Should I Play Neon White? The Speedrunning FPS That Became My New Obsession

What It Is

Neon White is a first person speedrunning game developed by Angel Matrix and published by Annapurna Interactive. It launched on June 16, 2022 on Steam and Nintendo Switch, later coming to PlayStation and Xbox. It costs $24.99.

The premise is simple: you are White, a demon slayer pulled from Hell to compete in a tournament in Heaven. Kill demons across short levels as fast as possible. The twist is your weapons are soul cards. You can shoot them normally, or you can discard them for a movement ability. A pistol card gives you a double jump. A shotgun card gives a ground slam. A rifle card launches you forward. Every level becomes a split second puzzle: do you keep the gun, or sacrifice it to shave a second off your time?

The game holds an 89 on Metacritic and an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam with over 16,000 reviews. It was nominated for Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2022.

Why You Should Play It

The movement is perfect. I don’t use that word lightly. The card discard system means you are constantly making micro decisions about whether to use a weapon for combat or for traversal. Once you internalize the language, levels that took you 45 seconds start taking 12. That progression from fumbling to flying is one of the best feelings in gaming.

The level design is surgical. Every level has a gold medal time, then an ace time, then a dev time. Each tier forces you to find new routes, new skips, new ways to chain card discards. A level you thought was solved opens up completely when you realize you can discard two cards in midair to skip an entire section. There are over 90 levels and none of them feel like filler.

The story is surprisingly good. The anime visual novel segments between missions seemed like something I would skip. I did not skip them. The writing is sharp, funny, and occasionally genuinely touching. The cast of afterlife assassins is memorable. White’s amnesia storyline goes places I did not expect. If you played designer Ben Esposito’s previous game Donut County, you know he can write characters with personality.

The “one more run” factor is unmatched. Levels take 15 to 90 seconds. Restarting is instant. The global leaderboard is always right there, taunting you. I cannot count the number of times I told myself “one more attempt” at 1 AM. Neon White is dangerously addictive in the best possible way.

Why You Might Not

The anime visual novel style is polarizing. If you truly cannot stand anime character designs, voiced dialogue, and relationship gift-giving mechanics, a chunk of the game will grate on you. You can skip cutscenes, but you would miss out on a story that most players agree is better than it has any right to be.

The difficulty curve gets steep. The last two chapters and the post-game challenges demand serious precision. If you get frustrated by repeating the same 20 second sequence dozens of times to shave 0.3 seconds, the endgame is not for you. The main campaign is very beatable, though. The pain is optional.

It is a solo experience. No multiplayer, no co-op. The leaderboard competition is asynchronous. If you need a social component in your games, Neon White is you versus the clock and nothing else.

My Take

I went in expecting a decent indie FPS. Neon White ended up in my all time top 10. The card system is one of those ideas that feels obvious in hindsight. Of course you should be able to sacrifice a weapon for a movement ability. Of course that creates the most satisfying risk/reward loop imaginable.

What really surprised me was how much I cared about the characters. The voice acting (featuring Steve Blum, SungWon Cho, and others) elevates scenes that could have been throwaway. And the gift system, where you find hidden presents in levels and give them to characters to unlock side missions, kept me exploring every corner of every level long after I aced them all.

If you have any affection for speedrunning, first person platformers, or games where mastery is its own reward, play Neon White. It deserves every bit of praise it gets.