Neon White is an anime speedrunner full of camp, cards, and colour

eurogamer.net:

«It'll be a game for freaks,» said Ben Esposito of Neon White in a gameplay trailer when it was announced for Nintendo Switch last July.

Really, it's a game for people who like fun, campy, melodrama alongside their speedrunning. In a video preview of the game, Esposito describes Neon White as a speedrunning first person shooter meets visual novel that's «nostalgic but not in a superficial way».

«We really wanted to make a game that felt cool and it really felt like the self-indulgent Y2K anime game of our dreams,» he says.

Rather than subvert expectations and shy away from obvious cringeworthy tropes, Esposito and the team have leaned into them. Here instead is a game that plays like an anime, full of vibrant colours, outlandish characters, and a fanciful story of Heaven and Hell. It's even got anime voice actor Steve Blum (Cowboy Bebop) voicing the lead character.

That's the titular Neon White, an assassin plucked from Hell to compete in a death game to secure a place in Heaven. White is one of a number of Neons taking part, with the story unravelling in visual novel style sections between levels. It's certainly a step away from Esposito's previous game, Donut County.

Not much of the narrative was shown in this preview, but where that leans into familiar beats the gameplay certainly subverts expectations.

This is a first person shooter that plays more like a puzzle platformer that encourages replay. The goal of each level is to defeat all the enemies and reach the goal. Simple enough. Completing each level rewards experience in the form of Insight, which then reveals new paths and hidden items. To truly master the game is to reach the goal as quickly as possible — often in mere seconds.

To do that, you must creatively