After the overwhelming success of GRIS and having now captured our hearts with the fantastic Neva, Nomada Studio has built a golden reputation as one of those teams capable of touching the emotional strings and elevating the video game to the category of art. A path that the team led by the brilliant Conrad Roset has mastered, letting themselves be influenced by true masterpieces of the genre without which, today, we wouldn’t have many of the games we enjoy. 3DJuegos had the opportunity to speak with Roset and the studio’s technical director, Adrián Cuevas, to tell us not only where Neva comes from and what they wanted to convey in this exciting 2D action-adventure, but also how it was to work with GRIS, and what has changed since the release of this title.
Former Ubisoft employees, Conrad Roset and Adrián Cuevas took on the challenging task of creating their own video game as an independent studio, but they found a great ally in Devolver Digital to work without extreme pressure, receiving creative freedom, resources, and most importantly, time to create the games they wanted to make. Their commitment to Nomada Studio has been such that from GRIS to Neva, they have doubled the size of the creative team. How has this translated?
“We want to remain highly focused on art, with a very polished and artistically powerful experience”
While GRIS was a visually powerful experience, Neva has evolved in terms of gameplay, offering more challenges without losing its fascinating art. “They are a little bit different. I think Neva is a bit more, not literal, but more explanatory, more narrative […] We play a lot with the relationship between Neva and you, and the evolution of Neva’s gameplay,” Roset comments. “We want to remain highly focused on art, with a very polished and artistically powerful experience, both in music and art. And the gameplay should not be intrusive. The action has to feel good, be fun, entertaining, but not frustrating.”
The core team of Nomada Studio.
Inspiration from Studio Ghibli
A heroine accompanied by a wolf-like creature inevitably evokes one of the great animation films of Studio Ghibli such as Princess Mononoke; but even with GRIS, there was “some reference” to other great stories created by the Japanese studio. “For many, right from the start, when we started making the game we said it was like the game we would have wanted to play when we saw Princess Mononoke at the time. There is even a part of our story that is very similar to that of the film […] We speak more vaguely about other types of fear, such as climate change or wars,” they comment.
“We want it to be interesting, but we don’t want it to be hardcore”
Here also introduced the theme of parenthood, as all these fears are magnified when you have a child, by how they will face them when we are not there. Indeed, the idea of Neva was born when Conrad had his first child. However, it may be that narrowing the life experience it appeals to may mean that fewer players feel identified with what Neva proposes. Adrián commented on this: “we look up to references as high as possible. So, we try to design the game as Pixar would likely do. They design their movies with multiple layers, so that if you don’t feel related to the message layer, at least you can enjoy what you are seeing.” The story, the art… everything is important, but the main focus has been that the overall experience, “must be entertaining.” In that way, even if the message doesn’t resonate deeply with you, “at least enjoy the journey.”
“Protect them so they can protect you,” says the artist. “I thought it was an attractive and vital theme; and in the end, I want to talk about it. I like to talk about transcendental things even if not explicitly: talk about death, about relationships, about depression, about anything. Topics that I believe touch emotionally.”
Interestingly, when establishing the relationship between Alba and Neva, more inspiration was drawn from the brilliant Ico than the aforementioned The Last Guardian. Initially, he explains, “they were going to be a boy and a girl who spoke different languages. Even before being a wolf, Neva was going to be a bird. Everything was always based on the main idea of having two protagonists and interaction between them.”
“If I achieve 5% of what Shadow of the Colossus and Journey achieved in me, I will be more than satisfied”
It is always fascinating to hear a creative talk about how ideas come to mind. Therefore, we wanted to ask what came first: the concept of the protagonist duo or the artistic style of the game. “What we knew for sure is that the style had to be different. The easy path would have been to use the same style, because we had already learned everything,” the artist says. They were looking for something different… but at the same time, something that with two or three images “you would immediately relate it to Nomada Studio and our artistic language,” he comments.
“In GRIS, in the end, there were lines, pencil, watercolor stains, paper texture on top… here without pencil lines, the characters are represented with stains, a more digital stroke, and we play much more with lights. We add noise on top, that is, technically and artistically it is very, very different.” And yet, the “triumph” for the team was to make people identify the game with the creators of GRIS. “As an artist, your goal is to leave a mark, a personal brand.”
With this desire to do something different, and their eagerness to create video games that touch the heart, leaving a lasting impression, Nomada Studios has become one of the most talented teams today. And the recent release of Neva, which has already achieved success on Steam, makes us look forward even more eagerly to their future projects.
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