‘Neva’ Is the Most Heartbreaking Video Game of 2024

What does it mean to oversee another life? A child, a pet — someone who’s entirely dependent on you for nurturing and care. And as that life grows and takes on new meaning beyond you, how do let go?

These are the key questions behind the artsy new indie game Neva, out Oct. 15. Created by Spanish developers Nomada Studio, whose previous game Gris (2018) was a visually stunning exploration of grief, Neva is about the cycles of happiness and sorrow, feelings of pride and fear, and the never-ending need to protect, as felt by a parent or guardian. It’s a story about a parent’s duty not just to nurture their children, but to teach them to improve the world they’ll eventually be stepping out into.

From the onset, Neva is a tearjerker. Its opening moments introduce the protagonist, Alba, a warrior traveling alongside a mighty white wolf and her pup, Neva. Traveling through the forest’s splendor, their peace is broken as a bird falls from the sky, tainted by a black inklike corruption. Quickly, the corruption spreads, taking corporeal shape and overpowering Alba and her wolf. In the end, the wolf is slain, leaving Alba comfort and care for Neva. Together, they’re what remains of this family.

Neva is a game of profound beauty. Its minimalist art design is portrait-like, with soft lines and vibrant color imbuing its increasingly fantastical world with a cozy hue. Whereas Gris resembled an illustrated sketch jumped off the page, Neva feels like a dreamlike take on an oil painting, by way of Studio Ghibli. The work of animated film director Hayao Miyazaki is a clear inspiration, from the look of the corrupted creatures to the spirit of the forest nature of Neva herself — it all feels very familiar to Spirited Away (2001) and Princess Mononoke (1997).

And like the great Ghibli masterpieces, Neva itself is both highly accessible and deeply affecting. There wasn’t a single moment during my two full playthroughs where I was more than a beat away from sobbing; the game’s six to seven-hour runtime is an emotionally exhausting journey seen mostly through watery eyes.

Whereas many games convey their stories through long, dialogue heavy cut scenes or the serialization of character interactions over extended periods of time, Neva cuts to the chase. It does more in just a few hours — hell, in its first three minutes — to earn its emotional impact than many video game epics do with ten times the runway. And most impressively, it does so while being almost completely devoid of speaking.

In fact, the only phrase you’ll hear repeatedly throughout the game is Neva’s name, whispered softly or cried by Alba on the player’s behalf with a button press. The game is ostensibly a classic 2D platformer where you’ll control Alba through different organic and dreamy terrain, looking for a way to escape, and eventually purify, the corruption of the natural world.

In tow is Neva, who begins the game as a pup, wholly dependent on Alba to lead. If the duo needs to cross a gap, the player will need to make the first move and turn back to call Neva, who’s unsure of her footing. If she falls, Alba can comfort her. The story progresses much like another filiation-focused game, 2013’s The Last of Us, broken up into four seasons from summer to spring, each telling their own part of the story chronologically as the relationship between Neva and Alba grows. Neva herself grows more literally, becoming bigger and more capable (and independent) as the year goes on. Each season provides the player with more abilities to use through Neva, while Alba’s remain entirely unchanged.

The dynamic between Alba and Neva plays out both functionally in gameplay and emotionally through the narrative. Moment-to-moment, Neva serves to assist in combat, chomping on corrupted monsters or strengthening Alba’s sword strikes. In puzzles, she can be used to trigger actions like illuminating a dark room or hitting a switch to activate a platform.

Overall, the gameplay is solid, if shallow. Combat is methodical, centering on properly timed dodges and the right balance of siccing Neva on foes while attacking with Alba. Missteps can be costly, but there’s little penalty to dying as combat sequences will simply start over. Big enemies and bosses aside, there’s only a handful of monster types, and the game has a slow build toward any kind of real difficulty.

The real danger isn’t what’s actually happening but the implicit dread of seeing Neva get hurt. As a pup, she’s vulnerable and can be pinned down by fiends. Her high-pitched yelps will instantly trigger an evolutionary response in all but the most sociopathic of players. Neva can’t even die, but it feels like she can. Without any overarching dialogue, the stakes are generally set by the assumption that you will intuitively respond to Neva’s cries and, after spending time watching her grow into her own, have a sincere attachment to her throughout the ride.

The game’s core loop boils down to beginning a seasonal chapter, exploring the area and seeing what the corruption has done, before following Neva’s desire to cleanse the world. The goopy black poison is unexplained (much like Alba’s basic connection to the wolves), but it serves as whichever allegories you choose: pollution, climate change, toxic behavior and culture. As Neva matures, she takes her inherent knowledge that this isn’t the way things should be, and it’s up to Alba (the player), as her parent, to help her follow the dream of making things better.

This manifests as a literal purification; defeating corrupted animals leaves behind their corpses, which Neva will honor with a ritual returning them to the earth, leaving sprouting plants in their wake. But the world itself isn’t getting better; the pair are mostly evading its reach, fighting off the nameless queen of darkness who is spreading the plague as their journey gets darker and deeper into the recesses of their mind in search of hope.

But the story is a hopeful one, although heavy on melancholy. As Neva comes into her own, she begins to accomplish more and more, making Alba feel less useful or needed. Neva’s going to grow up one way or another, maybe even becoming a parent of her own, but will the time come to let her go? One could hope not, but it’s clear how these things go. There’s a sanguine sadness to the game that’s inescapably painful.

Part of it is the visuals, supported heavily by the score composed by musical trio Berlinist. The game’s soundtrack is heavy on somber piano melodies, but ratchets up into stranger, more haunting places as the story goes deeper into dreamlike territory. There’re also multiple instances where the game, which despite never feeling truly small, goes very big, with soaring operatic tones for huge chase scenes and boss battles. These moments are infrequent, but well-earned, narratively and emotionally.

Critics might say that Neva is a game running entirely on vibes, and that’s true to a degree. Its gameplay is tight, but simple. Its puzzles are inventive, but not overly complex. And its narrative is clean, a straightforward A to B to C. And yet, woven together, Neva is astonishingly effective. Calling back to The Last of Us, Neva is one of the few games that drives home the ancestral instinct that people feel — being parents, pet owners, or otherwise — when seeing something soft that needs saving. In The Last of Us, Ellie was a precocious teen, and the players needed a road trip story to see her and Joel’s eventually familial bonding take root.

In Neva, it only takes a single cry.

After a sucker punch of an introduction that evokes the childhood trauma of anyone who’s seen Bambi, Neva traffics almost exclusively in the well-meaning manipulation of players’ emotional intelligence. After just a short time practically teaching her how to walk, the very first attack on the pup will have you seeing red, thinking, “Neva needs me.”

And we, as players, need more games like Neva.

Neva is available now on PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

From Rolling Stone US.