Neva: Prologue

Neva gonna let you down.

Nomada Studio has crafted some breathtaking adventures, with Gris and Neva providing emotional and stunning journeys given life through the art of Conrad Roset, the studio’s Creative Director. While I was content to wait to see what the studio would embark on next, the announcement of a prologue to Neva was certainly not on my bingo card. Still, knowing where this journey would end didn’t diminish my desire to dive in, but it would be much of its execution that would result in that instead. 

Acting as a prologue to 2024’s Neva, Neva: Prologue tells us the story of how Alba met Neva, her trusted wolf companion. Early into this glimpse of their past, Alba stumbles upon a small wolf cub. When u first meet Neva, they run away, but freeing them from behind a cracked pillar causes them to follow you, eager to find out who their rescuer is. It’s charming as they need to warm up to you, even after defeating a blackened foe who attempts to swipe at them. Eventually, a fall causes them to require your aid, forming the seeds of the bond that would shape the rest of their lives. 

While Neva is too young to join you in battle, you instead aid them during much of this roughly hour-long journey. There is a good chunk of this story that sees you cradling Neva in your arms, running and platforming as you hold them close. This does limit the overall combat encounters, but this is mostly down to only three basic enemy types appearing here and one overall boss, being spaced across only a few locations. 

Neva: Prologue is split up across specific gameplay segments that revolve around platforming, combat, or puzzle solving. Platforming sees new additions in these “puffer” like enemies, whose defeat launches Alba into the air. While you’ll only really meet them in the opening minutes, there is one platforming challenge that requires you to master the lift they give you. This section is also plagued by black tendril arms that rhythmically pulse out of the ground, should you touch certain sections of the ground, and in some cases, the walls around you. 

Another section has you taking cover during a rainstorm, as the crack of lightning illuminates the area around you, causing the game’s boss to notice you and strike. This section is just long enough to feel menacing without feeling overdone. The DLC’s best area, however, has you timing your jumps to platforming sections that only appear when a light shines throughout the landscape. In Neva, you would climb these towers that required you to trigger shifts in their design, so having these temporary platforms allows those puzzles to be more clever and engaging. 

Neva had some incredible boss encounters, spectacles that would be just as impressive visually as mechanically, but Prologue fumbles this to a degree that truly left a sour taste in my mouth. The final battle is beyond basic and simply has you jumping over a single attack to slice away at them. This repeats four or five times, and the deed is done, seeing Alba and Neva vanquishing their first major obstacle as a pair. 

While the sun’s light shifts around platforms, it also affects combat in one particular area instead of leaning on this throughout most of that closing chapter. You’ll encounter only a few combat areas in this DLC, with mostly the fodder leading the charge here. You do encounter the flying enemies, but only in one single instance. Neva was just as much as about the combat as the puzzle solving, and Prologue features so few of both that I was very surprised this game ended when it did. 

Still, Neva: Prologue is gorgeous, as Neva before it was as well. There are certainly more muted colors this time around, as a large focus of the aesthetics feels built around the barcode-like environments with white backgrounds behind black pillars and trees. The game does see more color as the pair is together, with the final act having the yellow sun to guide their way. That said, the opening twenty minutes or so do see a lot of the art hidden behind a ton of fog. 

Neva: Prologue had me see credits just over 40 minutes in, and while I’ve seen some outlets stating nearly two hours, I’m not exactly sure how they would have approached that amount of time unless they were exhausting the few locations to find the collectibles. Still, the length of this adventure didn’t bother me, but rather the lack of substance to the length itself. The final encounter just didn’t excite me, and the lack of ‘moments’ that Neva shone in was very noticeable. Prologue was always meant to be a short burst of something more, given its price tag, but I just wish it stood out more, considering the impact of what Nomada Studios has delivered thus far.

Developer - Nomada Studio.
Publisher - Devolver Digital. Released - February 19th, 2026. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (E 10+) - Fantasy Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.