Neva is a Puzzle-Platformer game published by Devolver Digital and the second title from GRIS developers Nomada Studio. This time, the game draws inspiration from Studio Ghibli films, with Princess Mononoke as its most obvious inspiration.

The game follows a young woman named Alba who raises a wolf cub named Neva as the world around them is corrupted by dark forces. Spanning four seasons, the two work together to fight back against this corruption with their bonds being tested as the cub grows into an adult in a world that is falling apart.

A prequel DLC telling the story of how Alba and Neva first met, Neva: Prologue, was released on February 19, 2026.

It was released on October 15, 2024 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Tropes

• A Boy and His X: The game is centered on the bond between a girl and her adopted wolf cub.
• Action Girl: Alba is a young woman who fights against the corruption that endangers her world with the help of a sword and an adopted wolf.
• All There in the Script: Alba's name is never actually mentioned in the game itself, but is mentioned in the various official descriptions of the game. The queen of corruption is only named by the title of her battle theme on the official soundtrack.
• Ambiguous Situation: Because of the game's reliance on visual storytelling, many aspects of the setting remain ambiguous, such as where Alba came from, where the other humans are, whether there are other members of Neva's species besides Neva herself, her mate, and her eventual cub.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Toward the end of the Winter chapter, Alba has to fight the source of corruption, set to a battle music with wicked guitar strings.
• Badass Cape: Alba wears a red flowing one.
• Badass in Distress: Alba is plenty strong on her own, but is frequently overwhelmed by the corruption, requiring Neva to step in and help her. Neva and her mate also fall victim to the corruption a few times and help each other.
• Bad Moon Rising: The boss fight in the end of the Fall chapter takes place against a red backdrop with the moon in close proximity.
• Big Bad: The queen of corruption is the one behind all the enemies you face in the game and all of the corruption that mars the landscapes.
• Big Damn Heroes: Alba spends most of the second half of the Winter chapter by herself and when she’s about to get killed by the source of the corruption during that boss fight, Neva comes in to weaken the source further and help Alba finish it off.
• Bittersweet Ending: Neva pulls off a Heroic Sacrifice in order to fully destroy the corruption and allow Alba to raise its cub in a more peaceful environment.
• Bookends: The cutscene that opens and concludes the game involves Alba, a fully-grown wolf, and a cub fighting off against a dark corruption, with Alba getting injured and the adult wolf at the mercy of the corruption.
• Creative Closing Credits: The closing credits display unique artwork chronicling Alba and Neva's life, including their first meeting, which was not shown during the main story.
  • The DLC storyline Neva: Prologue would later expand on what was shown in the credits.
• Dark Is Evil: The corruption that the protagonists fight against has dark colors compared to everything else in the game.
• Disturbing Deer: One of the boss fights in the Fall chapter is against a pair of deer that have fallen victim to the corruption, with the second deer becoming active when the first one has taken significant damage.
• Downer Beginning: The story begins with a flock of birds falling from the sky and dying to a dark corruption, which Neva’s parent and Alba try to fight against. It ends with the death of said parent, prompting Alba to raise Neva for the duration of their adventure.
  • Recontextualized by the ending, which reveals that what we saw was actually the Bittersweet Ending, and the parent wolf was Neva. In the full version of the scene, we see that although Neva was mortally wounded, she and her cub did manage to defeat the corruption for good.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Alba and Neva's journey lasts four seasons, from summer to spring. Throughout this journey, the player sees Neva mature, find a mate, give birth, and sacrifice herself to permanently end the corruption's influence.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Initially, it appeared to be the case with Neva's parent, as it was not mentioned following its plot-inducing death at the start of the game. However, this all makes sense when the ending reveals that the "opening" did not actually lead into the first chapter of the story, and Neva's "parent" was really Neva herself.
• Full-Boar Action: Boars are among the animals that have fallen victim to the corruption and serve as an enemy that the forces behind said corruption can use to fight Alba and Neva.
• Generation Xerox: Neva's cub Bruma acts exactly like a young Neva and has its father's gray fur.
• Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: Alba relies on a rapier as her weapon to confront the corruption, whereas the source of said corruption uses a katana.
• Giant Spider: One of the bosses you fight essentially fits the bill, complete with an abdomen, spidery limbs, and crawling around like one.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Alba wields a sword as her primary weapon, even after Neva becomes old enough to help her in battle.
• Horse of a Different Color: The first half of the Winter chapter sees Alba being able to use the sufficiently-grown Neva as a mount in order to traverse across wide areas faster.
• How We Got Here: The entire game after the opening scene is a "how we got here", as the adult wolf in the opening was Neva all along.
• Katana Superiority: The queen of corruption wields a katana in battle.
• Light Is Good: Neva's species' fur and Alba's hair are white colored respectively, and they're the story's heroes.
• Love at First Sight: Implied with Neva and her mate. She first notices him near the beginning of the Winter chapter, and the two share a few brief moments of connection when he saves her and Alba, and she later returns the favor by saving him.
• Meaningful Name: The characters have names based on Spanish and/or Catalan words.
  • "Alba" means "dawn" or "white". Fitting for the valiant white-haired heroine.
  • "Neva" is derived from nevar meaning "to snow". Fitting for a white wolf.
  • "Bruma" means "winter" or "fog". Also fitting for its white fur.
  • The grey wolf is named "Hivern" meaning "winter" according to the developers. It is encountered in the winter chapter.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: All the wolves in this game have deer antlers.
• Monster Lord: The queen of corruption. Notably the most humanoid-looking of the monsters, and the only one to fight with a proper weapon.
• Mutual Kill: Neva and the queen of corruption.
• Nightmare Sequence: The entire red world Alba and Neva travel through is revealed to be a nightmare Alba experienced after falling asleep after fighting the two corrupted deer.
• Noble Wolf: The eponymous Neva who Alba adopts is a loyal companion to her and helps fight against a darkness that’s threatening their land. This also applies to the mate who Neva encounters during the Winter chapter, and the cub they give birth to.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: A downplayed example. The player character, Alba, is the only character the player consistently follows throughout the game. However, Neva, the game's title character, and her cub are the ones to permanently stop the Big Bad in the end while Alba is out of commission.
• Older and Wiser: While the game spans only a few seasons, from fall to spring, Neva matures throughout the game, transitioning from a playful and mischievous cub to a graceful and competent parent who helps Alba in keeping her own cub in line.
• Order Is Not Good: The Corruption takes the form of a cancerous form of preservation that turns things into The Undead. Notably, killing its creations causes normal plantlife to sprout from their corpses, implying a return to normal cycles of change.
• Planimal: Neva and the other wolves possess antlers which resemble tree branches when fully grown and gain leaves when they use their purifying power.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Nightmare Sequence Alba and Neva find themselves in are primarily colored in red and black, and, fittingly enough, danger lurks around every corner in that place.
• Red Is Heroic: Alba wears a Badass Cape that's red in color.
• Rugged Scar: Neva gets an eye scar late in the game after being wounded in battle, and is quite the formidable survivor and fighter.
• Run or Die: The end of Part 1 of the first three chapters has Alba running from a powerful enemy that is using the corruption to try and kill her.
• Say My Name: The only spoken dialogue in the game comes in the form of Alba calling for Neva in varying voice inflections as well as Neva's cub at the end of the game.
• Seasonal Baggage: The story is set across the four seasons through four chapters, with the first taking place in summer and the final chapter set in spring.
• Secondary Character Title: The game is named after Alba's wolf companion, Neva.
• Secret Expanded Epilogue: By opening all the collectible white flowers, the player unlocks a short epilogue scene. In the spring chapter, climbing the giant tree leads the player into a chamber where Alba will seemingly dream of the future, showing an older Alba living peacefully with a grown-up Bruma and her many cubs.
• Scenery Porn: A lot of the game is full of lush forests, verdant fields, amongst other environments.
• Sequencing Deception: The cutscene at the beginning of the game does not lead into the first chapter, but actually occurs at the end of Alba and Neva's journey. Neva is the adult wolf in the cutscene, not the cub as the game would initially have you believe. The cub in the cutscene is Bruma, Neva's daughter who is introduced in the final chapter.
• Spiders Are Scary: Lots of the enemies you fight in the game have spider-like qualities, most abundantly seen in the way they crawl around and their legs.
• Shout-Out: The game itself is a Studio Ghibli homage, so there's quite a few of these:
  • The entire premise is inspired wholesale by Princess Mononoke, revolving around a young woman and her trusty giant wolf-steed exploring a hostile forest lifted straight from the film.
  • One of the enemy types, a shadowy ghost-thing with spindly limbs and legs with a white mask for a face, is a hostile version of No-Face from Spirited Away. There's even a King Mook version of this enemy who chases after Alba and the wolf, lifted straight from the movie when No-Face pursues Chihiro across the bathhouse.
  • An area filled with floating blue cubes, powered by some long-lost technology that Alba jumps on to climb upwards, that wouldn't look out of place in Laputa from Castle in the Sky.
  • Outside of Ghibli, there's an area where the sky is entirely crimson with a blood-red moon rising in the background, where Alba in the foreground wades through knee-high water ala Berserk.
  • Neva's death in the end is structured similarly to Mufasa's in The Lion King. Or more specifically, Simba's reaction to Mufasa's death.
• Significant White Hair, Dark Skin: Alba. The white hair provides contrast in darker environments and complements Neva's white fur.
• Story Difficulty Setting: In addition to an Adventure Mode that plays like a traditional adventure game, there is also a Story Mode that prevents the player from losing health and lowers the difficulty on the puzzles.
• Sword Plant: Alba does this to activate certain structures with totems to clear puzzles and to deliver the killing blow to bosses after weakening them. She can also use it in the air to attack enemies and to break weak structures to progress downwards.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Neva's mate is not seen again after the Winter chapter, leaving it unclear whether he simply ran away or died off-screen.
• White Is Pure: Alba has white hair and all the wolves are white, signifying their heroic nature.
• White Mask of Doom: The queen of corruption and all the enemies in the game wear one, and they're all antagonistic.
• White Wolves Are Special: Neva is a white wolf and one the main characters in the game who Alba raises while saving their world from trouble.