Last week, I received a text from my mom that the family dog, Sophie, who we got when I was in high school and who I really still think of as “my” dog, had broken her leg. It was scary news to receive about a dog who weighs maybe 15 pounds and is on the eve of her 15th birthday. I had to put it out of my mind for the moment as I was just a couple minutes away from joining an interview. When our chat finished, I quickly called my mom to hear what happened. In short, Sophie fell while at the vet, breaking her leg, but she’s doing fine now and should make a full recovery.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Sophie while playing Neva: Prologue, a new expansion for the 2024 action-platformer from developer Nomada Studio. The DLC was announced during February’s State of Play Stream and tells the story of how player character Alba met her wolf companion, Neva, when she was just a tiny puppy. Just like the main game, the Prologue DLC is harrowing and heart-breaking; I loudly gasped when Neva fell through a brittle walkway and yelped “Give me back my dog!” at my TV when she was taken by the game’s antagonist. The developers at Nomada Studio, also the makers of 2018’s Gris, are masters at imbuing their video games with strong emotion, and Neva: Prologue just further flexes that strength.
Neva: Prologue opens with Alba alone in a forest, the trees, flowers, and sky all various shades of pink. She gleefully chases after butterflies before finding herself in a dreary swamp. Enemies, the No Face-like creatures from the base game, pop out from the earth to attack her. Eventually, she finds and chases after a lonely wolf pup. After catching up to the wolf and fending off more goopy bad buys, Alba befriends the pup, whom she eventually names Neva. For stretches of Prologue, Alba carries Neva tight to her chest, just like how I used to carry Sophie around; I’d cradle her just like a baby, her head bobbing as she watched whatever was at my back.
In the DLC, Neva isn’t yet the force of nature that she becomes during the main game. She’s just a puppy, frightened and defenseless. During those sections together, Alba’s limited in what she can do. Hugging Neva firmly to her body, Alba can’t double jump, dash, or attack, but has to persevere through danger regardless.
