Introduction

Speedrunning, the race between you and the clock. There's a particular amount of finesse that goes into completing a game in record time and designing a game to be completed in record time.

In order to speedrun a game the player must be familar with shortcuts, timesavers and methods to breeze through each section of the game with ease. At the same time, learning to speedrun a game provides a barrier to entry with external tracking tools, countless hours of meorization and repeatition to even be up to par to compete to break scores.

However....What if one game was not only designed with speedrunning in mind, but was built on it.

If you were to ask me to describe Neon White in one sentence I would say that Neon White is a parkour puzzle platformer that prioritizes speed and mastery and encourages replayability. Which is all true, and is the elevator pitch for this game. But Neon White is more importantly a cleverly crafted game designed to be speedrunned that provides a level of accessiblity for new players new to speedrunning like myself, and provides a challenging competitve scene for veterns.

Lead Designer Ben Esposito stated that his experiences watching speedruns influenced the intial idea and the core mechanics stating "Speedrunning becomes less about skill and execution, and more about solving a puzzle to complete the game as fast as possible".

This sentiment is what would form the formula for each level of Neon White, and I'm telling you right now once you start, you can't stop.

Gameplay

Overview

Neon White is a First person Platformer that takes aspects of the deck building genre creating a sandbox of diverse parkour puzzles, where your greatest threat is the clock. Neon Whites gameplay loop is focused around killing all the demons of a said level and reaching the finish line as quick as possible. When completing said level the player will be rewarded with a medal spanning from Bronze to Diamond, and another medal that we'll talk about shortly.

With each incremental medal that you acquire the player is provided added benefits such as a little hand that'll appear and show the player a shortcut. This hand doesn't handhold the player, pun not intended, but rather provides an additional avenue or strategy to the player to assist them in reducing their time, and is still dependent on the players execution.

Soul Cards

The level design of Neon White starts off simplistic with the player being introduced to the basic mechanics of the game. Then the player is slowly introduced to different cards referred to as Soul Cards and this is where the formula for Neon White really starts to take form asking the player to construct a methodical way to complete each level.

Each Soul emulates a type of gun and comes with a certain amount of ammo, but Soul Cards also come with an ability that when discarded impacts the players movement. Some examples of this being the Elevate card is a pistol meaning you dispose of enemies with said pistol or discard the card, and perform a double jump.

Neon White provides a strong set of Soul Cards that keep the game entertaining, and challenging. With each additional Soul Card, the game is asking you to become compotent with the previous and through practice and mastery the player will feel a fluidity in their movement through each level.

Enemies

It's this continuous evolution on the skillset of both movement and weapon variety that keeps Neon White fun and challenging. But what seals the deal in these puzzle platforming levels, is Neon Whites approach to enemy design. Each level will be littered with x amount of enemies for the player to beat, before they can cross the finish line. This means that the player will need to be strategic in how they pick off enemies. But enemies in Neon White also provide the player a benefit, as particular enemies are color coded to represent a particular card that they drop when defeated.

This in an addition to the inherint abilities of each card, is what pushes the player to keep improving and bettering their completion time through trial and error, which is the foundation of any good speedrunning game.

Speedrunning

The replayability and a lot of Neon White's fun factor comes from how fluid and well throughout each level is designed. The levels are created with great depth and making each stage feel like an acrobatic playground where you're continuously hop. skip and jumping building to building to reach your destination as quick as possible.

These levels are purposely crafted so that they can guide the player to the destination through the long route and once the player knows the destination have them begin optimizing their routes to get there in record time. The game puts speedrunning at the forefront of the game, and continously amps up the tools and mastery throughout each chapter. All the aspects of speedrunning that appeal to a player a baked into Neon White, like the in-game timer, the leaderboards, the medals and the shortcuts.

In Neon White there is an additional bonus medal for players wanting to go above and beyond with their speedrunning challenges. Once they've reached the Diamond medal, there is one additional hidden medal. This Red Medal is the dev times medal and it is awarded to the players who clear a level faster than the developers. These Dev Time medals are a neat added bonus for those dedicated speedrunners out there. These medals coupled with the leaderboards continuousprovide a sense of progression and a reason to keep mastering your parkour skills.

The Music

The soundtrack for Neon White is energetic and atmospheric with its EDM breakcore-inspired soundtrack that syncopates with the gameplay like PB&J. The soundtrack keeps the adranaline pumping empowering you with each incremental run, making you feel like a badass as you hop, dash and cannonball across the map in a trance with the music. The music to me is like a skipping rope continously spinning and although you may fail the jump it's still there waiting for you to jump back in and try again. The soundtrack is stylistic and the Machine Girl tracks keep the blood pumping and it's definitely something I have on my regular music rotation at the moment.

Story

The story for Neon white is ahhh....

The Story for Neon White is not something that I would not sell the game on, the premise is cool but it is more designed to give context to the plot. The premise of Neon White is that our main protagonist named Neon White, wakes up in heaven with no recollection of his memories and how he died. He is surrounded by people who know who he is, which were his friends from when they were all alive and are explorable through social activites. Heaven has been influtrated by demons and there is 10 days until Judgement Day. So Neon White along with a collective of Neons have been assigned with eradicating the demon threat, with the incentive that the first place Neon gets to remain in heaven.

The characters are pretty one dimensional. You're given the chance to explore these characters more deeply through social interactions in a somewhat similar to Danganronpa or Persona. The way you access these sequences is through collectibles gifts that are scattered out through each level.

All the story related elements of Neon White are more a mechanism used to better provide context to the gameplay and add additional life and playtime to Neon White, but the memorable joyride of this experience will come more from the gameplay and its soundtrack, which we'll dive into now

Conclusion

Neon White delivers a fast, action packed parkour experience that can keep you hooked for hours after completing its main story and provides multiple reasons to keep you engaged, including additional modes and challenges post the main game.

Its adrenaline pumping moment to moment gameplay continuously manages to find new ways to elevate player enjoyment through its cleverly crafted level design, and approach to enemy and item management. The breakcore soundtrack, is the cherry on top to what it feels like to be a parkour maneuvering badass. The relationship that the gameplay and soundtrack share can invoke a feeling in the player that is best expressed through the following skit.

Whilst I didn't particularly love the writing or story for Neon White with its cheesy dialogue, and one dimensional characters, I did find that this did not hinder my experience with the game and overall I would say that Neon White is one of the more memorable and engaging experiences I've had in 2022.

I would not be surprised if Angel Matrix were to add a map creator mode in future, that would facilitate leaderboard integration and medals. Because what they have created foundationally is an explosive action packed experience where both speed-runners new, and experienced are welcomed and challenged to continuously improve, and it is my opinion that a custom map creator would be the final component needed to truly immortalize this game as something that an already dedicated community would forever return to.

Angel Matrix have forged a winning formula here, and I would love to see more of the studios future works, and more studios build upon and make use of the concept of speed-running. This is a parkour enthusiasts playground, this is Neon White. Thanks for watching.