Neva

Introduction

Neva was always going to be judged against its predecessor, and Nomada Studio knew it. GRIS, their 2018 debut, is a genuine modern classic of the atmospheric-platformer genre, and Neva — published by Devolver Digital and released 15 October 2024 — follows Alba and a wolf cub she bonds with across a decaying, seasonally shifting world. It sits at a Very Positive 94.4% across 4,197 English reviews, and reading the full negative sample finds an unusually coherent critical voice: this isn't a scattershot list of complaints, it's the same specific comparison and the same specific culprit, repeated with real consistency across dozens of independent reviewers.

A worthy successor, visually

Whatever else divides Neva's audience, its craft doesn't. Community tag votes — Atmospheric, Beautiful, Hand-drawn, Great Soundtrack — describe a game that even its harshest critics rarely argue with on presentation alone. "It is a gorgeous looking game," opens one of the highest-voted negative reviews before its actual complaints begin, a pattern that repeats through nearly the entire negative sample. The hand-painted seasonal environments and the wolf companion's growth from cub to adult across the story are singled out consistently, and the score draws the same kind of unforced praise. On presentation and sound alone, Neva earns comparison to GRIS honestly.

Where GRIS cast a long shadow

The specific, repeated disappointment is combat. Fifty-seven of the 100 most-helpful negative reviews raise it directly, and the throughline is consistent: GRIS built its entire emotional architecture around pure platforming and puzzle-solving, and reviewers who loved that approach feel Neva's addition of real-time combat dilutes rather than deepens the experience. "The focus on combat instead of puzzles doesn't really work since the combat kind of sucks," reads one 38-vote review from a self-described GRIS fan; another, more measured, calls the fighting "okay" among a list of otherwise "okay" systems propping up presentation that remains excellent. Fifty-four of the same 100 reviews compare the two games by name, and the near-unanimous verdict is that Neva's narrative and emotional impact don't reach GRIS's heights — not because Neva tells a bad story, but because expectations set by a beloved predecessor are a genuinely high bar, and several reviewers say plainly they're judging Neva more harshly for exactly that reason.

A few real rough edges

Two smaller but concrete complaints are worth naming directly rather than folding into the general comparison. A recurring, if less frequent, accessibility concern describes bright, washed-out lighting in certain sequences making platforms and on-screen text genuinely hard to make out against pale backgrounds — a real visual-legibility issue rather than a stylistic quibble, and one prospective buyers with contrast sensitivity should weigh. Separately, at a median playtime of just 4 hours among critical reviewers, 20 of the 100 most-helpful negative reviews describe the game as short, and Steam's own achievement data backs that up: the earliest story-progress achievements sit above 90% and 77% completion, consistent with a game the large majority of buyers finish in a single sitting rather than return to.

Final Verdict

Neva is a genuinely beautiful, sincere piece of work that suffers specifically from being made by the same team that made something extraordinary before it. Its own detailed critics aren't wrong that the combat doesn't match the elegance of GRIS's pure platforming-and-puzzle design, and that gap is real enough to matter for anyone coming in expecting a direct sequel to that experience. Taken on its own terms — a short, visually extraordinary adventure about loss and companionship, with combat that's serviceable rather than exceptional — it remains an easy recommendation. Just go in knowing what its own most detailed fans already told you: it's a lovely game standing in a very tall predecessor's shadow.