Neva review – sublime portrait of a warrior and her wolf in a dying world

PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Nomada Studio/Devolver Digital
Rarely do games move me to tears, but this tale of a woman rearing her cub in a world plagued by demons had a deep emotional effect

A warrior and her wolf are running through perspective-shifting collages of the most sumptuous nature scenes I’ve ever seen in a video game. Cranes flit from shining pools, boar and stags roam in the background; as the camera zooms out on the plain, yellow flowers extending off on all sides, a cleaved mountain comes into view in the distance. But there is a corrupting force at work. Here birds fall from the sky, black flowers blooming from their tiny bodies. Formless masked demons emerge from the ground to feast on them. These are your enemies, vanquished with a thin blade drawn from your warrior’s side. But there are so many of them – and you’re just one human, and a wolf.

Neva does not embellish this setup with words. You never find out what led to this corruption, or why you alone are fighting it. It tells its story with extraordinary visuals and elegant animation from developer Nomada Studio, in concert with chest-tighteningly effective music from Barcelona-based Berlinist. Many games that achieve this level of beauty suffer a little for prioritising style over substance, but Neva hits home on all levels. I was on the verge of tears at times, watching its formerly exquisite world succumb to corruption as the seasons passed, its beautiful creatures possessed by the awful blackness, birds frozen in motion, creating dreadful totems of the dead. By the end I was weeping as I clutched the controller.