Neva

I like to start a review by focusing on the element that for me best encapsulates a game. To put it another way: Where is the game most interesting? It could be the storytelling, the game feel or a particular system. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's hard to pinpoint. Neva, the second game from Catalan Nomada Studio, falls into the first category. Rarely have I experienced such breathtaking visuals. Playing Neva is like watching a beautiful painting unfold in real-time, with alternately calming, disturbing and downright beautiful results.

But Neva is more than its pictures. Where Nomada Studio's first game, Gris, was the platform genre's answer to a walking sim, Neva has far more far-reaching ambitions. The result is one of the most compelling art games of the year, whose amazing journey I will never forget. Like its predecessor, it's a focused, emotionally resonant puzzle-platformer, but the addition of a simple but sharp combat system takes the experience to new heights.

In many ways, Neva starts modestly. We meet our nameless protagonist and wolf cub Neva in the summer. Together they are on a mission to rid the land of a black corrupting mass that causes birds to fall from the sky and literally tears the landscape apart. You can only run and jump, and the latter is largely unnecessary. It feels legitimately uninvolving. But then something happens. Slimy black creatures bearing not a few similarities to Chihiro's No-Face attack you and Neva and start a gameplay development that is far more extensive than what I expected from Nomada Studio.

Starting with a simple three-punch combo with the handful of mechanically varied enemies the game throws at you, evolving into downward, cleaving slashes through the air and effective dashes to avoid attacks, and as summer turns to autumn and winter, Neva evolves from a helpless puppy to a full-fledged partner you can send into battle and even ride on to cover great distances quickly.

The combat system is far from complicated, which is in the game's favour, as despite its mechanical ambitions, Neva, like Gris, is still very much a game to be experienced rather than defeated. It's also sharp and responsive. At its best, combat becomes an exercise in dodging melee attacks and projectiles, sending Neva to keep the most troublesome enemies occupied while you thin out the herd.

This is all while being peppered with a few visually stunning bosses that perhaps could have had more complicated attack patterns, and some escape sequences, with the last one in particular taking my breath away with its mix of grotesque imagery and musical crescendo. One of the best gaming moments of the year.

The battles are the big news, but platforming and puzzles are just as much a part of the six-hour linear journey. Often in pairs, because the game's puzzles are usually easy to figure out, but require precise jumps to be solved, which the precise control fortunately makes an entertaining discipline.

One moment it's all about finding a route up through detached platforms and mysterious buildings by activating mystical totems in the right order, while the next you're using Neva as a projectile to smash porous boulders to cut a way out through the buildings.

Best of all, however, are the sequences where the game flips the screen - alternating vertically and horizontally - forcing you to use the mirror image to find platforms or defeat enemies. Delightfully confusing for both your brain and fingers, and an aesthetic delight in its own right.

In other words, the variety and execution of the challenges is almost lavish for a game whose greatest asset is not even its gameplay components. As I mentioned at the outset, the game's colourful forests, frozen lakes and monochromatic underworlds regularly took my breath away, beautifully accompanied by The Berlinists' alternately understated and thunderous background music. The images are the canvas on which the straightforward and almost wordless story unfolds to great effect. And like the best picture pages, it's not only aesthetically pleasing, but also tells a story about the places you visit. Be it gruesome architecture built around (and on) corpses, religious rituals or simply an idyllic clearing where life can unfold in all its lazy glory.

I really wanted to help Neva and my nameless protagonist cleanse the land - preferably with both of us safe and sound. As in The Last Guardian, you form a strong bond with the stoic and loving wolf along the way, and without going into detail, I dare say that the ending pulls at the tear ducts in a way I rarely experience in games. Nomada Studio works with themes that connect to our own world - the scorching climate and the dangers of blind worship come to mind - but the story actually stands up brilliantly on its own, the best kind of artful fantasy.

The only things that break the spell are the slightly clumsy text prompts that pop up every now and then and an otherwise excellent centre section that drags on a bit.

In the grand scheme of things, however, it hardly matters. Neva is an exceptionally successful example of how games can be aesthetically stunning, speak to the emotions and at the same time function as games in the traditional sense. In fact, it is perhaps Neva's greatest masterpiece, proving that you can take the experiential feeling of games of the 10s and equip them with a mechanical core that makes them also satisfying and detached from the audiovisual and emotional core that defined titles like Journey and Abzu. And satisfying, that's Neva. Simple, yes. And inventive, sharp and well-functioning. But it's the visuals that remain the star, because it's what elevates the narrative, the gameplay, indeed the whole package to excellence. In fact, to a real stronghold of emotional indie escapism.