Neva's Winter Mirrors Are The Best Level Of 2024

For most of my time with Neva, I thought it was pretty good. The connection to Gris, with which it shares 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a developer in Nomada Studios, was obvious. The contrasting use of pastel colours, the atmospheric emptiness, the oddly religious platforming and level design.ܫ.. it was everything I wanted, and needed, a Gris follow up to be. But it didn't quite click. Maybe the yearning loneliness of Gris hit harder than raising an abandoned wolf pup for me, someone with no children and decidedly not a dog person. Then I reached the mirror levels.

Neva is divided into four seasons, starting with summer. In real life, it's difficult to say what my favourite season is. It's very depende💦nt on the weather, what I 🐻may have planned in any given month or year, and any events that are on. A summer with the World Cup is eminently better than one without, for example. But thematically, visually, fictionally, my favourite season will always be winter, which is where this mirror magic happens.

Neva Does The Beauty Of Winter Justice

The crispness of the snow, the smooth beauty of ⛎the ice, the vivid clash of blue and white and black - winter is often overlooked as a season of barren death, but I have always found it to be nature's most beautiful. And this is reflected in the mirrors of Neva. During the winter passage, the ice is so clear it offers a perfect mirror surface. In doing so, it introduces a marvellously clever mechanic that I have never seen executed thꦫis well in a video game.

You can check out my colleague 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ben Sledge's 5/5 review of Neva here for a full perspective on the game.

At first, this seems purely aesthetic. As you run across the icy plains, you and Neva are perfectly reflected beneath you. It looks gorgeous against the inky sky, especially if you use Neva's launching ability to send them skyward like a shooting star. But as you explore further, and drive down into the icy 𒁃caverns, the reflection is no longer beneath you, but 🅠at your side.

The goal, as with most platformers that include a vertical section, is to climb higher. Occasionally there are inlets to 🍌exp🃏lore that house collectibles, but mostly you are starting at the bottom and making your way back to the top. Here, the reflection comes into play. Sometimes, you can see the next platform a little bit above you, and it's merely a question of getting the jump right. Other times though, it is a far more devious challenge.

As you get higher, you can no longer see the platforms - but you can see their reflections. Using the right hand side of the screen, you must make your jumps on the left hand 🌃side of the screen, remembering that, as a reflection, everything is backwards. Jumping forwards makes you go backwards, jumping backwards makes you go forward. Jumping up... well, that still makes you go up. Nevertheless, it’s tricky.

Mechanically, tℱhis is obviously a smart idea. It takes relatively easy jumps and adds a layer of challenge in an digestible and aesthetically pleasing way that the art design of the previous section subtly prepares you for. But it also represents the idea at the heart of Neva itself.♛ When you are alone, with no one to guide you, sometimes you only need to look around. And sometimes, the best person to help you is yourself.

This mechanic, and perhaps the metaphor, goes deeper the further you climb. Combat is introduced into the mix, with some enemies only visible in the reflected reality, not the actual plane on which you play. This forces someꦉ speed into the mix - where jumps can be timed on your schedule, combat is fast and reactive. Thematically, perhaps there is a suggestion that we cannot always see the things that might hurt us, but with preparation, we can cope with them nonetheless.

The Mirror Levels Make Never A Must-Play Game

This level comes late on in the game. Spring is relatively short,෴ as the game's menu tells you before the 🎉game starts - it houses just one collectible to Winter's 13. So starting in the Summer chapter, by the time you reach Winter you are nearing the end of your journey. Neva is a short game, taking me less than four hours to complete. I didn't play it in a single burst as I did with Gris, and while part of that was down to time constraints, part of it was also that it just didn't grab me as Gris did.

Clearly, Neva was A Good Game. Competent. Artistic. Pretty. The sort of game that, if people asked me about it, I would say "Yeah, that was quite good". But the mirror levels kicked it up several notches. This was now a Must Play Game. A game I would not wait to be asked about, bu🧸t one I would go out of my way to tell people "You need to try this out before you write your GOTY list".

It has not displaced 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:1000xResist as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:my 2024 indie obsession, and in a big year for indies and with a couple of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:personally important triple-As in the💝 mix too, it might have to claw﷽ it꧋s way onto my own list against the tide. But my list feels stronger already in that it can consider Neva, and its mirror magic, when it comes time to reflect on 2024.