may not be spectacular, but by virtue of Neva being in danger, it’s elevated into this urgent thing. You must save your fur child, even if the literal stakes are quite low.
Otherwise, it seems like the game’s platforming is going to evolve through Neva (the dog) growing older, but also through these things called Totems. The one I encountered lay in an otherworldly stage, with the forest suddenly replaced by abstract architecture and deconstructed steps. I rang a gong and the layout shifted and morphed, so I’d have to do a mixture of hopping and gong-ringing to reshape the landscape to exit the level. It’ll be interesting to see whether these Totems get folded into the forests and the like, for some added head-scratching.
And yes, James was spot on about the game’s combat. It’s alright early on, as you fend off the baddies with a basic sword combo and the occasional dodge roll. That’s your lot, in the first chapter at least, all culminating in a boss battle that’s quite Soulsy and a touch frustrating. I did beat the very large No-Face-Minion-on-all-fours hybrid on my first try (let me have this brag), yet I kept bumping into its legs and rotund belly and taking damage in the process. That’s all because I wanted to get close enough to actually hit the bastard with my sword swings, whose range was a bit piddly when it came to fighting a monster who didn’t stagger from my blows and thus gave me little leeway positionally.
It’s telling that in these moments, Neva doesn’t help, although apparently they’ll later join in combat-wise and do some mouth-clamping on those baddies. What’s interesting, though, is that as both Alba and Neva age, Alba’s abilities will remain the same (there goes James’ hope for her sword swings to change somewhat). Nomada Studios’ technical director Adrian Cuevas told me that Neva’s the one who’ll evolve to compliment Alba’s adventuring.
“What happens is that Neva evolves, she gains abilities, and that changes a little bit how you do your [Alba’s] abilities. But it’s mostly around how Neva behaves around you and how she helps you, more than Alba herself.”
Sadly we didn’t get to test this out ourselves, but I did learn something else. And that’s Neva (the dog) wasn’t actually a dog (technically, a wolf) when Nomada Studio first got their concepts together.
“Actually in the beginning it [Neva] was two persons, and at the beginning you could even control both of them”, Cuevas tells me. I asked creative director Conrad Roset about this, too, and he said that Neva’s initial concept was actually a boy and a girl, before it turned into a bird and then a bear, and then a wolf. “You can empathise more with a wolf”, Roset tells me, “although the programming team preferred the bird because it was much easier to play”.
Wolf or otherwise, I grew really attached to Neva in just the hour I spent with them. And I think that even if the game ends up being simply a “nice time” to play, by virtue of people’s fondness for her, I think it’ll elevate itself into “a very nice time” territory. When I asked Cuevas what he wanted people to take away from Neva once they’d released their hands from their keyboard or their thumbs from their rubber sticks, he gave us a knowing glance. Beyond his irises: people sobbing as they buried their heads in fur…
“Well, I guess, similar to Gris, we want them to have a fun experience”, Cuevas says. “We have this up and down, I don’t know what people will feel at the very end of the game. It will be interesting to know, but I think in general they’re gonna have this feeling of it was worth playing.” He goes on to mention something I think is rather pertinent, in this day and age of the all-consuming live service grinder.
“We just want people to play the game, enjoy it for a few hours and say ‘it was worth it’, because nowadays there’s so many games, so many games. Sometimes you start playing it like, ‘do I need to keep playing this?’. And if they can relate their own stories with their kids or their dogs, and they feel something, it moves them a little bit, then that will be perfect.”
God, I care deeply about that virtual mutt. And no, even if none of us are ready for the emotional devastation its ending will inevitably bring, I can get behind Neva’s philosophy. A succinct experience – one I’ll be monitoring very closely as its release draws nearer.
