Neon White

February 14, 2026

Plat-forming titles have the tough task of striking the balance between maintaining the feeling of challenge, while also avoiding headaches due to the first person POV. Neon White brings a lot of clever ideas together while keeping the player captivated through difficulty increases and story telling. There are tons of fresh ideas that this title attempts that absolutely knock it out of the park. With some nice tricks up its sleeve, Neon White can captivate players that decide to give it a shot. Along the ride are short comings that can sway the players perception depending on what approach they take with the game. 

Neon White is a unique combination of a platforming title and a first-person shooter. The game is split up into missions which are comprised of usually 10 courses on average. The goal of each course is to reach the end while eliminating all of the demons scattered across the map. While this high level overview may undersell the experience, the way that the player interacts with the environment is all executed in a very unique way. The course contains limited-use items named “soul cards” that all take advantage of different abilities. The player can carry up to two sets of soul cards, a total of three of each type. Each color of soul card grants the player limited ammunition of a particular gun style: handgun, sniper, rifle, machine-gun, etc. Along with the ammunition type, each soul card has what is known as a “discard ability”. Each discard ability grants a one-time use of its movement ability – at the expense of letting go of the soul card. Movement abilities can range from: an extra jump, launching forward, shooting and then detonating a bomb that launches the player, etc. Early on, each new mission introduces another soul card that courses then take advantage of going forward. 

One of the most common actions the player will perform is the “reset” button to start the course from the beginning. This is to say without insult, as continuing to improve upon each run is actually a very addicting loop that the game intelligently eases the player in to. As the game progresses, courses in each mission will ramp-up in terms of difficulty. The increase is noticeable, but feels like an appropriate climb. The player will notice that more precise turns will be required, specific timing for discard-abilities are demanded, and more course short-cuts are introduced. The difficulty increase is fine tuned as completing each course teaches the player new ways to interact with soul cards or the mechanics of the map. The attention to detail is very akin to titles such as Celeste. Neon White adapts a similar difficultly increase with “aha!” moments into a 3D format – which is one of the best complements I could give to a platforming adventure. 

Although the platforming is fast paced, Neon White is a fairly relaxed game at its core. The game can realistically be played at any time of the day with varying degrees of concentration. Grinding courses is a load of fun, and so is resuming from pause every five to ten minutes while doing something like chores at home. The average length of all of the courses is about 30 seconds which easily allows for bursts of demon killing and high score squashing. The play style is also elevated with the inclusion of the awesome original sound track (OST). The music is fitting and brilliant for the game play, and was entirely created by one artist; Machine Girl. The work can best be described as electronic-techno, and it complements the experience whether that may be course grinding, pondering ways to beat your high score, or folding towels during a break. 

The story of Neon White immediately kicks off with an interesting and pressing circumstance. You play the game as White, one of the several “neons” that were sent to heaven by god with a specific assignment. Neons being “sinners plucked from hell to do gods dirty work”, they are tasked to eliminate demons that have snuck their way into heaven. Neons are essentially dead people destined for hell who were given a chance to turn their destiny around. Neons aren’t technically offered much of a choice since straying away from their set path results in death through remote detonation of their face mask. Neons have variable recollections of their past life, but their personalities shine through in the dialogue during their interactions with other neons, angels, and “believers”. The believers are heaven’s own neon patrol force who waste not a second reiterating their superiority in this system. The overall premise is undoubtedly a unique take on the life after death experience. The writing takes advantage of this situation as there are plenty of moments where several characters question their placement in their roles. The added mystery behind the characters keeps the plot fresh and captivating. 

Neon White is first and foremost a platforming game, so the fact that it intelligently incentives course replay is a real perk. The player is able to continue on with the next mission in the story if their “Neon Rank” is at a certain criteria. A quick chat with Mikey (one of the many angelic cats) at the Heaven Central Authority grants White a new mission for him to access. Both new and previous missions along with all of their courses are accessible at Heaven’s Gate on the world map. 

The area where course replay-ability stands out is with the inclusion of the gift item that further advances the social links with the characters. In terms of logicality, the existence of gifts hidden throughout the courses makes very little sense. At the same time, god himself has selected the following hell-goers to carry out executions of demons in heaven – all to say that anything goes. The inclusion of the gift items awards a new perspective to all of the previous courses. Performing this search is not timed, so finishing as fast as possible is no longer the focus while on each course. Roaming allows the player to take a moment to admire the craftsmanship of the courses they’ve previously blasted through. This is a nice shift from the high score system as it is up to the player as to how they will approach. Locating each gift on the map can be quite the task itself as they can be hidden in quite some sneaky areas. Locating gift items grant White the opportunity to give them another Neon, a believer, or the several cat staff. In exchange for the gift, White is treated to advancing the social-links between characters which further deepens the bond between them. Most of the time the reward consist of dialogue that delves beyond what the main story can reasonably accommodate. These interactions between White and the characters make the world feel a bit more alive. Beyond the added dialogue, gift changes can also offer bonus “side quests” in the form of unique courses that would otherwise feel out of place in the main game.

The more you advance characters relations, you eventually gain enough insight to recall the type of life that White had with fellow neons. Replaying courses is optional and the player has the freedom to decide if they’ll never touch a previous course nor advance any of the character relationships. Neon White is story driven game, and how much of that story you get depends on player interest. The unfortunate part is that the game falls behind in properly rewarding the players who are interested in going after these extras. From my experience, the main plot line is a sufficient enough of an experience for the story. The extras lack any real reason to pursue outside of players who like to 100% complete a game. Course repeatability enables addicting high-score chases, outside of that it fails to provide any actual benefits for going after the extras. 

Once the player completes every course in a mission, they are rewarded with what is known as a “Heavenly Delight” ticket. These tickets can be redeemed at the Cathedral from a believer. The inclusion of this system also leaves something to be desired. This feeling of absence boils down to all of rewards being cut scenes or more dialog. They can range from “activities” for White such as spa sessions to karaoke nights. One of the activities consisted of White hanging out with a character that acted as a boss-fight about an hour prior in the game, making the scene feel a little tone-deaf. Since extra dialog from heavenly Delights and the gift system are optionally obtained, they can result in some awkward moments due to the freedom of the mechanic. If this reward system must be reduced down to dialogue, it would have been great to use this time in a more interesting way. Otherwise, I would have much preferred either a cosmetic shop of some sort (as much as you could incorporate into a FPS). All of this is to say that the parts of the game that incorporate a reward system seem like they were tacked-on by a different development team without consideration of viability. 

One of the most surprising aspects of Neon White is the inclusion of boss fights. After my first couple of courses I gained a familiarity for what the game was going for and expected it to remain somewhat consistent across the rest of the title. That is until a major story event occurs – White is immediately placed in an all-thrills boss battle that extends well beyond the length of any course seen thus far. The first boss fight was impactful yet fitting to the narrative, and was seen as a game-play surprise. The first fight combined all previous platforming mechanics and soul cards with hoards of demons firing your way. The addition of weak points are also added which are required to be broken before the boss’s health meter can continue to be lowered by White’s attacks. One of the best ways to make boss battles great in video games is to utilize mechanics to their full potential, increase the difficulty, and make the fight purposeful. I would say that all of the boss fights accomplish this with flying colors. As good as they are, it would’ve been have nice getting several more sprinkled into the adventure. Several moments between missions it felt the game could have benefited from some more boss fights to shake things up, or at the very least some mini bosses. Even still, It goes without saying that the boss battles that we did get were executed quite well. 

Truly, there is never a dull moment whenever the player is actively within the courses of Neon White. Every course that comes before feels like it was made to push the player to get ready for the next. The controls feel slick and translate well to a controller layout. This version of the title was played on a console, which admittedly provided a bit more of a challenge since the game was developed for mouse and keyboard. Using soul cards to navigate your way through the map and pondering solutions is an absolute joy. Undoubtedly, there are still various aspects about this game that I would have liked to see handled differently. Aiding these downfalls is a pleasant number surprises all across the board. If we were only looking at the preferred aspects, Neon White amounts to a considerable chunk of content that is an experience worth giving a shot. 

Rating

7.5 / 10