Neva Review

Neva is a beautiful and emotional puzzle platformer. Bonus points for the fact that you can cuddle with the wolf. No missable achievements and completion takes around 4 to 5 hours.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 5 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10 on the easiest difficulty
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, I used this guide from PowerPyx
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No, there is chapter selection and it saves automatically when you pick up a collectible
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play on the easier difficulty and still unlock all the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Neva starts with a heartbreaking scene. However, you will not yet feel the full impact as you haven’t formed a connection yet with the main character and the wolf companion. This will change later on as you can cuddle with the wolf and see it grow up throughout the game. Seeing the pup change from a scary small creature to a majestic huge wolf is beautiful.

In Neva, you play as a young woman who fights and traverses through a dying world. You climb through beautiful scenes, solve light platformer puzzles, and fight the corruption. you play through the different scenes which change the look of the world so much, but if you think away the corruption that is going on, the world is always beautiful.

I find it very impressive how a game without text is able to tell such a deep story. It requires you to focus, to not miss a story point. Neva taught me that I prefer a game with text, as the ending got me a bit confused, but gladly there was a topic on the Steam forum to help me understand it just a bit more. However, I still had an amazing time playing through Neva and following the story. The movement set feels very responsive and well done, and the abilities you get later felt thought out well and just as responsive as the ones you start with.

I highly appreciate all the attention to detail that got poured into Neva. Not only in the artwork, but also in gameplay mechanics. For example how the game saves when you pick up a collectible, and how it has multiple spawn points to return to in a chapter. This means that Neva not only has no missable achievements, but it also isn’t torture to go back to an earlier part of the game to collect the thing you missed. You don’t even have to finish a part if you find the collectible you missed because of the saving that instantly happens. Unlocking all the achievements in Neva takes around 4 to 5 hours.

I give Neva 4 out of 5 stars. The artwork is breathtaking and I just want to cuddle the whole day with the wolf.

This review for Neva was written on 28 November 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 18 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.