Recent reviews by SeánKR

If you enjoyed the first one, you most certainly will enjoy this! The 3d models are simplistic in design, but once you get a huge studio going and zoom out you will experience some frame drops. Nothing too bad considering how many computations it's doing.

I'd love if official workshop support was added! Other than that one of, if not the, best video game studio tycoon/management games made!

Spoiler Free Video Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZp1KogrCUk

Summary
Neon White is a fast paced FPS Platforming game that has speedrunning at its core. You play as Neon White, someone who has died on earth and finds himself in a tournament with 99 other people. The participants and White were not good in life, thus not being put into heaven. That's where the tournament comes into play, the winner of the tournament has a chance to secure their spot in heaven. This tournament goes over 10 Days.
While this plot might sound like it could be an extremely religious game, there's not a whole lot of linkage or dialogue to any of the real world religions (at least from what I gathered playing).
While playing you'll encounter some other Neons who seem to know you. The only problem being White seems to have suffered from Amnesia and now has no recollection of anything prior to joining the tournament.

Gameplay
Gameplay is where this game shines extremely bight. It has a lot small mechanics that when put together into a level creates an extremely fluid, buttery smooth experience.
The game revolves around Chapters, each chapter having a select few levels. In these levels you'll be battling a timer. Each level has a medal system. These medals are Bronze, Silver, Gold and Ace. There's also a secret medal that you unlock when you beat the developer time. Getting at least gold medals will increase your ranking in the tournament (Neon Ranking).
Each chapter is locked behind a certain Neon Ranking threshold, but this by design is rather lenient so you don't have to worry about getting gold on every level!
The general gameplay loop for majority of the levels is to kill all demons on the stage and progress to the finish line. To kill these demons you have access to weapons called "Soul Cards". These cards typically have a unique secondary ability to them once destroyed manually. You hold two different cards, and three of the same card. They also spawn with a finite amount of ammo, but that increases by picking up more of the same card, or a generic "Ammo" Soul card. When you run out of bullets the card is destroyed without any ability being used. Two cards you experience early on is the Pistol (Elevate) card, and a Machine gun (Purifier) card.
The Pistol card typically spawn with 9 bullets. This card is rather weak against later enemies but makes up for it with its ability Elevate. This ability makes White be able to double/triple/quadruple jump depending on how many cards you are holding.
The Machine Gun card typically spawns with 35 bullets. This is a fast rpm fully automatic gun. While useful for taking down enemies up close and has a small bullet spread. This gun however has one of the most useful abilities, in my opinion, once used a sticky grenade will shoot out. This grenade can be used to destroy red coloured objects in the level, or be used as a rocket-style jump.
Another small mechanic that makes a huge difference is water. While it doesn't sound like much when I put it that way, this allows the player to move at a much faster pace. When maintaining contact with water you will receive a much faster speed boost. This gives a rather fun twist on the shortest distance being the best path to take, as you could get a much better time by going out of your way to stay on the water.
Each demon you will face have a unique trait about them. Some act more as a obstacle for you to kill to unlock the finish line. Other when killed will drop a Soul Card. Each one is distinctive enough to where you can tell which is which. One demon I extremely enjoyed was the Balloon Demon. This demon, as the name suggests, is shaped like a balloon. Its unique feature is when you collide with it, it pops. This kills the demon but has the nice bonus of causing you go upward.

When you beat a level along side getting a medal, you receive a thing called "Insight". This allows for multiple things to happen. One being unlocking an orange hand on the level. This hand will show you a clever way to save time and skip some of the level. Another is Gifts, these gifts can be collected on a level and given to either the neons you know or angels at the main hub.
When gifts are given to someone you can either get something in return like an item, or you unlock dialogue, memories with who you gave the gift to or Sub-Missions. These sub-missions are small levels but they typically have a twist to them. One of them disables card abilities as a whole, another has a masochist approach where you must beat the level at any cost.

Technical Aspects
For reference my pc specs are on my profile. I ran this game at 1440p/144HZ at max settings.

This game ran beautifully. Through my play through I never experienced any frame drops. Along side that I never experienced any bugs, atleast that i noticed. The devs seems to be patching any known bugs frequently and adding some QOL elements.
The settings are rather lack luster compared to other titles, but at the same time they seem to do the job well.
One complaint/suggestion I have for the game is a lack of accessibility. One example I feel could be useful to add would be a colourblind option, or a slider/defined dropdown box that allows the user to increase the font size.
One that would be more tricky to implement would be a GUI element that could possibly show the direction of an oncoming projectile.

Visuals
Personally I extremely like the visuals of this game. They are rather simplistic in design but for the game it is, that is the most ideal/perfect direction to go. The levels have a very uniform colour scheme that allows demons or objects to stand out. I also never experienced thinking two levels were alike. Each one either hosts a extremely cool usage of the mechanics or is rather beautiful in design. One small personal problem I found, but to be expected, is getting lost on where to go. I'd end up following the main route to not notice where to go breaking up the pacing. This was quickly rectified though as once I found the route I could quickly restart the level with a single keypress and proceed to get atleast gold on the level, to then replay it till I got Ace.
The levels themselves feel rather linear, that is until you start thinking outside the box and observing where the enemy placement is. Once you do this you'll end up skipping half the level sometimes!
When Dialogue takes place the game takes a more 2d approach, sort of like a visual novel. They do an extremely good job at smartly show emotion visually with some small effects over the character portraits.

Audio
I want to start this section by saying, this OST is one of the best I've ever heard! It was made by an artist called Machine Girl. I've not personally heard their work before but if it's anything like this I'll be 100% adding it to my personal playlist! I'm not good when it comes to defining music genres, but after speaking to a friend they mentioned it's like Breakcore/Hyperpop. One of the songs I extremely enjoyed was Machine Girl - The World to Come. The fast pace of the music only exemplifies and compliments the gameplay. If I was to complain about one thing regards the OST is there's not a lot of it when on the same chapter. This isn't personally a deal breaker as at no point during my playtime (and still to this day even after editing the video) did i find it to be repetitive.
The sound effects of the game are pretty good too. Nothing stood out as out of place. All demons typically sounded the same, that is unless they posed a extreme danger to the player then you'd know for definite what enemy is attacking you. All other sound effects were also extremely pleasing to hear and showed no sense of being overwelcomed.

TLDR/Closure
I've ran out of characters but if you're wondering if you should buy this game, i'd 1,000,000% recommend it
More in Video

While this game is short, it was an extremely enjoyable experience with an impactful story

This game is extremely good on every front.

The art is solid as heck, The combat mechanic, personally, had a tiny bit of a learning curve, The writing is hilarious as is the character design.

For a free pilot that lasts around 1 hour depending on how much you die, I would completely recommend playing.

Looking forward to what this whole or episodic game has to hold.

One of the best VR games on the market. Only think to consider as of writing 27-NOV-19, Facebook recently Acquired Beat Saber and the "Beat Studio" itself so if you dislike that be cautious. They have stated they are still going to be operating as an independant studio though. How ever that will work.

Ref to article relating to acquisition: https://nichegamer.com/2019/11/27/facebook-acquires-beat-saber-dev-beat-games/

This games Early Access stage is still fairly fun. The game is not as easy as other game dev studio sims i've played (Atleast not at the start till you do post-release reviews). There seems to be foundation work for modding which is a huge+ for replayability.

Two things that are bad or could use some improvement/implimentation.
1. End game is more repeitive than it is fun.
2. Training staff be a feature, Atm there's only doing contracts which you can do to train or produce AAA games etc to train.

NOTE: I receved the product off the developer as a gift for gifting him an inspiring game in the past. I wasn't told to do anything other than have fun with the game. I also have yet to finish the game as of writing this (7-1-19).

The Eternal Castle is a Cinematic platformer like Old School Prince of Persia or Abe's Odyssey. It's mechanics is polished to near perfection. There's a small problem I encountered that was running and end up falling off an edge instead of gently climbing down. This is more my error than it is the game.

The story unfolds infront of you. If you want to pay attention to it you may but it does not force you to read notes if you wish not to.

The artstyle is just gorgeous. The Font is abit hard to read in the intro but during gameplay it is crystal clear. The art is very Cyberesque. It's unlike anything i've seen before and i'd reccommend the game just on that alone.

The sound is perfect. Every sound in this game weither it be music based or sound effects just suits everything. The sound effects are distinct enough but does not stick out like a sore thumb.

Finally the games controls is easy to pick up but hard to fully master. There's pickups/abilities you can collect during gameplay that will aid you in the story so it is a benifit to you to explore this beautiful world.

For 6€ this game is a bargin! i'd buy this game for double or even triple the price tag!

This is a game I usually come back to every month and play a days worth of gaming.

Take away the mods in this game is like removing killing civilians, GTA and just letting you drive around like a normal human. It's just stupid

This is what a DLC should be classified as. Not a 2 mission piece of garbage that will be done in 1-hour max. Other game Studios should take note of this beautiful world/Game and work off it.