Neon White’s demo has a little of everything I need in my life

 

I played Neon White’s demo in the Steam Next Fest and it has instantly shot up the ranks in my wish list. Published by Annapurna Interactive and developed by Angel Matrix, this indie game is a genre-bending, speed-running shoot ‘em up of a good time. On top of that, there’s notes of smooth parkour and a stylish visual novel with characters that seem vibrant and appeal to my anime sensibilities. The game’s creator Ben Esposito has taken a stark departure from his previous game Donut County, but you can feel some of the influences in Neon White. The simple yet refined controls and unique puzzle solving mechanics embedded into a parkour time trial style game are incredibly fun to play around with.

Neon White has players take control of White, an assassin picked to compete with other demon slayers for a chance to avoid Hell and gain a ticket straight to Heaven. He suffers from amnesia, which keeps him from remembering the colorful cast of characters that seem to gravitate towards you and are involved somehow in your past. The demon slayers, called “Neons”, compete against each other in various levels where you need to cross the finish line after taking out all the demons along the way. Once you end the run, you get a medal based on how quickly you completed the track and then unlock certain aspects of the level. At the bronze medal, you simply clear the level and can proceed forward. Silver medal grants you a special gift in the level to pick up while the Gold medal unlocks additional speed-running hints. Acing the level gives you a Platinum medal and unlocks the global leaderboards to see how you stack up against other players around the world.

Speaking of the game mechanics, Neon White involves a lot of movement and combat. Your character moves fast and in an incredibly smooth way, giving you tight control. You collect soul cards along the way which give you access to weapons with a specific amount of ammo. These cards can be swapped around and when you discard them, it activates a special movement ability like double jump. You need to utilize these to help you get to the finish line faster as you figure out the best way to traverse each level. There’s no awkward crouching or holding down a button to run, giving you crisp and clean movement. Run across water to move faster, jump off of an exploding grenade, strafe sideways and land at the perfect spots to get the lowest completion time on that leaderboard.

Neon White also brings an interesting aspect to the visual novel style story by incorporating a gift and relationship system similar to games like Hades. Once you finish the tutorial, you can accept missions and drink with your friends, getting to know them and the overall story by progressing your relationships. I really hope the game leans harder into these mechanics by going full blown dating sim on the side of this incredible action game. So far, Neon White has me hooked and I’m seriously looking forward to getting my hands on the full game as soon as it’s out. I highly recommend checking out the demo while Steam Next Fest is running until February 28. The game will be launching early 2022 on Nintendo Switch and PC.