Neon White Review – Speedrunning has never been so stylish

Although I’m not particularly religious, I still sometimes wonder what heaven would be like. It’s a vague and sometimes scary concept. What is waiting for you in the afterlife?

Maybe somewhere, concepts like stress and worry don’t exist. Or maybe it’s like falling asleep forever. In Neon White, heaven isn’t one of those things: it’s a place where you kill demons and get horny.

Last year, the co-creator of Neon White Ben Esposito kicked off a walkthrough of the game, saying that unlike his more kid-friendly title Donut County, his next game will be designed for geeks. “Ah,” I thought, “I think he’s talking about me.”

Describing Neon White in its most basic terms, it’s a fast-running FPS where our protagonist, the titular White, is t asked with slaying all the demons that plague Heaven before Judgment Day. But there’s also a ton of anime mixed in there, with simple visual novel elements, but also a lot of fun.

When you call something vaguely anime, the problem is that some people don’t like it by nature, for boring, simplistic reasons, I want these people to grow up because neon white proudly wears it’s anime influence in its on the sleeves, and is all right. Especially when combined with the most exciting gameplay I’ve experienced this year.

It would be an understatement to say that the game is fast. Neon White is designed to get you through levels as fast as possible, giving you a variety of tools from level to level. These tools come in the form of soul cards that give you access to a range of guns that can also be “expended” on one-time supernatural powers. Take a rifle, for example: use it as a weapon and you have a long-range, powerful gun that can take down most enemies in a few rounds. Alternatively, you can “spend” it to quickly dash through a gap, knocking down any enemies along the way as you step through them, but it does make you drop your gun.

As a core mechanic, it’s pretty compact, and none of the weapons in this batch feel bad or finicky to use. In order not to be too powerful, you can only have two soul cards at a time. So you don’t drive on a particular creek, you always have a katana that deals a small amount of damage, but it doesn’t have any special power either.

Sure, you can have the best sensory weapons and powers in the world, but without good level design, they’re just plastic toys. Thankfully, Neon White has some of the best level designs I’ve ever played in an arcade-style game. At first glance, the levels seem simple, at least the early ones. For the most part, levels are short but layered playgrounds that require you to figure out how to get through them as quickly as possible. The more I play, the more I start to really understand the real fluidity of it all and know when it’s best to use a particular power or weapon.

The path you should take has a clear direction, through enemy placement and clear and colorful modeling work. Soon, you’ll discover that these routes are never the fastest, and the game even provides hints for jumps you can complete. With these hints, you’ll slowly learn about the game’s geography, and even if they’re not as obvious as the so-called “main path”, there are clear ways to skip entire sections of the level. As any speed runner knows, that’s the point.

Most importantly, the combination of effective level design and clever movement mechanics taught me something special: the magic of running fast. I’ve dabbled in speedruns in the past — the only game I’ve ever gotten a full run of is the seminal Celeste, and my personal favorite in Kingdom Hearts 2 — but never took it particularly seriously.

Gosh, did the neon white make you feel its rush. I think the moment that really cemented it as a game that I really wanted to learn how to run happened when I played the first level of it – not the first time I played it, but after I played it for a while Go back to it for a few hours into the game. I wonder how fast I can beat it and how high I can place it. do you know? As of this writing, I’m number one.

Granted, I probably won’t be facing a ton of speedrunners, as it’s probably limited to a handful of players before release. I don’t care though, because when I squeeze into the first position in less than a millisecond, the adrenaline I feel is different than I’ve ever felt before. If this isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

If nothing else, it’s a school to learn how to run fast – I’ll actually try to learn how to run if time permits. In a way, that’s the highest compliment I can give.

However, that’s not all Neon White is all about. There’s a story there, and honestly, when Esposito said he was making games for Freaks, I think it was more of what he said. In addition to the titular white, there are three other neon lights (the ones responsible for killing demons) that you spend most of your time on. The thing is, White suffers from amnesia, and I know it’s an overused plot device, but it works here, and it’s well done.

To res tore White’s memory, you can get different levels of gifts to give to three neon lights, red, yellow, and purple. This can lead to side quests, which are levels with specific challenges; dialogue scenes, which are mostly just a little fun with no meaningful story; and memories, which are where the sad stuff begins.

Surprisingly enough, Neon White’s story is a bit of an abuse. For the most part – despite not having directly experienced the trauma firsthand – I think it handles these themes well. It’s worth noting that there’s also a fast-forward button in the cutscene (it’s a game about speedrunning, after all), so you can skip it if you don’t want to see the topic.

Either way, while there’s some surprising content here, don’t go into Neon White expecting the most revolutionary story, nor a particularly scary or heavy one, because a lot of games just see white flirting with red , and vice versa (which, thankfully, never feels too rude – more of an adult being an adult). These exchanges are also offset by White’s constant taunts — mostly because he’s a huge nerd who asks to be dunked, albeit in an unbelievably cute way — so there isn’t any sexier game Conversation feels particularly gratuitous as a result.

Still, the key to the Neon White is its speed. If nothing else, it’s a school to learn how to run fast – I’ll actually try to learn how to run if time permits. In a way, that’s the highest compliment I can give Neon White. This is not a game for everyone, especially for those who like to take their time. But for a geek like me, this is something I can’t live without.