OVER THE FULLERENESHIFT

OTAKUSPEEDVIBE

1/1/2025 - Neon White - Almost Perfect

As I'm writing this, it's currently 22:40 of January 1st - only because on my last post, I promised I would make one at latest on New Year's day. Procrastination sucks - and as you can probably tell, honestly, I've lost interest for working on this site. Maybe it's because I'm playing too much Minecraft recently - Ok, it's definitely because I'm playing too much Minecraft recently. I can't promise anything though, I just hope to get the motiviation to work on this thing again soon. Although I do want to work more the next few days, I'm not going to make any promises because god knows what'll happen. Since I didn't exactly have much time for this, I'll just talk about Neon White, since I've been playing it a lot recently too. Expect typos, and don't expect this to be good either - again, I'm writting this for the sake of being written, and I might fix everything when I get the chance or after finishing the game.

Note: Keep in mind that I am writing this within a span of about an hour, and that I've only gotten about halfway through the game. Despite that, expect some spoilers, if you do care about the plot.

Sinners Plucked From Hell

When you open the game, a sick ass intro plays. I don't have much to say about it other than that it looks cool as fuck. Yes, this is the entire section. It's really good though, so it's something I thought was worth mentioning, even if it doesn't really matter much overall.

10 Days Until Judgement

The general plot seems rather interesting - Sinners are brought from hell to heaven once a year, tasked with killing as many demons invading heaven as possible - for the chance to live in heaven for the year. Whoever kills the most demons, gets to stay. The concept is pretty good, and playing as a character who lost his memories, while generic, still works pretty well.

A bit of a bigger problem though, is the dialogue. I'm not sure what happened. I was somewhat invested in finding out who Yellow and Red were and what they did at first, but the dialogue could not possibly be worse. I started skipping everything at about the point where Yellow dies, which was a bit unfortunate, that I missed that part, but at the same time, the dialogue. It's interesting, to say the least.

Some people really like it - it's kind of parodying a lot of anime tropes, but that also means that, even as a parody, it's incredibly, for lack of better word, cringe.

Here are a few examples:

Some of these are missing a lot of context and aren't even that bad, but hopefully you get the point, on at least some of them. If you don't, then you're probably the target audience. I'll update this to be more complete later, and add more context, but right now I just need to get this post done.

Oh, there's also the short dialogue where Red walks in on White showering, if I'm not mistaken.

machin3gir1

The game's soundtrack is made by Machine Girl. I've never listened to their music before, but I might after playing this - it's really good. Nothing else to say, I recommend you try listening and see if you like it or not.

Not Bad For a Dead Guy, Huh?

The most important part: The gameplay.

The gameplay is incredibly fun. Although I usually hate first person shooter games, despite technically fitting under the definition, Neon White has a completely different feel. It's mostly focused on just going fast, but strategically. This is great because I suck at games instead of having to go fast with pure skill, I can just look for skips to use instead. The card system is great too.

Another thing that's great about the gameplay is Ace Medals and the gifts - those that don't want to focus on being as fast as possible, can try to get all the gifts instead - collectibles found in every level, often difficult to get but never time locked. Those that do want to focus on speed however, can instead go for getting an Ace Medal on every level, a score for their speed.

Honestly, Ace Medals are rather easy to get sometimes. Red Ace Medals however, are not. Red Ace Medals are hidden unless you get them, not causing most to feel pressured into getting a Red Ace, but also incredibly difficult. Each Red Ace Medal can be obtained by getting a time under the record of the developers. Naturally, this makes it a huge challenge for those that have already gotten the normal Aces.

Neon White also has an online leaderboard, so speedrunning and competition is heavily encouraged. Overall, it's one of the most fun games I've played, despite generally prefering rhythm games, metroidvanias, and 2d platformers.

Art

Although some things look slightly odd, overall I don't have much complaints with the artistic direction of the game, especially during gameplay. The lack of graphics settings would have usually a huge issue for me, but the game runs surprisingly performantly on my computer, and still looks really good. Nothing much to say here, and other than that it's mostly preference.

Conclusions

Overall, if not a bit short, Neon White will probably continue to become one of my favorite games of all time. I highly recommend reading a bit more and if it seems interesting, buying it.

About the Website

A few things before I finish off - as I said at the start, I realize the quality of this post is terrible - I will hopefully rewrite it once I finish the game, or when I'm not in a rush to finish it by the deadline I promised to the single person that still checks this website.

In my last post, I mentioned a playlist of songs I liked. I completely forgot about that, but now I remember so I might get back to work on that.

Thank you for reading this despite its terrible quality, and see you next time!