“Neva may not be the most complex 2D platformer, but it still might make you cry.”
Pros
Incredible music
Gorgeous art
Emotional story
Cons
Dull platforming
Repetitive combat
In Neva, Nomada Studio’s follow-up to Gris, the cycle of life and death starts spinning immediately. An opening battle against land-poisoning sludge monsters turns tragic when my white wolf companion is slain. From that loss, a new relationship is born as I team up with my fallen pal’s orphaned pup. What would be a downer of an opening quickly turns into something hopeful. Even in the darkest moments, we can find reasons to keep fighting. As Swedish director Ingmar Bergman once noted: “Lilies often grow out of carcasses’ arseholes.”
Neva tackles that grand idea in a minimalistic fashion that hits a ceiling. The colorful adventure stuns with gorgeous music and visuals that make its beautiful world feel like something that’s worth protecting. It’s just light on originality outside of that, with simple 2D platforming and combat that never fully capitalize on its evolutionary chapter structure. Like Gris, it’s an effective tone piece that’s more about meditating on a feeling than overcomplicating its statement on life, death, and the beauty on both ends of that spectrum.
Neva tells the story of Alba, a young girl fighting to protect nature from decay at the hands of creepy black monsters. After her trust wolf is slain, she becomes a surrogate mother for her cub, Neva. The two form a bond and travel together for the next year, each chapter taking place during a season. With each season, Neva grows bigger, gains more confidence, and even picks up a few new tricks that aid Alba in her duty.
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The story plays out like a fable, wordlessly told through animated cinematics that deepen Alba and Neva’s bond. There are clear shades of Hayao Miyazaki in its environmentalist themes. It largely plays like a small-scale video game adaptation of Princess Mononoke. There are white wolves, beasts with massive antlers, and critters corrupting a beautiful natural landscape. While there’s not much depth to its message, Nomada Studio drills down on the pure emotional beats of its story. Its deaths are gut-wrenching, but its moments of light are warm and hopeful. It’s an effective portrait of life’s highs and lows in one five-hour adventure.
Neva – Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games
What really sells that idea is Neva’s breathtaking sound and visuals. The soundtrack is full of sweeping orchestral pieces that feel bigger than those in the grandest big-budget games out there. They’re awe-inspiring compositions that sell the emotional turns of each scene and make every vista feel like a sublime sight.
The soundtrack has the visuals to match; each natural landscape is awe-inspiring. Even something as similar as a forest clearing feels holy, as streaks of light shine through rich green foliage. Any given frame looks like a painting, and that makes matters all the more dire when monsters begin mucking it up with their dark corruption. It’s as if someone spilled a bottle of ink on a masterpiece. This isn’t a case of pretty visuals for pretty’s sake; I truly believe in Alba’s desire to protect such a place from rot. There’s a spiritual connection to the natural world here, and the minimalistic storytelling allows that strong feeling to take center stage.
Though Neva’s sights and sounds communicate, that same sense of wonder is missing from its comparatively run-of-the-mill gameplay. It’s very much cut from the same cloth as 2018’s Gris, with all the same strengths and weaknesses intact. That game stunned with its watercolor art, but delivered thin puzzle platforming that even felt a little behind the times back then. Neva doesn’t move the bar much further, though it does scratch at a creative idea or two.
The platforming itself is fairly standard, with Alba being able to jump, air dash, pound through weak rocks, and scale walls. There’s some light iteration in later chapters, including a section where she needs to dash through portals, but it often feels indistinguishable to something like last year’s Planet of Lana. Even reading my review of that game now, I feel like I’m largely making the exact same critiques here.
If Neva has taught me anything, it’s that growth doesn’t happen all at once.
The main difference is that Neva features a light combat system, which lets me slash enemies with one button or slam down on them. It’s a similarly thin system that’s mostly used to fight the same few monsters over and over with little variation. It’s not terribly complex, but it does keep the platforming from ever getting monotonous on its own.
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While it’s all a little thin, Neva does find the seed of a great idea in its titular wolf. In the first chapter, Neva is helpless. The cub is almost too scared to leap between platforms or make daredevil dives off high heights. I often need to stop and comfort my friend, petting them between enemy encounters. But with each passing season, they grow. They become braver as they fearlessly follow me through platforming gauntlets and even start chasing down enemies automatically to help me fight them. I can even toss my cub toward enemies eventually. The more we grow together, the more physically connected we are.
Devolver Digital
It’s an effective moment in an otherwise pretty, though understated, adventure. Not every game needs to innovate, but considering that Neva is specifically about evolution, I found myself waiting for it to switch gears up through its abrupt ending. Like my pup early in our journey, Nomada Studio still feels like it’s growing as a developer. I can see its potential to create beautiful, heartfelt stories in both this and Gris, but it’s yet to really take a leap and find its voice when it comes to interactivity. But if Neva has taught me anything, it’s that growth doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a slow process that happens naturally. An uncertain whimper from the edge of a cliff can become a brave leap; it just takes a little time and encouragement.
In just over two weeks, TechCrunch will gather some of the startup world’s leading companies at Disrupt in San Francisco. But our partners provide more than just financial support. Their presence at Disrupt gives startups at any stage the tools, knowledge, and community they need to be a success.
We thank Meta for their support of a special invitation-only cocktail reception. If you get the invite to “Women in Tech(Crunch),” the women staff of TechCrunch look forward to seeing you there.
Dropbox DocSend will be hosting a Breakout session and is one of our Startup Battlefield sponsors, as is J.P. Morgan. We appreciate the high-octane support for our amazing Battlefield startups! You can also connect with J.P. Morgan at the Women of Disrupt breakfast on Tuesday, October 29 at 8 a.m. PT (first come, first served).
Thank you to HP and Thomson Reuters for sponsoring the sessions on our AI Stage. And many thanks to Casa Azul and Humanx, who are supporting the Speakers and Editors’ Dinner.
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We’re grateful for the Metronome-sponsored coffee and espresso bar. Once you have your caffeine, head over to the industry stages, including the StrictlyVC stage, presented by Amplitude, and the SaaS Stage, presented by SingleStore.
Thank you to Braindate for being the official networking provider at Disrupt 2024. Braindates are knowledge-sharing conversations that you book with others to have either one-on-one or in small groups on-site in the Braindate Lounge. They’re the best way to brainstorm, solve challenges, and share expertise or experiences while connecting with new (brilliant!) people.
And don’t miss these companies in the Exhibition Hall:
The rumors are true, the Destiny franchise is heading to mobile devices soon. Destiny: Rising is a new free-to-play mobile sci-fi RPG shooter that includes a number of playable hero characters, a shared world, and PvE and PvP modes all set in Bungie’s Destiny universe.
China-based NetEase Games has developed Destiny: Rising, after announcing a partnership with Bungie and a $100 million investment into the studio in 2018. Destiny: Rising will be set in an alternative Destiny timeline, exploring the post-Dark Age era of the universe and lore before the Tower existed and before the emergence of Guardians.
Destiny: Rising will be set in the Destiny universe.Image: NetEase
NetEase is licensing the Destiny brand from Bungie and it has been granted creative freedom to develop its own storyline and vision for Destiny: Rising. “We want to capture and depict a specific time where the reins are in the hands of the players to experience, to explore, to define,” says Stone Shi, senior narrative designer, at NetEase.
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Unlike Destiny or Destiny 2, you’ll be able to pick from a variety of Destiny hero characters instead of creating your own Guardian based on Hunter, Warlock, or Titan classes. Hero characters include ones like Ikora Reythat exists in Destiny and Destiny 2, as well as a host of new characters.
Each character will have unique abilities and stories, and will be able to access single, co-op, and competitive multiplayer modes. There will also be the usual Ghosts, Lightbearers, Iron Lords, and Warlords found in the Destiny universe before the Last City. In a trailer for the game we see a variety of characters and their new abilities, including a new void scythe that looks a lot like something a Warlock would use in the main Destiny games. There are also familiar enemies like the Hive, Fallen, and Vex.
“For over a decade, we have built this universe to contain many unique and wonderful stories, and we are excited to see mobile gamers be able to experience this new take on the Destiny universe from the creative team at NetEase,” says Terry Redfield, creative lead at Bungie, in a press release.
Destiny: Rising players will also be able to play in first-person or even third-person view, with touchscreen controls or controllers. There will be the usual campaign missions, six-player co-op strikes, and replayable PvE and PvP modes.
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The Mythic loot in Destiny: Rising.Image: NetEase
Even powerful exotic weapons will be available, alongside a new Mythic weapon rarity class that includes a new weapon type, too. All of these weapons help to fight against the darkness enemies in the Destiny universe in new locations like Jiangshi and the Red Sea Rift. Part of this new Destiny narrative includes searching for seeds of hope that are said to “shape the future of human civilization” after its collapse in the Dark Age of Destiny lore.
One big question around Destiny: Rising is what monetization system it will use. NetEase isn’t answering that just yet, but it says in an FAQ that a “good part of the main campaign will be available” in the alpha test next month alongside “at least one map for all game modes” so people can try out what the game has to offer.
Destiny: Rising will be available first as a limited access closed alpha test on November 1st in the US and Canada. You can register for the test version at NetEase’s website.
As US energy companies continue to grapple with the challenge of supplying enough power to meet the growing demand for AI data centers, a report from Bain & Company has revealed power use could soon exceed actual supply.
The report forecasts that by 2028, utility companies will need to increase annual generation by as much as 26% in order to keep up with demand.
The concerning outlook raises questions about the true eco-credentials of the time-saving and productivity-enhancing technology, which could soon need to rely on dirtier energy sources which are more abundant.
Data centers will use more energy than we currently have
Indicative of the scale of the problem, capital expenditure at these data centers is anticipated to rise nearly 30% this year alone. A separate study (via The Register) by Rystad Energy, a research and business intelligence company, found that US data center power consumption could more than double by the end of the decade.
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Typically, historical energy generation has been several hundred terawatt hours higher than historical energy consumption, however over the next four years, even the low-end demand scenario could outpace current generation, with the high-end demand scenario rising by as much as 1,000 TWh, from 4,000 to 5,000 TWh, marking a significant jump.
By 2028, Bain & Company reckons that data centers will account for more than two-fifths (44%) of all US energy consumption, with residential applications standing at around one-quarter (27%). Manufacturing (17%) and commercial (13%) are set to take smaller percentages.
Adding to the complexity, other sectors like electric vehicles and repatriated manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions are also driving up energy demand in coming years.
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Subsequently, the consulting firm warns that failing to act by modernizing business operations and infrastructure could cause companies to lose out on substantial revenues, even forcing datacenter companies to generate their own energy.
And with US utility companies accustomed to flat or even shrinking demand, the fact that global data center energy demands could top $2 trillion represents a significant growth opportunity for those prepared to make the changes.
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The Australian film director said he had worked with a “very talented design team” to create the film’s visuals in a response to someone querying their own originality in a comment on an Instagram post.
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“Elon Musk on the other hand has a not so talented design team who watched a lot of movies, including I, Robot it seems,” he said.
Patrick Tatopoulos, the film’s production designer, later reposted the image comparing the film’s designs and images from Tesla’s event side by side in his own post on Instagram.
“Maybe it is just me, or should I feel honoured that Elon found some inspiration in my I, Robot designs,” Mr Tatopoulos wrote.
“Either way it’s fun to watch,” he added.
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Paranoid Android
The claims made by Proyas have been met with scepticism online, however, with some claiming his own film is derivative.
Several people replied to his post on X with images of the feminised cyborg in Fritz Lang’s German expressionist film, Metropolis, from 1927.
But it is not the first time people have queried whether tech companies look to sci-fi cinema and novels for ideas – especially as firms develop new gadgets and robotics to capitalise on interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI).
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Mr Musk has previously said he was inspired by Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which features humanoid robot Marvin the Paranoid Android.
And he has also called Tesla’s futuristic Cybertruck “an armoured personnel carrier from the future” that “Bladerunner would have driven”.
Meanwhile OpenAI boss Sam Altman appeared to confirm comparisons drawn between a flirty, new voice unveiled for ChatGPT and a virtual assistant played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 film Her in a post on X in May.
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The firm removed its “Sky” voice following criticism over its similarity to Ms Johansson’s – saying it was not intended to be an “imitation”.
There are many ways for computers to store numbers
Andrew Ostrovsky/Panther Media GmbH/Alamy
Changing the way numbers are stored in computers could improve the accuracy of calculations without needing to increase energy consumption or computing power, which could prove useful for software that needs to quickly switch between very large and small numbers.
Numbers can be surprisingly difficult for computers to work with. The simplest are integers – a whole number with no decimal point or fraction. As integers grow larger, they require more storage space, which can lead to problems when we attempt to reduce those requirements – the infamous millennium…
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