Sometimes it’s easy to explain video games, even to those unfamiliar with them, sometimes something like it happens Neon White. It is among the most interesting games of the last period, released without too much fanfare, but ready to carve out a slice of fans and critical acclaim. There are titles that you easily place within their category, reassuring and precise in their adherence to the canons, others that you find yourself explaining mixing genres, styles and influenceschallenging the classification in a fascinating demonstration of how much the word videogame now embraces a range of drastically different experiences.
To blur the lines between these experiences and make a mockery of genres, Neon White decides to mix them together: the story is about a stranger who suddenly finds himself in the afterlife, where he is told that he can only earn bliss helping the forces of Heaven to defeat some demons that haunt the heavenly halls. To make things more complex, in doing so he will be competing with other damned souls, who wear like him explosive masks to avoid escape attempts. We will soon find that some of our adversaries know us well, while we remember very little of our mortal life. Part of the game will then be doing what is asked of us, while the other part will be finding out who we were, coming to terms with a past that just doesn’t seem worthy of holiness.
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A video game split in two
The most strictly playful part of Neon White is a sort of huge tribute to one of the most fascinating and long-lived videogame subcultures, those of the speedrun. It defines itself speedrun the art of getting to the top of a level as quickly as possible, using technical skill, map shortcuts, and even code errors if needed. It is a discipline that is more or less born with Super Mario Brosbut finds consecration before in Doom and then in Quakespreads more and more thanks to the development of the Internet and shows players moving within the levels as a sort of ballet in which every jump and every curve highlight the absolute knowledge of space.
In Neon White you have to do more or less the same thing: in every level we will have to go from A to B in the shortest time possible and eliminating all targets, in challenges that rarely exceed one minute. To eliminate the demons we will have to use weapons in the form of cards, which in addition to the basic shooting have a secondary function when they are discarded and which represents the strategic heart to overcome the levels. For example, by discarding a gun card we will make a double jump, by discarding a rifle we will be able to make a very fast sprint forward a few meters, breaking through particularly fragile walls and so on. Completing a level in the shortest time possible means repeating it, mastering every movement and always checking our trajectory, filing pennies and becoming one with the muscle memory that will eventually allow us to make some movements without even thinking about them. The loop of these little puzzles to solve in speed is fascinating and hypnotic and stimulates the desire for competition and the dopamine rush that comes when everything fits together perfectly. In no time at all you find yourself wanting to do just one more, and then they will be at least 10 before quittingespecially if you want to stay high in the world rankings.
Beyond all this there is the other part of Neon White, or the relational one: chapter after chapter, you can visit some places of this strange paradise where you have come and chat with the rivals and with the bizarre managers of all the bureaucratic part of the competition. Level after level, absurd dialogue after absurd dialogue, you can try to find out who you were before you died, because some people seem to fear you and with others maybe there was a love affair, and maybe you could even reflect and make amends for the mistakes of the past. This section of the game is somewhat reminiscent of what are called visual novels, i.e. video games in which the narrative part it is preponderant and all you have to do is read the dialogues, but if you want you can improve your relationships by finding some hidden gifts in the levels that will unlock additional dialogues, bonus levels and so on.
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One style that looks like two
All this is accompanied by a visual style that is split in two, just like the playful components: during the races against time we will find ourselves in front of minimal three-dimensional environments, with graphics reduced to the bone, stylized monsters, pale structures that seem to almost float in space; during the dialogues a manga style comes out that despite knowing it has already seen it still manages to maintain a strong identity, thanks also to characterization of the characters and the masks they are forced to wear.
Neon White is a ballet of bullets, jumps and dodges that will keep you nailed to the screen in search of the perfect ride, and when you decide to slow down every now and then, there will be a story waiting for you that could hide very intimate and interesting moments. The game, available for Nintendo Switch and on Steam (costs 21.99 euros), is also highly recommended for those who feel a bit rusty with the joypadbecause the level of difficulty rises, but always just enough to leave you with the desire for a new challenge.