Neon White is a game that's categorized primarily by it's excellent aesthetic and it's overtly amateurish game design.

The gameplay of Neon White is genuinely brilliant, if not groundbreaking. The way that the different abilities and weapons attatched to them are constructed is something special, i love the card game seetup of it.

The level design was something i found myself more and more dissatisfied with the longer the game went on. In the early levels i found myself having a lot more fun due to the faster, shorter nature of them, as well as the fact that a lot of them felt more open and less rigid. The later levels feel almost on-rails with how little room for variation or mistake there is, every level has an exact way you're supposed to play, and the only real difficulty in them comes from figuring that out with the sometimes obtuse mechanics. It's far too steeped in trial and error for me to find that muh satisfaction from it, even the boss fights are so limited in what can be done despite having such a well-designed moveset, it doesn't feel like it's reached it's potential.

The narrative is, as you can probably guess, paltry, and almost obnoxious in how unambitious it is. I want to give credit to an indie game for even having a story of this calibur, in addition to having voice acting for most of the dialogue, but as soon as i'm ready to ignore the cliche-ridden dialogue and poorly-defined characters, they throw in an almost insulting nod to the audience in the form of a joke or an out of place pop-culture reference, the tonal dissonance in this game is absolutely ridiculous. Just like the levels, the more and more the plot went on the less i found myself interested, it doesn't jive with the rest of the game, nor does it stand on it's own.

The aesthetic, for the most part, is atleast very well executed, it has a problem with a lot of the areas after the first third of the game not looking nwarly as good as that which was designed to be shown off in trailers and used in promo material, but the game never looks actively bad. The character portraits are actually pretty impressive in sheer number, they compliment the excellent designs. Neon White has such a firm hold on looking a certain way, but only some of the time, and i love the way it looks some of the time.

The soundtrack was an excellent addition too, and it made repeating the same missions over and over again a lot more enjoyable, it definitely adds to the vibes of the game a lot, one of my favorite game soundtracks in a while, just off the top of my head.

The thing that strangely bogs this down is the optional relationship-building and bonus level segments, which are required to acquire what is surely going to be considered the superior, and possibly, canonical ending, are such a drain on the game i can barely even articulate it. The scenes aren't particularly fun to unlock, take a lot of time of aimless wandering, and aren't entertaining to watch at all, they are a tremendous waste of time, and i can only see tying the true ending to them as a massive mistake. The game doesn't even account for narrative change that would, in other games, cause these scenes to be inaccesible for the time, once again the game undercuts any emotional significance it might have.

Overall i felt that Neon White was undercooked, but worth playing. I'd say this is a great first attempt for a studio that's only just finding it's footing, and hope that they can either improve upon this idea, or move on to something else that i happen to enjoy more in the future.

Devo admitir que apesar da estética e da falta de sal dos personagens, Neon White foi uma experiência até que divertida.

A jogabilidade é bastante dinâmica e engajante, com diversas maneiras de se realizar os capítulos e alguns coletáveis escondidos de forma bem divertida.

Lado outro, a história simplesmente não chegou perto de me entreter - talvez pelo fato de grande parte do diálogo ser desinteressante. Mesmo assim, a dublagem é até que boa, apesar dos apesares.

GLASS OCEAN ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
VIRTUAL PARADISE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
VAINGLORIOUS CHORUS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
SIN TO WIN! ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
PENDULUM ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
CLOUD NINE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
HELLION ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
FIGHT OR FLIGHT ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
HOUSE OF CARDS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
THE WORLD TO COME ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
RIGGED GAME ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
ANGEL'S PEAK ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
SOLITARY GRACE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
THE WICKED HEART ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
FALSE WITNESS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
THOUSAND POUND BUTTERFLY ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
HAND OF GOD ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
MISSION COMPLETE (NOT BAD FOR A DEAD GUY) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
SERMON ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
PEACE OF MIND ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
HEAVEN CENTRAL AUTHORITY (MIKEY'S THEME) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
HEAVENLY DELIGHT ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
COMPLETELY CLUELESS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
LIGHT IN THE FOG (RED'S THEME) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
NEON BAR ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
SQUIRT OF LEMON (RAZ'S THEME) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
SUNCOAST SUITE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
FIST BUMP (YELLOW'S THEME) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
RUDE INTERLUDE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
PEARLY GATE PROMENADE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
DISPATCH ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
BLOODY SNEAKERS (VIOLET'S THEME) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
MILLENNIUM ESCALATOR ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
OUT OF BOUNDS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
RINGER OF BELLS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
DARK TWIST ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
MECHANICAL HALO (GREEN'S THEME) ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
COIN FLIP ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
STAINED GLASS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
APPLES & HONEY ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
RUMORS ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
HOLY GROUND ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
SEVERED ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
BE NOT AFRAID ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
BURDEN ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
MERCY ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
WTF ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
CONFESSION ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
LIGHT IN THE FOG PART 2 ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
MILLENNIUM STAIRCASE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE
FADE TO WHITE ON REPLAY TILL THE DAY I DIE

A speedrunner's paradise intended to be replayed over and over for the most optimal movements, Neon White is an impeccably designed puzzle-platformer-shooter thing that never stops throwing the most fun gameplay ideas at you. Some of these levels legit blew my mind! The complaints about bad writing are so overblown to the point it's all I heard about the game till now, and I missed out on one of the best of last year. While yes the story is wildly different quality to the actual core gameplay, it should absolutely not put you off when it can be entirely skipped and isn't important at all. Love the character designs at least

I’ll keep coming back to this for years to come. Mechanically it’s one of the most tightly designed, fluid games which encourages speedrunning whilst still being friendly to the casual player. It goes balls to the wall in how it asks you to tackle and experiment with its gimmicks and mechanics/physics, despite their simplicity. It’s fast paced and your decisions come on the fly, but it’s never in the sensory overloading way. The game is smooth, quick to let you reset and perfect your run and walk back your mistakes. It’s made with the same understanding of its playerbase and demographics that Celeste was, so despite the intensity or perceived difficulty, it never grates. The amount of tech you can pull off by the end is as impressive as it is fun. While I’ve seen the story be ripped into online, I’d like to say that’s some of the point. The developers wanted it to be cringe in the way it was what you’d think was cool in middle school, and I think that it sticks the landing due to a full blown commitment to camp. Not that it’s what you play the game for, there’s a skip button loudly placed in the top left of your screen. But I think it’s a case where you can embrace the cringe or easily ignore it. Most overblown critique. It’s not like people pretending Fire Emblem Engage’s story was actually good, when it lost the entire campiness midway through.

MUITO divertido, a gameplay e o estilo de arte desse jogo são os pontos principais dele, eu comprei isso achando que era o tipo de jogo que eu gostaria de jogar enquanto assisto alguma coisa, mas é só muito mais legal ouvir a musica dele (que também é um acerto absurdo) enquanto eu passo pelos obstáculos tentando fazer tudo no FRAME PERFECT pra pegar o melhor tempo possível

a única coisa que me deixo meio meh desse jogo foi a história, não sei oque tem nela que não me pegou muito, o meu chute é que eu nao gosto muito do estilo visual novel, que é o jeito que a história é contada

no geral é um bom jogo, ele mistura muitos elementos diferentes e consegue fazer isso muito bem

! For the sake of clarity, I am not factoring in the story of Neon White into my review, because if I did it would ultimately reduce my rating to 2 stars maximum. The story is an appalling waste of voice acting and everyone's time. A guy who loses his memory and nobody wants to tell him even though they all know him? The 5 most unlikeable anime-esque characters? Weirdly sexual and borderline offensive dialogue? No thanks, I am leaving this out of my review. It is a stain on a masterpiece of a videogame that I could luckily skip through. !

Neon White is what the game SUPERHOT should have been: a satisfying, consistent and most of all quick 3D platformer that gets progressively more complicated and fun. I absolutely loved playing this game, especially the final 3 episodes.

The game's visuals are perfect for a genre like this. They provide clear indication of your targets and what attacks enemies perform. So clear in fact, that you are mostly able to fly through the levels without having seen them first. The game leaves traces for you to follow, you just have to figure out what buttons to press in which order, and where to aim. If you have quick reflexes, you can even mend a lot of the mistakes you make by taking a slight detour, saving you a death on the counter.

The extra challenges the game provides are also quite unique and fun. Each set has a theme to adhere to, for example only being able to use certain abilities, or having to perform different actions with abilities you're already used to. It is a neat way of showing off new moves and adding them to your arsenal.

The rush modes were also surprisingly fun, mostly because of how quickly you can access levels back to back: no menus and incredibly quick load times. You can actually finish all 96 story levels within 70 minutes if you're quick, making the rush modes less of a drag and an interesting challenge.

My only dislike (not counting the horrible story) for this game is the music. It's not bad, but way too angsty and electronic for my taste. It made me feel more stressed out than I needed to be for this.

I recommend Neon White to anyone, really. Sure, the skill ceiling is quite high, but it is accessible to players with different gaming experiences and is immensely fun.

An Ode to Neon White:

Oh Neon White
Your levels are well designed and controls are tight
Before you I was never into speedrunning much
But now I've went and done every Hell Rush

Oh Neon White
Last summer all I did was play you into the night
Sweating in my chair at 37 degrees, hunched up to my knees
Replaying the first level to beat my friend's record
Accidentally entering the Top 50 world leaderboard

Oh Neon White
Your aesthetics are on point, character art is a delight
There's not much I can fault you for, if I'm to be polite
You're the game of 2022 as far as I can see
Oh and by the way, thanks for the Machine Girl LP

But Oh Neon White
Your story and dialogue could be better
I just wish it wasn't written by Twitter

Ooohh this game controls good.

It's definetly built around speedrunning, so the levels are short but full of value and potential for replayability. I'm not sure what I could compare it to. Kind of like a 3D celeste in a way.

The story is a pretty interesting take on religion, yet it's still lighthearted.

Machine girl is a bop, the artstyle is great!

When I initially played this game I kind of turned my brain off and chugged through it and cringing at the buzzwords used and wrote it off as nothing more than a fun distraction for a few hours

However this time when I pushed myself to get every single dev time on every level this is when I had to lock in and really appreciate how well designed the levels are for the player. There was constantly new skips I was finding and when I would watch speedruns of certain levels I particularly enjoyed my jaw would drop, its finetuned to feel amazing to flow through and I went so ham in every level I started to feel my hand cramp up it was addicting. The change from joycons to dualsense def helped me enjoy it more shooters to me feel awful on both joycon and pro controller imo.

As for the story id argue that its definitely solid when I first played it was pretty easy to make fun of of course with the shitty buzzwords and pretty generic cookie cutter archetypes but honestly its fun and does its job especially when you know what happens and can pick apart parallels it can get pretty cool, cheesy but enjoyable for the most part.

My big problems this time stem from violet switching on the fly from the worst bait character to actually ok when they pit her with green and her jealousy towards white and my other reason being selling this group of characters as a family but red and yellow share one single dialogue of interaction hard to sell to me but still cool designs and i liked most of them. Glad I gave this one another shot cause now all the heaven/hell rushes are calling to me 🙏 and another note machine girl is like THE perfect choice for the ost of this game

Also Ilyes and Kai if you’re reading this I beat both of your times on every level ;)

Neon White is a game made by someone who really knows how to make engaging, fun, fast-paced action, and does NOT know how to write a compelling narrative. There's a lot that I absolutely LOVED about Neon White, and plenty that I hated as well.

Let's start with the positives. Neon White's gameplay is the star of the show here. Almost every level made me smile and excited, especially towards the end. The game is not afraid to test your speed and knowledge of its mechanics. It does a good job of introducing you to concepts at a good pace. Just as certain abilities are going stale or running out of uses, BAM, a new weapon or way to use your weapon that changes the way you have to think about things. The movement can be a little floaty at times, but for the most part, the action is fast-paced and thrilling.

The art style and music are also fantastic. I love the way things look both in the VN sections and during the action. It isn't anything mind blowing, but its very pretty to look at. The soundtrack by Machine Girl has been praised a ton, and that's for good reason. These tracks help ramp up the action and intensity during levels, especially as they grow more difficult.

Unfortunately, Neon White's huge red flag is its story, dialogue, and characters. While I liked some of the side characters (Raz and Mikey specifically), the main cast is a huge let down. This is mostly because of the very, VERY poor writing. The main plot is nothing special and never really amounts to anything interesting. Character dialogue is meh at best and, at worst, so cringe inducing I just had to skip it. Whenever you are engaging with characters in its VN sections (akin to a dating-sim at times) you can't help but feel like you just want it to be over. This concept is so cool and interesting, but Ben Esposito just doesn't know how to engage its players with a compelling narrative, instead trying to appeal itself to dumb anime fans who will eat up the game's terrible writing simply because it tries to be like an anime game.

Another thing I was disappointed in was the game's lack of bosses. There are only 3 boss fights in this game, and they are all against the same character. While gameplay wise, I LOVED the boss fights, having it be with the same character was a huge bummer. I would have loved to have seen some unique demon bosses that could have tested the player on different mechanics or weapon abilities just to shake things up. It doesn't detract too much from my overall opinions on the game, but it is something worth noting.

Neon White is the product of incredible gameplay and horrible writing. If the story had been better, this could have been a real GOTY contender for me. Instead, we have a pretty great game that is held back severely by its lack of compelling characters and plot. But hey, I had a great time with this game overall. The gameplay kept me engaged and wanting me to keep trying for faster times and finding each level's secret presents to unlock secret challenge levels. If this game were to ever get a sequel, the biggest improvement needed would be its narrative. If this had been a full $60 title, I would probably rate it a bit lower, but for only $25, I'd say its worth picking up, even with the horrible writing. Give us a great narrative and keep up with the amazing gameplay, and you would have a surefire hit on your hands, Esposito

Pretty much everything that has been said about Neon White already, is true of my ultimate opinions of it. It is an insanely stylish, ultra-fast and addicting game that sadly doesn't make the most of its narrative. I will say, the writing is not as poor as I was anticipating, a lot of the humour and characters just feels like reddit, and it can be very annoying at times, I especially did not enjoy Neon Violet. But most of the time its just inoffensive and has a vaguely interesting plot you kind of turn your brain off for.

No what you're here for if you're playing this is for the gameplay. And this game has you covered on all fronts. Everything is lightning fast and stylish, you'll be constantly zooming around stages with a whole arsenal of insanely fun weapons, each with their own little abilities that you will play smartly around. This game is addicting as hell, and its almost all down to the speed at which the action is going. You are almost always going at insane speeds, using on the fly reactions, likely failing many times, but slowly getting quicker, more skillful, and eventually mastering these levels like they're nothing. All of this is backed with a wicked art style that just makes everything pop, and probably the best soundtrack of the year, courtesy of Machine Girl, who I was already a fan beforehand, so seeing their name on it was a huge treat.

This is definitely a game you can decide if this will be your jam or not just looking at a trailer. What this game reminds me of most is like, the concept of Toonami. Obviously this game is very anime-inspired but in terms of direct references I don't think there is much in mind (maybe except Black Lagoon), but more just those old Toonami bumpers. And yeah, like those bumpers, they're cheesy, but like the program itself, the meat of the game, is what makes both so cherished by those who experienced them. Definitely a runner up for my game of the year, it took over my life for two days, which I think deserves credit where credit is due.