a game that, in almost every aspect, perfectly illustrates the difference between "being derivative" and "being iterative"

is it like Resident Evil and Silent Hill? in game design yes, but is it a clone? not really. does it have motifs similar to other various popular media? yes, but is it just a series of "hey do you like this other thing" moments? not really.

a very good exploration of ideas wrapped tightly into a well-presented box. excited to see more from this team.

it's hard for me to write a review about this game. i feel like it was designed in a lab to be optimally enjoyable for exactly me, much like how McDonald's french fries are chemically engineered to be Mathematically and Provably Delicious for the general American public.

i can't talk about Neon White without talking about Arcane Kids. in the mid-10s, being someone who staked a lot of identity into playing games was profoundly embarassing. ignoring the truly heinous shit that goes without saying, year after year, AAA studios continued to pump out "mids at best." on the other side of things, "indie" games were no longer new and were in something of an awkward puberty. i can't tell you how many "physics-based puzzle platformers with a gimmick" i had pitched to me that promised to be Actually Good. they weren't. however, during this time, the Unity weirdos were churning away in their art scenes around the globe. the new derisive joke became "make a game in unity, make a million dollars." of course, the people making these jokes didn't know what they were talking about, but i guess none of us really did back then.

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Arcane Kids existed as something of an antithesis to the games of the time. when we had more than enough pixel-art RPGs, they gave us ZINETH. when we got innundated with walking simulators, they gave us Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. when indies decided to try and be funny with things like Goat Simulator, we got Sonic Dreams Collection, CRAP! No One Loves Me, and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RNCyc3hzAw). while a lot of these games were "funny" or "jokes," they always had deeper ideas to them beneath the surface around player agency, the joy of moving your avatar, the love of Videogames As Videogames.

i cannot possibly explain how strange it felt to turn on the game and have the title screen after the intro cutscene splash in with a voice echoing "NEON WHITE" as the moodiest witch house track creeps in through your headphones. the fake scanlines, the neon glow on the characters, the tone, the vibes. i thought to myself, "they finally did it." as i played more, i confirmed my suspicions.

Arcane Kids finally made the game it feels like they had been working toward all these years. blazing fast, huge jumps, easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master, tight, violent, horny, loud, freaky, all at once. in Mission 11, as breakneck-paced breakcore blasted out of my screen, i screamed aloud in my room to my partner who was watching me play "I. FUCKING. LOVE. THIS. GAME." in time with each click of the RMB that shot me across the map at incredible speeds. in moments like this, you know for a fact that moments like Bubsy pulling out an uzi and a katana at the end of Bubsy 3D or them subjecting a crowd of people at a game conference to vape trick videos that inspired their previous game (https://youtu.be/2pO23GTaBtk?si=ldB9w6CU2UC3TkHI&t=1791) was not just them contributing to the general irony-poisoned sense of humor of the time; they legitimately thought that it was tight as fuck.

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one line from the infamous Arcane Kids Manifesto (https://arcanekids.com/manifesto) that i always think about is "the purpose of gameplay is to hide secrets."

at a time when even FromSoft has started to move away from their smaller, more-focused world design in favor of chasing the lucrative open-world design potential in Elden Ring, it feels amazing that we have a game like Neon White that is about intricately crafted and infinitely replayable level design. after years of waiting, we finally have the one true Indie Puzzle Platformer, but this time it has guns.

the gameplay (for me, usually) fell into a flowchart like this:
-beat a level once and get whatever medal you get
-go back to find the secret gift
-during this second trip, notice which parts of the levels you can skip or save time on that were hidden to you before
-play the level a 3rd time to get a gold medal
-use the hint from the Gold medal to get an Ace medal on your 4th time
-over time, you begin to amass a collection of "hey, did you know this quirk" movement secrets like shooting bullets, bunny hopping after a dash, or sliding with the shotgun's discard

game design that calls attention to itself like this is beautiful. level designers are artists. we've known this since Doom WADs. however, in the time since Doom we've had several games like Gears of War, Halo, and their ilk that said "wasn't the sickest part about Doom being a huge buff guy with loud guns just blasting disgusting freaks and seeing them explode???" while that does indeed whip, Neon White is on the other side of the coin saying "wasn't the best part about Doom the level design and the joy of figuring out how to move as fast as you can through a level???"

after 11 years of watching speedrunning streams nearly every day, Neon White finally made me feel like maybe i could do it too. first you pit yourself against the Ace medal time, then your friends, then the Dev Times, then your own ghost, and then the world. to this day, i have yet to have a global #1, but i've had a #2 and two #3s. i'll keep going though.

[EDIT 7/17/23: i did it :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWT2b9pwRMI]

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Neon White is a love letter in videogame form

absolutely whips. incredible design, sound, art, worldbuilding, pacing, and length.

a game that asks the question of what community is to you: is it the body you occupy, is it the world around you? is it your friends you help or simply every life you touch? do the people you love in far away places form that community as well, even those you are incapable of remembering? all of these questions balance on a knife's edge in a world that hates you, one that actively plans for and expects your death. they Necessitate it. in a life and a world where control is so nested in corporations who will never see consequences for their actions or remember that you exist, waking up feels like protest, choosing your own life is the new punk.

beyond incredible

still refreshingly playable, but also STILL ahead of its time. so much nuance baked into each facial expression and quip, an ocean of complexity buried in thousands of branching trees that you will only ever see a small portion of.

TokiMemo perfectly captures the constant worry of high school, in a constant environment of crazy-making conversations where you overthink every possible interaction in every way that it could go. you become the emergent gameplay, even when your character's words/actions betray how you actually feel.

the pain of being on a date with the girl you like and saying something to upset her is a spine-chilling dagger running through you, knowing that you COULD reload and have to relive the same few weeks to try again or you could let your initial choice lie and have to deal with the consequences. do you fulfill a promise you made earlier to your childhood friend you have a crush on who is CLEARLY emotionally struggling lately, or do you choose to spend time with the girl who loving is easy and carefree, who clearly likes you more, who is honest about her feelings toward you? you can only choose one, and the other will be upset. when the bombs start rolling in, you only have yourself to blame.

to play perfectly, you must become a pervert freak like Yoshio. to seek the Perfect Love, you must (in some small way) become a manipulator. to find the love you actually want, all you have to do is wait and consider how they want to feel, how to make them feel supported best, but also offer them new experiences that they might not have had without you.

this is only after my FIRST PLAYTHROUGH also!!!! Mio, i'm coming back for you....

the ultimate smooth brain game mixed with the ultimate galaxy brain game

Tunic starts out with a simple premise: it's like an old Zelda, but ~different~. it's purposefully more cryptic, its combat and design more like dark souls, and its whimsy is more whimsical than its influences. this charm pulls you in, but the idea that there's something more to the world keeps you going through the more "where do i even go/what do i even do" parts.

the chests and walls hidden by the isometric camera are fun, a repurposing of old classics. the language of the game is genius, a joy to solve. the deeper secrets are the same, another delicious treat to stumble upon in your own way. even as i finished the game, i KNEW that there were still more bigger mysteries to solve, but i had my fun with Tunic and i knew it was time to break the cycle.

an absolute joy

no longer home captures the hazy, ethereal nature of lying around with your friends hopping from topic to topic of discussion, losing track of time, having your poignant thoughts tumble out unexpectedly. the backgrounds drift in and out of focus along with your own. one second you're talking about a painting in the hallway and the next you're interrogating the nature of yourself.

i've written before about how i think games that get in and get out within two hours are the Exact Right length for narrative games, and this is no exception. i love the pacing and length of the game, but somehow i almost wish that there was just liiiittle bit more to sink into.

an open-world exploration game that has both more "breath" and more "wild" than Breath of the Wild

Sable wears its BotW inspiration on its sleeve, but the game is much more than that. BotW's combat is servicable at best (the bows are okay), but Sable imagines an open-world experience without that. what if you focused less on conquering and looting a space and more on luxuriating in it and learning more about it. the world feels alive, skittering like the wind across the dunes. the people don't feel placed in random locations, they feel nestled into their own communities where it's you're job to figure out where you fit in with them.

for a coming-of-age narrative, Sable goes a lot more beyond that. it has its Lore Dumps, sure, but the story does a lot by piecing out the flavor of the world through incredible dialogue. i have a folder full of screenshots of my favorite lines, and i STILL missed a lot that i wish i would have captured at the time. the writing centers the player not as a Grand Important Hero that the land needs to survive, but instead as a friend to many. the different groups of "jobs" that you get badges for both asks you what Sable wants to do and what You like doing. for a game about deciding what you want to do with your life, it encourages you to taste all of its flavors.

i love the score by Japanese Breakfast. i got tears when the title theme first appeared in the story. so often i would warp to a specific area when night would fall just so i could hear the area's night theme while driving aimlessly across the desert or climbing to sit atop the dunes or a perch somewhere

it is with this that Sable's love is felt. not when you are running from place to place trying to burn through a game as fast as you can just so you can say you beat it, but when you sit and become part of the world around you. it's this ludonarrative synergy that kept me coming back. the game embodies the feeling of being on a road trip, stopping somewhere cool to get food and the locals there are really nice to you, continuing to drive in the dark, looking at the houses that pass by and wondering who lives there.

in this, Sable reminds us that the joy of games is not in the checking of boxes off of a list of activities, it is in the running and jumping, the exploring, the learning.

(the game has bugs but whatever lol. i'm always willing to look past jank/unintended things when the core experience is good enough)