Neva

After Alba encounters dark forces in a fading natural world, she forms a bond with Neva, a curious wolf cub. Their journey crosses four seasons as they learn to rely on one another, facing platforming challenges, hostile creatures and a changing partnership that grows from caretaking into cooperation.

Neva is a side-scrolling action adventure from Nomada Studio, developed around Alba and the wolf who gives the game its name. A traumatic encounter with dark forces leaves Alba connected to a curious cub, and the pair travel through a landscape that was once beautiful but is being overtaken by a spreading corruption. The premise stays close to their shared journey: they must keep moving through dangerous places while finding a way to survive and make a home. The world’s decline provides the larger threat, while Alba and Neva’s changing relationship gives the adventure its personal focus.

The journey is arranged into four seasonal chapters, with the changing environment marking time and Neva’s development. At first, the wolf is small, distracted by things in the landscape and wary of danger; as she grows, she becomes larger, more confident and more capable of acting without Alba’s direction. This shift changes how the two travel and fight together. They are not a pair of fixed characters with the same abilities throughout: the wolf’s growing independence is part of the progression, and their cooperation becomes more reciprocal as the story advances. The seasonal structure lets the adventure move forward without relying on a separate party, inventory or branching quest system.

Alba is the character directly controlled during the platforming sections. She runs and jumps across gaps, uses a double jump to extend an airborne route, and can dash in the air to cover space or adjust a landing. Wall-climbing passages and shifting platforms add different ways to read the route ahead. Some environmental puzzles ask Alba to reach and activate mysterious nodes, requiring her to cross moving or rearranged platforms while negotiating obstacles. These sequences combine observation with movement: the player works out which surfaces provide a route, then times jumps and dashes to reach the next safe ledge or interactable point. The camera follows a side-on view, making the order and spacing of ledges central to judging each approach, especially when the intended route moves vertically as well as across the screen.

Exploration connects those traversal sections to the combat encounters rather than opening into a large free-roaming map. Paths can include optional hidden flowers that reward looking away from the main route, while the main direction remains legible through the scenery and platform layout. The obstacles vary with the environments, so movement is repeatedly applied in new arrangements instead of serving only as a way to cross flat ground. This makes the basic actions—jumping, dashing and climbing—part of both navigation and puzzle solving. Progress moves through these spaces and continues into the next seasonal chapter. A new stretch of terrain introduces a fresh arrangement of hazards and traversal tasks, with the changing environments marking how far Alba and Neva have travelled.

When hostile creatures block the way, Alba fights with her sword and a dodge roll. Her attack can be chained into a short three-hit sequence, while evading at the right time creates room to strike again. Consecutive hits without taking damage restore health, tying survival to maintaining an uninterrupted offensive rhythm. Encounters can place several enemies together, so focusing on one target while avoiding the others is not always enough; the player also has to decide when Neva’s support will help. Larger foes and bosses use readable attack cues and brief openings, turning those fights into cycles of watching, dodging and retaliating instead of simply holding the attack button.

Neva’s role in these fights expands as she grows. Early on, Alba handles the direct combat while the cub stays close and can be unsettled by enemies. Later, Neva can engage opponents on her own, pin some down to leave an opening for Alba, and provide commanded assists that operate on cooldowns. These actions add a timing decision to the sword-and-dodge loop: use Neva to interrupt a threat or create a window, then take advantage of the opening with Alba. The wolf’s growth therefore changes the available tactics as well as the story’s relationship between the pair. Her responses are not just another weapon effect; she increasingly acts as a partner with her own presence in the encounter.

The pair’s interactions continue between challenges, where calling Neva’s name, comforting her or sharing a quiet moment gives the journey texture. Neva is largely wordless: Alba’s call is the game’s only spoken dialogue, and its delivery changes with the situation. That restraint keeps attention on gestures, movement and the shifts between landscapes. By the later stages, Neva is large enough for Alba to ride, an additional traversal possibility that reflects how their practical roles have changed. Across the seasons, the game alternates exploration, platform puzzles and fights, letting the evolving wolf and the deteriorating world carry its story without extensive spoken exposition.