The cyberpunk aesthetic was brought back into fashion a few years ago, appropriately by Cyberpunk 2077, but otherwise was derived from a prediction from the ’80s of a tech-steeped future society. To a point, it becomes less and less science fiction and more reality as technology in the real world evolves to match or even surpass many of the advances that were once predicted. Neon Blood, which drapes itself in cyberpunk imagery, envisions a dystopian society that hits too close to home with plenty of neon, but not much more than you might see in a city today. This drains the typical cyberpunk aesthetic of its inherent meaning, reducing it to little more than the glowing fringe on main character Axel McCoin’s trenchcoat. And that’s not even the main problem with Neon Blood.
McCoin is a troubled detective, disillusioned and suffering from drug addiction. He hasn’t yet sunken to the depths of Disco Elysium‘s protagonist, but he’s on his way down there. His cybernetic implants are glitching, and this once-legendary cop is barely clinging to his sanity. It probably sounds like part of a cyberpunk story you might have seen before. Neon Blood has the individual parts of a cyberpunk neo-noir thriller like Cyberpunk 2077, but it has no idea how to weave them together into a cohesive experience. It starts out alright, with snappy, sharply pointed dialogue and some rain to set the mood in this pixelated adventure. Oddly, the writing breaks down to the point where it becomes overly verbose and sometimes incomprehensible, completely losing the plot by the end.
However, I can’t deny that Neon Blood looks good. I wouldn’t mind having McCoin’s awesome trenchcoat myself, which doesn’t seem too much to ask. The pixel characters recall the classic Blade Runner point-and-click game, and they stand out beautifully against the dingy, yet neon-lit 3D cityscape of Blind City. If you’re a fan of the general cyberpunk look, this is a beautiful, though derivative version of it. When you’re not running around trying to unravel a conspiracy, big moments are punctuated with beautifully animated cutscenes. Although the soundtrack is familiar simple synth sounds, it’s the cue that indicates this is indeed a cyberpunk tale.
There’s something off about the pacing of Neon Blood‘s narrative. Part of that is the poor writing. ChaoticBrain Studio is located in Spain, and considering it’s a small indie studio, I’m guessing English is not their writers’ first language. Translation issues are understandable, but some parts of the text seem to be written by a professional English writer, while others read as if from an automated translation service. There are many lines of dialogue that I had to read several times before determining they didn’t make sense or didn’t have much meaning to them. Though the prologue is cohesive, the writing starts to break down in the second part before becoming unintelligible. It’s a simple game; you can explore the environment a bit, chat with characters in the area, and even work a couple of crime scenes since McCain is a detective, after all. But ultimately, your only aim is to talk to the next person to advance the story. It’s disorienting when the game gives you a specific goal, but then it turns out you’re actually supposed to be doing something completely different.
Neon Blood is a short game, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The story, however, is entirely predictable. It is almost like reading a first-draft storyboard. A down-on-his-luck cop in a dystopian city discovers a conspiracy and unravels it, the end. An arc is implied for McCoin, but it’s more of a short, squiggly line, as he never gets the time to develop, and the conclusion is too easy. Side characters seem intended to give a sense of familiarity that can’t arise as you barely spend time with any of them. The villain is obvious but doesn’t get enough space to feel sinister or whatever they’re supposed to be. The story literally takes a huge leap through time and space to abruptly begin the ending sequence. Some moments of soul-searching could have given this story the space it needs to breathe, but those moments don’t happen. The painful thing is that the writers didn’t need to move heaven and earth to make the story take off, just a little something more than what’s there. It was a world I would have liked to have immersed myself in, but I was kicked out before I gained my bearings. But overall, the decor that makes a story worth telling isn’t in Neon Blood. If you squeezed the entirety of something like Cyberpunk 2077 into about four hours, this would be it, but where’s the fun in that?
The gameplay is similarly bare bones. Combat is simple: You pick an action, the enemy attacks, repeat until one is dead. The amount of damage each attack deals varies wildly, so a boss fight showdown could potentially end in a couple of turns, while a run-of-the-mill battle could take several minutes. Though you gain more abilities over time, McCoin’s initial headshot and defibrillator for healing could get you through the entire game. There’s an items menu, but for some reason, those are locked for most of the game. You don’t even get an inventory or equipment. Unfortunately, there’s just nothing there. Aside from the basic combat, defeating bosses shifts you into a series of quicktime events where you watch McCoin absolutely dismantle his enemies, which are much more engaging than the basic fighting. Neon Blood would have been better served opting for more QTEs, à la Telltale Games, than tossing in the basic blocks of a bulkier combat system that never materializes.
It’s difficult to categorize what Neon Blood is intended to be, but not in a good way. There’s only one puzzle, which you have to solve twice. It has elements of point-and-click games, but as you have no inventory, your interaction with the world is limited. Combat exists enough to be irritating but not enough to feel like a substantial part of the experience, to where the quicktime events outshine it. Admittedly, it looks great, but Neon Blood would have been better off as a series of desktop wallpapers or a movie than as a game. Even if it was either of those things instead, it’d still be begging for context to complete the ideas it introduces.
It’s disappointing to say that Neon Blood is dripping with unrealized potential. Clearly, the developers put effort into the impressive visuals and the quicktime events, but equal effort was not extended to the writing in a game that so heavily depends on its narrative. It’s not like there’s so much cyberpunk-style media that there isn’t room for more, so it’s too bad this one doesn’t come together. Maybe someday, someone will flesh out Neon Blood to make it as human as it is machine.
