Good Game Design - Neon White: Turning Players Into Speedrunners
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2023
- Neon White isn't just a fun and addicting platformer - it's a game that convinces players to become speedrunners. Let's talk about how they pulled it off.
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This explains so well why i love Neon White. It was my first proper speedgame and after 750 hours I still keep coming back to it most days to improve my times and grind for the harder benchmarks set by the community. Can't recommend it enough.
I loved this game even though it's not my usual genre. The temptation to do a level faster and faster is just so good. Everyone complained about the story but I never took it too seriously and was just laughing along with it.
They might make a roguelike first person platformer someday. We probably don't have the technology for it yet!
I love Neon White. The Story is really goofy but the gameplay is really good. I got the top metals for every level in the game.
I think it says a lot that Snoman didn't mention the plot even once during this review. I found it completely unbearable, but the game does allow you to skip it altogether.
My favourite thing about Neon White's design is that the hidden Gifts to collect aren't even available on your first clear. Something that bothers me about many games is the constant stop and start to the flow. Gotta go to all the dead ends before I accidentally trigger a cutscene or something! No, Neon White says. Just enjoy the level ahead of you as your first impression with no distractions. It's great.
I think that's just preferences, no one style is better designed than the other. It's just a style difference, most games with collectibles are designed around this, eg the whole genre if collectathon, what feels to you like "stop and go" loop.
@@thisorthat629 Considering I've never seen a game do collectibles like Neon White, I think it was a deliberate break from convention that should be in more games that would benefit from it. For example, I don't think a game like Mario 3D World is particularly enhanced by having your first run through every level being slow and methodical as you hunt down some green stars. Collectathon's a very different kind of game to these two.
@@thisorthat629 Let people enjoy stuff without feeling that you need to play devil's advocate for once - not everything has to be a debate, their opinion's valid on its own
@@arthurjeannin3357Why 'for once', you don't know me? But I'm not trying to play devil's advocate, just adding onto og comment sentiment.
Because I've seen similar gaming sentiments a lot and especially on this video 😅 to a lot of people within one perceived genre there can only be one good type of game design, not a lot of different types of game design standing together benefiting different tastes within one sub-/genre.
In both directions "NW is bad design", because no classic collectible etc design, or "NW is good design and other 3D plattformers bad or at least lacking game design". Perspective of, maybe games not fitting personal tastes, either NW or more classic 3D p, gets kinda ignored.
Conclusion, if you love NW that's great and I love that for you ( personally haven't got around to play yet ), but what feels like justifying tastes as the one type of good game design and thus implying other games lacking when just different. it just kinda irks me. yk?
@@MarcomixToonsThat's kinda what I said tho. Yes, deliberate, different break / new design idea, that seems to work great for itended purpose ( haven't gotten around to play NW yet, only try for a bit 😅 ), but not better design, just different. But also not 3D World is better, both are great design fitting their purpose. And should coexist.
Imo 3D World's collectibles are good the way they are, they add this feeling of exploration a lot of big 3D Nintendo game ( Zelda and Mario ), have as an underlying idea. Also a bit of challenge to a mainly very easy game.
Eg NW and 3D World both have timers, but while NW is centered around this speedrun time aspect, 3D World is kinda the opposite. Timer isn't the focus, for the most part, don't remeber if there were actual "timed challenges". It's been a while 😅 Sure, if you like you can play for better and better times, but imo it's more of a remanant of times past. Similar to lives in Mario games. Also Nintendo, being their conservative self, and everything. And I believe Wonder doing away with timers kinda underlines the not focus on time in Mario games but especially 3D Mario.
NW is the opposite, if you will, collectibles serve the express purpose of speedrunning. Having you learn new mechanics, techniques to earn them, maybe even hinting at new paths?
From what I can tell they are a teaching tool, thus having them only available on the second run, to not muddle up the first run aka first lesson, does make sense. That's good design too!
In contrast 3D World, collectibles are a integral part of world design, you'd have to completely redesign levels eg do away with sub areas, for levels to work without them, or it'd feel very sluggish or off, imo.
Sorry, for the wall of text.
Yeah collectathon kinda didn't fit, just tried to think of a ver, stark contrast to make clear what i meant, kinda didn't work 😂
Neon White does a really great job of easing you into wanting to replaying it to get better times. With the short length of the levels and fast paced gameplay I can easily just replay the same level multiple times to shave off time and do better which I really enjoy. Dustforce did the same thing with me with just being a really fun platformer and wanting to get SS.
Also have you played Spark the Electric Jester 3? It's a fantastic Sonic Adventure like and been loving it. It's a trilogy of hidden gems.
T-this is my game! It was made for me! I love this thing more than games I've put thousands of hours into. It may well be my favorite game of all time. I've been evangelizing for Neon White since I came away from my first session all sweaty, having chased down aces on every level before moving on to the next. This game WHIPS
It's hysterical that you say "ew shooters", because despite your calm demeanor and gentle voice and how it may sound like a dislike of fast competitive games, you then go on to play hardcore Kaizo Mario hacks and aggressive Donkey Kong Country-like games and something as fast-paced as this, more aggressive than any shooter on the market.
Neon White was my favorite game of 2022, even over Elden Ring. It was just so damn fun that I put a good 60 hours into it 100%'ing everything, getting all the red ace medals, and completing all the heaven and hell rushes. Completing White's Hell rush for the first time and in under an hour was so satisfying.
Good to see you upload again, Snoman!
Neon White is the opposite of what I like, but i can tell they put work into it.
Neon White was absolutely phenomenal. Easily one of my favorite games of last year. I'd probably only put Ragnarok above it (I love Elden Ring too but theres something to be said for a more focused experience).
Snowman is back in the saddle, happy to see you uploading again.
I have to say, as much as I'd like to get into Neon White, I'm just not someone who is compelled by mastering a game or beating other people's times. In the Bartle's player types, I'm squarely in the explorer section and this means that games that push me to get better and better just aren't going to tickle my fancy. Sometimes I'm a little bummed and can't enjoy games like this more, but every time I try to get into them, I bounce off and really don't have a good time.
Regardless, I'm always interested in seeing other people views and opinions on games.
Maybe a good video idea would be to look at games that you played that many people enjoyed that you didn't and try to dissect what makes the game good for some people and bad for you. Can't say I've seen many people really delve into that type of discussion
I'm often in the same area. That said, Neon White definitely pushed me to at least Ace everything. Possibly it felt like I hadn't seen the whole game until I had. Though I only earned one red medal before deciding "Yeah that's enough."
@@csidesummit I've played and completed a few games with a similar feel, like Cyberhook, and while I enjoy the gameplay, I really didn't get into speed optimization. Once a completed a level, unless I really enjoyed it or got a terrible time that I thought I could easily beat, I just moved on. I don't think I played a single level more than 10 times, which is nothing in terms of true speed optimization.
YOOOOOOOOOO SNOMAN GAMIIIING
Sno earning the name, putting your friends on blast is cold 😆
I thought about picking this up when it came out, but there would've only been two possible outcomes: it wouldn't be for me and I wouldn't enjoy it, or it would devour all my time and mental energy for waaay too long lol
This game is so good it's got me entirely in it's grip, the gameplay feels so smooth and the entire aesthetic is so pleasant I love this game
Legit had no idea about red medals...or deflecting bullets. Guess I.gotta go.back
One thing that's great about neon white is that it also never makes you feel *bad* for not reaching certain milestone.
Like, you need to obtain some gold medals but that's pretty easy and you can grind insight level if you're really struggling.
Ace medals are what unlock global leaderboards so if you are not on that level you don't get the game pointing at you how low you are.
Red medals are a level well above ace so they are hidden so you can feel good about your ace medals, and they have no achievement linked to them, ace is the official 100%
And then if you're like me I'm very happy to stop after getting all the red medals I don't feel the drive to grind the full game speedrun or try to get in the top neon ranks it was the right level of difficulty for me (while still pushing you out of my comfort zone). I feel super satisfied about having reached my goal and it's cool.
At any point the game lets you decide "that's where I'm comfortable going and where I want to stop" and you'll not feel like a failure for it. Hell even getting the bronze medal is still a medal with the level being a success and white saying something like "I'm just getting started" instead of "I really messed up there" or something. You would always know you can do *better* even the top 1 player knows that better is possible (except when they are so crazy they beat the TAS I guess... what the hell conouri), but that also means there is no end point that if you fail to reach you are failing at the game.
I don't know how to explain but I find that really nice in the same way celeste assist mode is nice, it's a game that wants you to have the most fun you can have and you get full agency over the level of challenge you want. But even more so than games with modular difficulty here it's done in a way where you don't have to do the game designer's job of *knowing* what's the appropriate challenge level for you in advance. It's great.
The game is so inexplicable, it's just something you have to experience for yourself
And I fell completely in love with it
If you are into this type of game, im going to recommend Cyber Hook. Short 5 hour, speedrun platformer. Not as much combat but it was a great 5 dollar steam sale game.
indeed. The sound track is motivating.
speedrun a real game like zelda 2
Machine Girl my beloved
Glad to see you're back!
Devs: only show what's necessary
Also devs: adds distracting lock on image
this game is just lovely planet 2.0
glad you made a new vid man
I DIDNT NOTICE YOUR BACK LETS GOOOOO
this game left such a big impression on me i decided to learn game development and make my own game inspired by neon white defintely my favorite indie off all time outside of hollow knight
if you're interested i'd recommand you checking out pizza tower, it's also a game that makes you thrive for perfection in mastering the character's movement for speedrunning and getting high ranks
❤️ Still playing it!
I think my game glitched. I got almost the whole way through without it ever saying lock on in the corner or having the chime for it. When it finally started working for seemingly no reason it was super distracting..not what you want in the later stages
I've missed your game recommendations, although both Tunic and Neon White were in top 3 games last year already.
Tunic also slaps. Everything involving the manual was genius and I genuinely think the golden path puzzle is one of the coolest things I’ve done in a game
HE'S BAAAAACK!
The Return of the King.
i LOVED this game, but remeberring the lvl with flying rocks at 4:30 oooohhhh i got salty xD
"And then of course I realised there's no way I could ever become a top tier player"
imo the game is fundamentally about the fact that everyone can be a speedrunner and, with enough time and motivation, even a top tier player/speedrunner. Just like the ace medals seem unreachable at first until you work yourself closer to that needed time.
Damn didn’t know that a snowman could run
Suprised you didn't mention that you still have to kill every elemeny
Thought this game was was an online multilayer shooter when I got it on seitch was great sinxe I don't have online for my ps5. Disappointed in that aspect but pleasantly pleased with what it ended up being
maybe fighting game story modes could learn a thing or too form this
The movement reminds me of Glyph
Snoman, where have you been for so long?
Pleas do a video on tunic
ah yes, i speedrun the speedrun
I wanted to like it but couldn't. I mean, I did like it for almost the first half, but it gets infuriatingly hard and punishing later on which no one ever seems to mention. The stages became such brutal exercises in tedium requiring nothing but absolute PERFECTION just to pass. The amount of trial and error went from being interesting to absolute absurdity. And platformers are my favourite genre, and I love the thought of something that's like Mirrors Edge x Super Meat Boy, but the developers just went WAAAAY too far and got carried away with the difficulty. I had to drop it at the 2nd last boss fight because I was just not having fun anymore. Probably my most disappointing game I played this year.
Do it slower and it will be really easy
i don't want to be a speedrunner though
Neon white encourages people to replay levels for a better time but doesn't give people the tools to really push further. A majority of the red times are easily attainable within a few dozen attempts and it shows it by the average around the times being rank 8k or so. So on those levels there isn't much of a further goal besides just a higher rank and it doesn't have that impact when the game won't allow you to see replays or have other players ghosts show up. Beyond that there are dozens of cheaters near the top. I briefly checked the discord community and they do have additional community medals but they seem to require something like a top 60 time to get the lowest tier on certain maps.
As a... well former speedrunner now I guess, while I acknowledge Neon White as a great game and good speed game, I honestly just can't call it a *great* speed game. I don't know how applicable it is in general but I know myself and at least a handful of others got into speedrunning because of the communal hunt aspect of it. For context, I ran Castlevania 1 back in the day, and the primary reason I kept coming back to it was the feeling of discovery and in a sense misbehavior to take a game so ploddingly and methodically slow and force it to go fast based on nothing more than what the community found. I tried to play Neon White, and didn't manage to make it 30 minutes into the game precisely *because* it was built with speedrunning in mind.
There's nothing quite like using a glitch or exploit to go fast, or even just piecing together that there's a mechanic that allows you to go fast that isn't necessary or even elaborated on (think hyperdashing in Celeste). But once a game starts *telling* you where to go, how to go fast, and that becomes the point? The magic is gone. Celeste - to me anyway - is still the golden standard for getting people into speedrunning. The actual speed strats that are in the game intentionally aren't elaborated on until you actively seek out the challenges, it doesn't rub it in your face all the time. I honestly think Neon White is kind of obnoxious in how it *expects* you to grind your time down. I'm glad people have fun with it, but I just... can't call that good game design.
It is a bit of a different game, but I had the same experience with Getting over it:
1) Trying to beat the game
2) Parts getting easier and easier (after falling down multiple times)
3) Beating the game just to find out its a race for time
were called neons
so true bestie
Better not mention the story hahahaha
Ayyy
Hi
Can you make Kingdom hearts videos?
Hi 🎉
I've never heard of this before, but just watching your gameplay as you talk about it... I absolutely hate it. You're moving from point to point, doing the things all so fast I don't have enough time to make a strategic plan, or even take in the environment.
You're just blitzing past all of the actual game and telling me this is how they want me to play it, no thanks.
The “actual game” IS blitzing through the levels as fast as you can. It’s entirely built around speedrunning.
@11clocky which is entirely counter to what I enjoy about games. I can't even comprehend what people like about speed running, it's such an alien concept to me.
@@VideoGameVillians Do you understand the appeal of racing games? It’s a lot like that. Speedrunning is all about improving your efficiency, through a lot of practice and planning out your route for the best times, as well as mastering the controls and physics so that you can execute those plans consistently. It’s entirely about self improvement and a raw showmanship of skill and experience.
@@11clocky I have no desire to get good through rote memorization and execution... I feel good about success when I spent my time planning a strategy and out thought the challenge.
And to answer your question about racing games, no I find them quite boring, except sometimes kart racers when I have friends over to play in person, and then the fun is about the chaos that comes from a kart racer's items, not the race itself.
@@VideoGameVillians Speedrunning also involves strategy and thinking things through, but it’s through a process of getting familiar with the level first and then experimenting to find the best time saves. It’s almost like figuring out a puzzle, only the solution requires skill mastery and execution.
Neon White is designed around this gameplay loop. As said in the video, your first attempt at a level doesn’t pressure you to beat it quickly, just tells you to get to the end so that you can learn the level. After that, you are pushed to improve your efficiency now that you know how the level works.
This also involves memorization, as you said, but Neon White’s levels are all like 30 seconds long each, so there is little to memorize.
And..... unsubscribe!!!!
U arent gonna get views til u explain your absence