Back in 2017, I attended Pax West, conducting an interview about Once Upon a Coma, the very game this review is about. While it took a few years for the game to release, and a subsequent name change to Neversong, the game has finally found its way to pretty much every platform. The roughly three-hour experience features a wealth of interesting characters, gorgeous storybook visuals, and some entertaining boss encounters as you attempt to track down your girlfriend Wren after you’ve awakened from a coma. While the game is largely an engaging experience, a floaty jump does give way to a few bouts of frustration.
Thomas Brush’s Neversong is somewhat of a sequel and reimagining of a 2009 Flash game, Coma. The two share in some similarities, such as a few quests and ideas, but fundamentally, the games are very different from one another. Neversong tells its story through a series of poems, told through storybook cutscenes with some dark and gorgeous artwork. The narrator chews up these moments and sells the story just as good as the voice acting given to its fun and interesting cast. Apart from a few characters, everyone here is provided a voice and the game is much better for it.
Neversong has you play as Peet, a young man who has awoken from a coma to find that his girlfriend, Wren, has gone missing. You’ll attempt to track her down, being told that she was kidnapped and that while many in the town blame you for it, there is not really much hatred placed upon you. The adults are all gone, left to find her, leaving only a handful of kids to occupy Red Wind Village. You’ll explore a few of its buildings, and talk with its inhabitants, but the real adventure is outside the town, as you look to track down Wren.
Neversong at its core feels hollow. There are a few mechanics and ways to overcome obstacles placed in your way, but nothing feels impressive or attached to any sort of “aha!” moment as you attempt to figure things out. You have a bat that can bash enemies, spikes that you’ll equip to the bat to slash down bombs, to a skateboard and umbrella that are hardly used to any great effect. While these systems are used to aid you in your journey, the mechanics built around jumping is where the game just got annoying. Peet has a very slippery jump, think of a faster-paced Luigi in Super Mario Bros 2, but without the crazy leg animations. It’s hard to pinpoint where you’ll land when you’ve made a long jump, and you are incredibly likely to overshoot your target to just miss it, given the lack of momentum you’ll often have. There are a handful of locations and scenarios in the game where jumping is crucial to survival, and some areas where you’ll have a simple series of steps to jump to that you’ll fall again and again because either you’ll phase right through the platform, or overshoot it completely.
Where Neversong excels is in its story, its characters, the level design, and in its visuals. There are a handful of characters that are fun to talk with and you’ll encounter them all over the game, often having you engage in delightful conversations as you continue to track down Wren. Several of them suffer from various mental illnesses, but the game doesn’t really dive too much into these. You’ll get hints of who is inflicted with what, but it never commits to exploring these with much of the cast, other than maybe Simeon, a roundish boy who you’ll use as a rolling platform, but one who has had a crush on Wren himself.
While I wouldn’t call Neversong a Metroidvania, it does have that sense of design as you’ll use a series of items to traverse locations, backtracking once you’ve discovered more to unlock more and more secrets, often in the form of Coma cards, that can allow you to learn more about the world and change your appearance. These are hidden pretty much everywhere and is where the bulk of extending the length of game lies. There are three chapters in the game, each taking place in their own setting, with levels that feature a few puzzles here and there. None of them are obtuse or hard to figure out, with the best puzzle being the one where you’ll roll Simeon’s round body into a variety of smells to wake up the boss.
Several mechanics are either used too little or too much in the time it takes to complete your adventure. You’ll swat down bombs with your spiked bat to kick or roll into objects to blow them up or rip down the hill on a skateboard flipping switches. You can also latch onto those very bombs and swing across gaps. The skateboard is only used in one overall section, with a slight appearance in earning a key in the final chapter. The bombs are used pretty frequently once you unlock them, but the mechanic is never used in interesting ways, often committing to the singular use it’s needed for. Each system at play here is very transparent on how it’s used and never attempts to be clever or interesting. There is a child’s toy in the See n’ Say that made me chuckle and it’s a shame it was just something that was used and discarded in a manner of minutes.
The title does feature a lot of combat, but apart from a standard swing and a jump attack, that’s about all you get. There are half a dozen enemy types, but these are simply there to either unlock doors upon their defeat or used to grant back any health you’ve lost. You can collect items to increase your accumulative amount of health, but apart from a few cheap hits in the final battle, you likely won’t die too often anyway. You’ll save at fireplaces and respawn back at the last saved one should you die. Bosses are fun and often have a few easy tells on how to defeat them, without any of them being too clever or inspiring. Defeating a boss when then grant you a song, to which you’ll play back at Wren’s house to unlock new items to aid you on your journey.
I still find that its flaws are a bit too apparent from time to time but considering the title is easily completed in less than 3 hours, you don’t have to deal with them for too long. There is a very well-told story here with fun and engaging characters and some gorgeous visuals that are vastly entertaining, I just wish the game built around them was just as impressive.
A review code of Neversong was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review and played on an Xbox One X.
All screenshots were provided by the publisher.