Neon White Demo out on Steam

In case you don't remember, this is the speedrunning card based movement shooter (what a delightful word salad that was) that had a very cool trailer a while ago. It is coming from Ben Esposito the creator of Donut County.

The demo is a part of Steam's Next Fest and after playing through the first chapter I think I'm in. The on-boarding is great. They slowly introduce the mechanics, while still giving you a lot of freedom to mess around and see what works. As you replay the short levels trying to get better times, you unlock "Insight" which can unlock level specific perks like a hint system showing you ways you might get through the level faster which I think is a real smart addition to this sort of game.

I was worried it would be overwhelming, but it seems really smartly crafted and replaying levels is quick and engaging. I didn't spend too much time on the story stuff because I wanted to jump in and see if I enjoyed the gameplay part, but it is fully voice-acted which is a plus.

Anyone else checked this out?

The card-kour stuff seems fairly interesting and engaging, although something about the feel maybe lacks the slightest "oomph" to it. I was expecting it to be much harder and more free-form from how they presented the "sacrifice cards for movement" idea in trailers, but I did only get through the first ten or so levels so far, I'm sure that stuff starts to expand over time.

All that said, the game's writing has turned me off pretty hard. All of the characters are immediately grating, from their personality and dialogue down to the voices given to them (the protagonist especially.) I don't think falling into "tropes" in character design is necessarily a bad thing, but each of the Neons I've seen so far felt like tepid executions of personalities I've seen dozens of other things do halfway decently before. Add on top of that the heaping helping of unearned horniness bounding from any scene the two women have been in thus far, and it makes a story I want nothing more than to skip past as fast as possible.

Again, both of those are things that could get better later into the game, but this demo made me way less interested in the game than I had been before.

@franzlska: Yeah, to your first point, I imagine things open up a bit more as you get deeper into it even on the last level of the first chapter there seemed like a couple of ways to shave off some time that seemed off the beaten path. I also enjoyed getting the presents in each of the levels, they offer a fun little puzzle to solve that seems different than just going as fast as you can, which is a cool change of pace.

That's a shame about the story though. Like I said, I skipped it in favor of jumping in and seeing how the game played, maybe I'll go back and see how it strikes me. The fact that most of it seemed skippable in the case I don't enjoy it is a major plus for me.

I also skipped all the dialogue to get to the game parts and had a pretty good time with it. I like the visual style of the characters too, in what little I saw of them blurring past as I skipped the dialogue.

Help me out:

I hate card games generally, but I loved Inscryption.

Neon yay or nay

@jagerxbomb: The cards are just a stylistic choice, they're basically weapon pickups. There aren't any deckbuilding elements, it's just a first person parkour game where the weapons and movement abilities happen to come in the form of single use cards you pick up.

Played through the whole demo and in the moment to moment gameplay felt great. They throw you into some later game levels toward the end of the demo and the flow from one ability to the other felt really great at times. Not sold on the dialogue and characters, they definitely present at the outset as bad, but the setup for the story in the demo is at least interesting. Looking forward to the full release of this.

The game seems cool from what I saw Rorie playing of it but not "cool enough" ?? I feel like there is a big disconnect from the stylized menus and presentation and then the actual in-game world which is a lot cleaner and less interesting in comparison. I wish it pushed the envelope a lot more in that regard.

The writing and especially voice acting is awful though and a major turn off. Some of the worst anime fan-fiction as seen through the lens of a 15 year that thinks they are being really cool that I have seen in quite a while.