Neva Interview: Nomada Studio On Adding Combat And Companions After Gris

Summary

Nomada Studio's upcoming game Neva offers combat, a second character, and new challenges compared to Gris.
Neva features a Story Mode option for easier combat, so players can enjoy the narrative without the challenge if desired.
The core theme of Neva is parenthood, providing room for interpretation without specific details, connecting emotionally with players.

Nomada Studio, the team behind Gris, will soon launch its next game - Neva. I recently visited Barcelona to play the first hour and speak with Nomada Studio lead producer Roger Mendoza and creative director Conrad Roset about 🌼the work behind c𝄹reating their beautiful new platformer.

Mendoza tells me the team was initially very burned out after Gris. “We barely had any programmers, it was a tough game to release.” After the launch, they took a much-needed break and then began to explore different options for what their next game could be. The team had several ideas befꦰore forming the concept of Neva, “Once we settled on that, it was pretty easy for us because it felt like the next iteration of a Nomada game.”

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However, Mendoza admits that changing pace from Gris to Neva has been “super scary” because of fan expectations.“Gris went super well, obviously. We're very happ🏅y about that, but that means that people create an expectation of what you're going to release. At the end of the day, you're not going to make everyone happy.🌞 You just have to make a game that you're happy with, that you're proud of.

“But it was super refreshing to change things, to have a second character, to have combat. There were ne꧑w challenges that, at least as a programmer, are interesting, like enemies, the companion that needs to be engaging but not frustrating. It was a fun project.”

Creating a companion character was a challenge the team found “w🦩ay more difficult” than expected because of how Neva grows throughout the game, which meant they had to change its behaviour 🔯and animations.

Neva challenged the team in many ways. Gris struck a fine balance betwee🐟n platformer and wordlessly emotional narrative, but with Neva, Nomada Studio is upping the ante by adding combat into the mix. Mendoza tells me it was “super tricky” to find a balance between all three elements and to ensure they’re appealing to their fanbase without alienating anyone. “It was difficult to strike the right balance between difficult and shallow. We did a lot of iteration on that.”

Mendoza acknowledges t🎀hat for a lot of players, Gris was one of their first games and the team didn’t want to “leave them behind” by adding combat, and to that end, it has included a Story Mode for Neva. This mode features easier combat without the threat of dying, a few gameplay tweaks, and overall allows you to enjoy the narrative without as much challenge.

The team says Gris gave them the foundation of experience they needed to apply to Neva. “[With Gris] we learned how to build levels. In Gris, it was a bit more chaotic, I would say,” Mendoza explains. “This allows usꦯ to build bigger and more complex levels, and I think it shows in the art. Cinematic sequences, something that in Gris we'd never done before, and now at least we have the expertise to make this more complex and more interesting.

“We took a lot of inspirational reference from Gris in terms of pacing, with the idea that something has to happen every several minutes: combat, puzzle, a beautiful scene. Back in the day, we had a lot of combat, butဣ then we started narrowing down so the pacing gets equal with both puzzle, combat, and beautiful moments. It was a lot of iteration, which I have to say, the developers gave us all the time in the world that we needed.”

Gris was Roset’s first video game, having worked as an illustrator artist for advertising agencies and publishing galleries before that. He says working on Gris, and everything it taught him, was like “going to school”. I ask Roset whether he prefers working with video games or his previous work but he simply laughs that he’s too exhausted to think about it object🤡ively, b𒆙ut still “want[s] to make some more games”.

Undoubtedly, there’s a lot of Gris DNA evident in Neva. But while admiring the striking simplistic art style and looking at 💛the gorgeous white wolves, the majestic deer, and the strange, dark creatures chasing you, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke. “We love Ghibli films,” Mendoza tells me. “Mononoke is also one of my favourite films. When we were creating that, we were really thinking of Mononoke.”

It’s not just Princess Mononoke that inspired Roset either. He tells me he also draws inspiration from comics, manga, mo🎃dern illustrators, classical paintings, and movies such as Disney and Pixar. He says he could talk about his inspiration for hours, and it shows.

Part of that comes through in Neva’s varying landscapes of a living, breathing world, and Roset explains how important it was for the world to have depth, “We wanted the forest and the world to be really alive, because it does help the nar✱rative. When there's death, there's a hu🦩ge contrast with a lively world and death.”

He points to a portrait on the wall when I ask him his favourite part of Neva. He refers to it as “the nightmare part in black and white”. The image shows a large black wolf descending from the heavens with a snarl at Alba and Neva while 🥃they stand on a bridge. It wasn’t in the part of the demo I played, but on closer inspection, I could see the pillars of the bridge are made of the enemies you fight.

The black and white nightmare scene in Neva.

The team knew they wanted to create a partnership between two characters, but the initial idea didn’t involve an animal companion. “When Conrad told us that he wanted to do a game about parents, the initial idea was two humans,” Mendoza says. “I remember very specifically telling Conrad, ‘Please don't make it a quadruped. Please, no four legs.’ But then he came up with this concept of ꧋wolf and Neva, which obviously works really, really well. In terms of programming, making four legs is always more complex, but we pushed through it, and it paid off. I think it helps you connect more with the character. Everyone who has had a pet, there's a very direct connection with the animal. I think that works really well.”

While the core theme of Neva is parenthood, Mendoza says there is more to be found in the depths of how each individual connects with it. “We do have themes in the back of our heads, like what's happened to the world, who a🐭re the enemies. We don't want to go too deep into that. We say it's any fear a parent can have when raising someone. There's no specific reason. We prefer people to connect with the message of the game without putting it in their mouth. So the core idea is parenthood, and then the rest is just little details on it, but it's not super specific.”

Rose🌳t tells me following Gris’ lead with no dialogue allows for this room for interpretation. “We try to narrate in a very subtle way. Not having dialogue and text gives a lot of room for imagination, because the pla꧋yer fills the information holes with their own experiences, and I think that gives us a lot of personality when narrating.”

However, the devs are individuals too, and thus have individual takeaways themselves. Roset drew from🐻 his own experience of being a parent when developing Neva and so for him, “it's about protecting your son and how the roles are reversed as he evolves.” He points to the opening of Neva, which shows the mother wolf giving her life to save her 𝔍cub. “You would die for your child,” he emphasises, “I think that the greatest fear for anyone, if you're a father, is that something happens to your son.” Roset hopes Neva connects with players emotionally, “It doesn't have to be a positive feeling, it can be negative, but that it conveys emotions. Sadness, joy, whatever.”

For many fans of Nomada Studio, the question of whether we’ll ever see Gris 2 lurks in the back of their minds. “I mean, it always depends on the size o♔f the cheque,” Mendoza laughs, before saying, “You can never say never, of course, but no, it's not in our minds. When weꦫ're talking about other projects that we have in mind, Gris 2 is not one of them, for sure.

“Maybe one day we have a super cool idea that fits well into the꧅ narrative and the context, but even when we were doing Gris, we knew that we were not going to do DLC, we were not going to do the second part. It's a complete package, it works well as an experience, the story starts and ends, so I don't think it's going to happen any time soon.” However, Mendoza✨ says Neva has “more potential for sequels, prequels, or even DLC”, though he quickly adds “we’re not working on that”.

Whether its game has two legs, four legs, or combat, Nomada Studio continues to make interesting games with artistry at their 🌠heart. Neva launches on October 15 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.