Neon White's a deckbuilding FPS halfway between Doom Eternal and Mirror's Edge

Publisher Annapurna Interactive has announced Neon White, a stylish and fast-paced first-person game that combines gunplay and card strategy. Playing an assassin dedicated to ridding heaven of demons, the game in motion looks halfway between Doom Eternal and Mirror's Edge, a blend of quick impact choices and momentum-led navigation.

The core gimmick is how the cards work, with each having a weapon and an ability associated with it. Thus the 'elevate' card has a pistol which will gradually use-up the card's power, or you can sacrifice the card at once for a giant leap upwards. 'Godspeed' features a rifle and a dash: 'Stomp' an SMG and a ground-pound; 'Dominion' a rocket launcher with a boost-jump and possibly a grapple.

You get the idea: whether the game is any good or not depends on how these abilities stitch-together, with the trailer showcasing several examples of clever interplay. Your default option is a sword that doesn't seem to have any movement tricks, so building runs that exploit the environment and your tools in unexpected ways will be an odd combination of twitch skills and card-management.

Neon White's being developed by Ben Esposito, creator of the excellent Donut County and horror Furby simulator Tattletail, with a soundtrack from Machine Girl. It's due Winter 2021 on Steam.

Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."