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Neon White: Card-based FPS by creator of Donut County (Switch/PC)


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  • 5 months later...
  • 10 months later...

 


Game Information

Game Title: Neon White

Platforms:

  • Nintendo Switch (Jun 15, 2022)
  • PC (Jun 15, 2022)


Trailer:

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive

    Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 87 average - 95% recommended

Critic Reviews

 

Spoiler

COGconnected - Jaz Sagoo - 85 / 100

Neon White takes elements of a range of genres and combines them to create a truly fascinating experience. Part hectic, card-based, FPS speedrunner and part visual novel, dating sim, the game manages to strike a perfect balance that successfully blends a multitude of strands. Due to its highly addictive and massively replayable gameplay, online leaderboards and secrets within, you’ll love each and every minute of this heavenly title.


Checkpoint Gaming - Tom Quirk - 8.5 / 10

Neon White is a truly unique first-person action experience. With its clever level design and Soul Card system, chaining together demon-slaying and platforming to get to the goal the quickest is a breeze. The game’s compelling cast and setting draw you into its story, and the wealth of side content and drive to improve on one’s scores will keep you coming back. Even its sluggish boss fights and somewhat samey visual style doesn’t do much to hold the game back. If you are looking for a truly unique indie action title, you should definitely check out Neon White.


Console Creatures - Bobby Pashalidis - Recommended

Neon White comes in like a hurricane and delivers one of the most satisfying speedrunning titles in recent memory. If you're tired of open-world bloat, this stylish, sleek, and bizarre game from Ben Esposito is worth your time.


Dexerto - Lloyd Coombes - 9 / 10

Neon White is a stylish, unique title that’s sure to see a dedicated community of speed runners and action game fans alike flock to it.



It’s like nothing I’ve played before, and I can’t stop thinking about its lucid but responsive gameplay even after playing for hours on end.


Digital Trends - Giovanni Colantonio - 4 / 5

Neon White swings for the fences with its card-based gun-platforming, but it pays off to create a wildly enjoyable action game.


Eurogamer - Oisin Kuhnke - Recommended

Neon White achieves everything it sets out to with remarkable success. Not only is it one of the most entertaining experiences I've played in years, but it also speaks to a highly specific audience many just don't anymore. It's for weirdos, misfits, and dorks. Neon White is one of the best games of the year, and it'd be a colossal mistake not to check it out.


GGRecon - Harry Boulton - 9 / 10

Neon White is an outstanding take on the rather untouched subgenre of first-person platformers that consistently reinvents itself at every turn


Game Informer - Blake Hester - 9.5 / 10

Neon White achieves everything it sets out to with remarkable success. Not only is it one of the most entertaining experiences I've played in years, but it also speaks to a highly specific audience many just don't anymore. It's for weirdos, misfits, and dorks. Neon White is one of the best games of the year, and it'd be a colossal mistake not to check it out.


GameSpew - Richard Seagrave - 8 / 10

As long as players know what they’re getting into With Neon White, chances are they’ll have a brilliant time. It’s got a clean visual style, a brilliant soundtrack, and gameplay that’s challenging but moreish. Add in a story that will keep you interested in uncovering the fate of Neon White and his acquaintances, and you have one of the most interesting releases of the year so far.


GameXplain - Adam Conner - Liked

Video Review - Quote not available


Gaming Nexus - Elliot Hilderbrand - 9 / 10

Sitting down for even ten minutes with Neon White makes me feel like I've gotten a lot of playing time in. Stages are fast, and replaying them when things don't go your way doesn't feel like a drag. The addictive nature of Neon White meant I was going back to the same stages again and again until I was able to ace them. The story isn't for me, and feels predictable, but I can see how it might hit the right crowd. The easy to learn gameplay, with the unique weapon cards made for an experience I couldn't get enough of.


God is a Geek - Chris White - 9 / 10

Neon White is as addictive as it is challenging, with plenty of replayability and varied gameplay, looking gorgeous at every step. It's a magnificent take on the FPS-genre, building complex and thrilling levels where simply pulling the trigger isn't enough.


Goomba Stomp - Marc Kaliroff - Essential

Since its announcement, Donut County creator Ben Esposito has been claiming that if Neon White “is for you, it’s your favorite game.” While that may sound like typical self-promoting high praise from a game creator, his sentiment does not fall short of its intentions. Neon White is a glorious gift from Esposito and his new developer team, Angel Matrix. Once a player steps into heaven and pulls their first trigger, they will be locked tightly into Neon White’s premise of exterminating every demon in its stylistic bloodbath.


IGN Italy - Damaso Scibetta - Italian - 8.8 / 10

Neon White is everything you want from a speedrunning game: fast, super precise, well structured and built around short and various levels. This alone would be enough to recommend it, but the package is completed with a unique artistic style, a valuable writing and a clearly original and strange game design that mixes together visual novel, dating sim, first person shooter and platformer. Some very small technical uncertainty in the repetition of the attempts does not affect the overall quality.


Metro GameCentral - GameCentral - 8 / 10

A stylish and brilliantly designed blend of first person shooter and platformer, which nails the compelling and addictive chase for the perfect run.


MonsterVine - Diego Escala - 4.5 / 5

If you’re looking for a game to scratch that adrenaline chasing itch, Neon White might just be the thing you’re looking for.


Nintendo Life - Scott McCrae - 9 / 10

From its excellent writing, music, and presentation to its intense and satisfying core gameplay, Neon White is one of the most exciting things we've played all year, and it's a game we can't see ourselves putting down for a long time as we try to best our previous times. It successfully brings together elements from apparently disparate genres in new and exciting ways and seems poised to become the next great speedrunning title. It's one that action game fans and Switch owners in general won't want to miss.


NintendoWorldReport - Donald Theriault - 8 / 10

Although it's coming out at a packed time of year, Neon White should definitely be on the radar of Switch owners. Whether trying to stay ahead of the story, ripping off a stage or two in between games, or trying to shave a few hundredths of a second off your level time to get up the leaderboards, there's always an excuse to shoot up heaven.


Prima Games - Jesse Vitelli - 9.5 / 10

It feels incredible to play and is designed to be a constantly upward ramp in both difficulty and execution. The basic tools and ideas it teaches you in its early stages come full circle when it has you running the gauntlet in its final sections of level


Saving Content - Evan Rowe - 4 / 5

Stylish, beautiful, and frenetic, Neon White's unique blend of anime platforming FPS speed-runner is challenging fun you can't put down.


WhatIfGaming - Ali Hashmi - 9 / 10

Neon White is an exceptional shooter brimming with style and substance in equal measure. The core mechanics are extremely polished and encourage you to get better through repetition, and practice. Despite my early reservations, the characters grew on me as the story progressed, and White is a pretty likable protagonist. Expertly designed levels, Machinae Girl's OST, and the slick presentation make Neon White a worthwhile experience that you won't put down easily.


Worth Playing - Chris "Atom" DeAngelus - 9 / 10

Neon White is an absolute delight of a speed-running game. It's easy to pick up and play, and it has enough bite that you need to master how to shave off a few seconds from your time to proceed. More importantly, it feels really good to do so. The plot is fun, if not groundbreaking, and the likeable characters keep you invested. Aside from some backtracking that I wasn't fond of, Neon White hits all the marks and hits them well. Just be prepared to start playing and discover that eight hours have flown by.

 

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Game is awesome, though I think calling it "card-based" is going to mislead two different crowds. It'll keep people who hate card games away, and it'll attract people who like card games... but it's not a card game. The "cards" are just weapons. Not like weapons that you spend mana to cast or whatever. They're literally just weapon pickups with a main or alternate fire. The most "card-like" feature about them is that you can have two weapon stacks of 3. i.e. 3 assault rifles and 3 pistols, which gives multiple uses of the alternate fire, which generally destroys the card upon use.

 

I think the main reason they used cards was to keep the screen free of giant gun model clutter (which I personally appreciate, I always turn off gun models in fast-paced shooters if I can) and also of course saves on dev time designing the model, firing animations, an arm, etc.

 

In short, this is an FPS parkour time-trial game with an anime-style story and some light relationship (S-links from Persona or relationships similar to Hades, not dating-based) elements. Each map is super quick, and there's generally at least two paths, one being the obvious one and another being much faster. Sometimes there's more. Completing a map awards a medal based on your performance, bronze, silver, gold and ace. Each level of medal unlocks "insight," which range from being able to find a gift on the map to give as part of the relationship part of the game, a level hint which shows you the quicker path, and after getting an ace medal, you unlock the global leaderboard, while the friend one is enabled by default.

 

I think this is great because you get a much more manageable leaderboard to start with that's fun to beat since it's just your friends, and only unlock the global leaderboard once you stand a chance of actually competing on it, assuming the level doesn't have some massive skip.

 

Had a ton of fun today just trying to break the top 1,000 for each stage (got as close as the top 200 in a few, the early stages especially are hugely competitive as there's tens of thousands on the leaderboards and they're simple stages so shaving a hundredth of a second can rocket you up over a hundred places) and managed to reach that goal on every single one so far.

 

Game looks good, controls great, good voice acting, interesting story and concept, the characters are fun so building up the relationships is rewarding, I like the whole package so far.

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10 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

That's certainly a lot of words to say it is card based.

No, because "card-based" generally implies that there's some form of deck building, or some sort of card-based resource management like mana or land or even shuffling, but they're just... guns. It's like if you reskinned the guns in Doom to be cards, that would not make it a "card-based" game in any way that matters.

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1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

No, because "card-based" generally implies that there's some form of deck building, or some sort of card-based resource management like mana or land or even shuffling, but they're just... guns. It's like if you reskinned the guns in Doom to be cards, that would not make it a "card-based" game in any way that matters.

 

Yeah this was basicialy key for me to know, so thanks! That wasn’t clear to me before and greatly increases my interest. Now I need to decide where to get this on.

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6 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

Yeah this was basicialy key for me to know, so thanks! That wasn’t clear to me before and greatly increases my interest. Now I need to decide where to get this on.

This is exactly why I'm trying to draw the distinction, I know many people who would not pick this up because it was card-based, which is a shame because it's actually not! And for people looking for a deep card system, they'll get it and might be disappointed. I think clarity on the subject is good for everyone!

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3 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

This is exactly why I'm trying to draw the distinction, I know many people who would not pick this up because it was card-based, which is a shame because it's actually not! And for people looking for a deep card system, they'll get it and might be disappointed. I think clarity on the subject is good for everyone!

 

I was planning to at least try it because of the word of mouth/critical reception/great style, but this actually has me pumped now! But yeah the only reason I was hesitant on it at all was because my mind went to deck building and shit.

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8 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

No, because "card-based" generally implies that there's some form of deck building, or some sort of card-based resource management like mana or land or even shuffling, but they're just... guns. It's like if you reskinned the guns in Doom to be cards, that would not make it a "card-based" game in any way that matters.

 

Weapons based on cards -> Card based game.

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Man I don’t know why I was so sure this was game pass, but it’s not even on Xbox! And apparently the res is trash (though it is 60fps) on switch, so that makes the choice for deck easy!

 

Ill grab this today to join my already anxiety driving amount of stuff loaded on deck I wanna play.

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Game is super fun, but I think it's definitely not for everyone. If you love speedrunning this game is absolutely for you. If you like quirky anime stories and platforming this game is you.

 

The shooting definitely takes a backseat to map traversal. And as xbob said calling it a card game is very misleading.

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Damn this is really fkn good so far. Def my sorta jam. Looks great on deck at native res. It’s definitely first person platforming done right. The card mechanic is actually pretty interesting how it adds an element of mid fight puzzle.

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  • 3 months later...

Finally got around to this. About 25 hours in and I've platinum'ed every level, got ever gift, completed every side mission, and got the good ending.

 

Some of the platinum's were intense.

 

The game was probably a little longer than it needed to be- - I think I'm ready for a break after all that -- but it is a solid game and the highs when you make a good run are very satisfying.

 

 

I will not, however, being doing the level rush unlocks where you have to do all the sides for a character in one sitting and certainly not the one where you do the whole game in one sitting!

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