Neon White honestly feels like a game tailor made for people like me. After being recommended it a few times by various friends, attributed to my love for speedrunning and first-person shooters / platformers, I decided to give it a go. For the most part, Neon White was an extremely polished and addictive experience that had me grinding times for hours on end.

Let’s get something out of the way to start off. Yes, the writing is cringe, and it's most likely a purposeful decision. I guess they’re trying to make the story uniquely self-indulgent, complete with an amnesiac protagonist, cartoonishly evil villain who directly says the line “we’re not so different after all”, some extremely sexualized female characters, and the classic stupid but well-meaning best friend. Yes, it's cliche and stupid on purpose, but being aware of how bad something is and winking to the audience doesn’t mean that it's not still stupid and annoying. I understand what they were trying to do, but ultimately the story suffers heavily and I found myself really having to hold back just outright skipping many parts of the story.

Outside of the writing though, Neon White is a fantastic experience. This has been said a hundred times already, but this really is a game built for speedrunning. The card system is quite frankly a genius idea, the card serving as both a weapon and an ability once discarded. Through this system, the game presents super well-flowing levels that mix using your gun for shooting and discarding for abilities flawlessly and makes every level feel so smooth. Once a level is completed, depending on your time, you unlock certain things, like seeing your own ghost, hints at possible shortcuts, and the complete leaderboard of times from players across the globe. Getting ace times (or even red, which requires beating the developer’s time) feels incredible and it pushes you to improve your times over and over.

Though set in heaven, Neon White’s aesthetic leans far more into vaporwave, breakcore, and the like. The level’s architecture has elements of Ancient Greece, and its interpretation of heaven, its monolithic white/beige buildings only broken up with scattered foliage. It’s both utilitarian so as not to confuse players for where to go, but at the same time very stylish. The music is where the breakcore elements really shine, in my opinion. Composed by Machine Girl, the music is so lush and complex while feeling very reminiscent of that PS2 music vibe, similar to games like Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio, or even Ape Escape. Altogether, the visual and audio elements of Neon White create a nostalgic, hypnotic, and free-flowing experience that both looks good and never confuses the player.

While I can see the writing being a major turn-off for a lot of players, it would be a disservice to overlook just how much Neon White does with absurd quality. Aside from the story, Neon White is one of the most complete and satisfying indie experiences I’ve seen in a while, and easily sets the standard for first-person platformers for me, and really proves that first-person platformers have so much potential for great gameplay.