Trigger Cut Game Reviews

Neon White is a lightning fast first person action platformer that will make you feel like a speedrunner. While I am not an anime fan, the visual novel approach to the story is over the top, cheesy, and oftentimes cringy but over time I grew to enjoy it for all of its silliness. If this is not your thing you can easily skip through all the dialogue but I think you’d be missing out on some enjoyable framing for this mostly purely gameplay driven game. The gameplay works as such, you run through a stage where you pick up cards that function as abilities.  This is not a deckbuilding game so do not let that scare you off.  The cards have two functions, one is to be a weapon such as a pistol or assault rifle and the other is to be a way to traverse the environment such as dashing or ground pounding.  The trick here is that in order to use a traversal ability you have to discard your card.  This adds a level of strategy that is core to the game.  Do I use my gun to kill an enemy or do I discard it so I can dash to a platform? The game adds more tension by forcing you to not only go as fast as you can to reach the goal but you also have to kill every enemy on each level in order to complete it.  This loops back around to the core strategy of this game, I couldn’t just discard my pistol card and dash past an enemy, I had to kill it.  This system sounds complex and convoluted but I promise you, you will get the hang of the game quickly.  I reviewed Mirror’s Edge on this site, and while that game is a classic, I felt that at times the game was working against me and I did not always feel like I had complete control of my character. In Neon White, I never felt this way.  If I wasn’t fast enough, or made a mistake, it was my fault.  I was constantly improving and became hopelessly addicted to perfecting each stage.  Neon White is a masterfully designed action platformer that will make you feel like a sweaty. You might actually start sweating so grab yourself a towel, sit on your couch, and get running.