Neon Tail Reviews

This is a great early access game with fun gameplay and a wonderful aesthetic. There's a ton to do if you want to do missions and follow the story, or just skate around and do tricks. There are definitely some bugs and there needs to be some quality of life improvements, but the devs are very open with what they're working on and talk on the discord fairly often. Highly recommend!

This is a fantastic game. The controls are weird at first, but stick with them and you'll see why they were implemented the way they are, as they allow for some great precision, and really fun movement. Ever since Jet Set Radio, I've been itching for a game that makes simple movement as fun as that game did, and this game checked all of those boxes for me. It has a great, catchy soundtrack; I played the game way back before it was on Steam, and it was only a small demo. Ever since then I've sang the song to myself quite frequently, as it's really memorable and fits the game well. If you don't like it though, you can easily change the music at a cafe by drinking the bubble tea, and all the other songs are quite good and varied as well. If you miss the Jet Set Radio series, or you're a fan of skating games, buy this game now. It has a very high skill-ceiling and feels very rewarding to simply move around, a trait very few games still have. The world is very open and has a lot of really cool sights to see; I feel like the developers took a lot of inspiration from Japanese architecture, as there are a lot of areas in the game that look very similar to specific places I've been in Japan, which evokes a pretty nostalgic feeling for me. Buy this game and have fun just skating around. There's a main storyline to be run through, but I feel like I could just simply skate around the world for hours, and I really appreciate that in a game. Since the game is in early access and is actively being worked on, I want this next part of the review to focus more on places that could be improved upon. This is more written for the developers, so if you're considering whether or not to buy the game, you probably won't care about the rest of the review. My main gripe is that this game NEEDS a quick-stop button that stops you in your tracks. If not that, at least make braking slow you down faster. When you get up to a high place, you'll almost always slide right off the top of a building, plummeting back down to the lowest area, and it is extremely frustrating. This is part of the above gripe as well, but the quest design needs work. In particular I was doing the quest where you have to bring Misa's 3 friends to her birthday party. Why, for the love of all things holy, are all of her friends on tiny balconies, surrounded by grind rails? In particular, the second friend, Mei, was a pain in my ass to get to. She's on a tiny balcony with an awning over her that you can grind on, and an air conditioning unit/vent that you can also grind on. To top it off, the building itself is absolutely tiny. You're supposed to spin around in a circle to stop, much like you would in real-life on rollerblades. However, this is impossible here, because the building itself is so small, and if you touch any of the grindable objects, you'll start grinding and get flung off the side to start the climb all over. To top it all off, you have to go back and forth to get things for her, so you have to do this miserable climb 3 times over. It's a pain in the ass due to how floaty you are; I think the floatiness makes sense and feels realistic, and it feels fun to skate in this way on the ground, so I don't think you should overhaul the physics. What you should do is remove quest characters from such hard-to-reach places so that we don't get angry/upset after falling off and having to redo the climb over and over. A quick-stop button would also have helped tremendously, as it would have prevented the problem of having too much momentum and flying off the side. My last thing is the grindable objects themselves. A lot of them lead to dead-ends, and don't really have any ways for them to link up with other grind-rails. One of the things that made Jet Set Radio so phenomenal, was that you may never have to touch the ground if you're good enough. There were tons of well-placed grind-rails that one could hop between with enough practice and precision. There were branching paths, so you could grind all over the stage and back. With this game, there are too many rails that are just placed as a means of transportation, and by that I mean they are there to get you to certain parts of the map if you just hop on and sit there. I think having some of these is alright, and actually necessary in my opinion. But there are not enough rails that are close to each other. To summarize, I think there should be more small rails closer together so that you can hop between and loop around the map without touching the ground. Also in reference to rails, there are a lot of very small ones that are unnecessary. Especially in places like I mentioned above, on the tops of buildings. They are very small and since they don't link up with any other rails, these small ones serve only to frustrate the player when they get on without meaning to. I think there are too many grind-rails in places they don't belong, and not enough rails in places where they should be. My final point, not really a gripe but more a suggestion, would be to add hills! The game can feel a bit flat, especially in the areas with a lot of roads underneath the train tracks and at the bus terminal. There is verticality, which I appreciate, but I think there should be more slopes, hills, and bumps in the terrain. It would really help the world feel more alive if it felt like a real city built on a real planet; right now it feels like a flat platform, and is a bit dull as a result. Just be sure to add plenty of rails and things to help get out of low-points on the terrain since it's hard to skate up hills. In case this bit isn't clear, I'm imagining the city of Shibuya (the real city), the hill section of Shibuya in Jet Set Radio, or Dogenzaka Hill from Jet Set Radio Future. Hope this helps. I've been subscribed to the Youtube channel for awhile and love seeing the progress. I made a lot of criticisms, but I really do love this game a lot. You've got a great thing going here, and I look forward to seeing where it goes!

The game is extremely fun with some great characters and tricks to do, feels like when I played tony hawk a long time ago for the first time! Also the dev is really attentive and fixed my issues as soon as they could! Commited devs are the core of amazing games

Been keeping up with this game progress for a long time, my boy finally did it. Comfy sound track, and fun to skate around the city, reminds me of the toonami times.

[strike] Absolutely some of the best movement in its genre. It's still in Early Access and the story isn't finished so I won't review that portion of the game however the sound, gameplay, and visuals all pull together an experience you could easily sink hours into just doing something as simple as pulling off tricks in a long combo to entertain fans or exploring the city. The devs are also very friendly and easy to get in contact with via the discord linked in various places. 8/10 for now as it's in an incomplete state, but still 100% worth picking up or trying the free demo to see if you'd like it [/strike] 1.0 Release Update: Neon Tail is a game I played without any expectations going in. I gave it a chance due to the themes and trailers of the game showcasing roller skating game play I had compared to Jet Set Radio. From the start I could feel the games thrilling sense of style and speed with its own thing going on that I would struggle to find anywhere else. If you go into this expecting Jet Set Radio or the newer Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, you won't find it here, but you might like this even more. The movement and tricks in this game are all physics based placing you in complete control. You'll quickly pick up on the controls as they become intuitive rewarding you for the efforts you put into mastering them after (probably) failing the tutorial a few times. Due to certain circumstances, Neon Tail had it's development cut short resulting in a shortened story with some loose ends and underdeveloped characters. This doesn't prevent the story from giving you a good chuckle from time to time, and it will still last you a good few hours with some replay-ability that I fully encourage so you can see how far the skill gap gets between when you start the game the first time versus a second or third. The strong point of this game is 100% it's game play that continues to get better as you move through the story and acquire upgrades and eventually a full cast of characters to swap between. Combat is introduced towards the end of the story with a zombie and alien invasion and is surprisingly well thought out! You have a few differences between characters and the flow of Ruby, the main characters, move set will keep you hooked and struggling to find time for anything other than horde elimination. Optrellian is another characters who I've really enjoyed my time playing as due to the beefy heavy hitting baseball bat he carries and a boost on his legs replacing his dodge which actually DID make the game feel like old Jet Set Radio in a great way. All in all this is a great game that could have been more with proper support, and I will be singing it's praise for a long time to come. vvv My Opinions vvv Movement: 8/10 - Extremely fluid and rewarding, a few finicky aspects Combat: 10/10 - As an addition to the movement, the combat propels the game to another level Story: yes. Visuals: 7.5/10 Soundtrack: 9/10

I love the concept, the art style, and the environment design, but this game has many problems which I will list quickly: - The mechanics feel solid, but too simple. Maybe they should add wall-riding or something to spice things up. What the game has right now gets boring real quick. - The only way to make "points" is to perform extremely easy and boring tricks. I think the game should mainly reward you for making stunts (getting speed, air, and grinding on multiple rails on succession). - The game desperately needs an auto-save feature. - Performance is bad for the way it looks. They really need to optimize. The only reason I "recommend" this game is because I don't want to hurt it with a bad review, knowing that it's still on early access.

The game has so much potential and is a great concept...Buuuut Pros: Great Concept Colorful Character(s) Descriptive Tutorial Fun Speeds/Jumps/Grinding Great Song(s) Cons: The Controls are a little floaty and Attempting combos is a bit picky My final rating; 8/10 It's a Good game idea with a Good concept. and since it's a small group of Devs I'm not exactly quick to pulling the same judgement I would on a Massive Company making games. I'm already wanting to make a Skater OC due to the beautiful/Amazing fashion styles of characters....and I'm also THAT gay.

EDIT 8/10/20: going by the devs' comment, it sounds like there are no plans to make the controls/camera less viscerally unpleasant to deal with. i've booted up the game a few times since this review and every time i come away more disappointed, because there's a good game in there it's just buried under the control scheme. my character regularly fails to move how i expect her to and that just does not work for me, she feels like a mac truck with no brakes perpetually going downhill instead of a human person with the mass of a human body and good lord is the lack of auto-camera aggravating. it sounds like some people manage to get to grips with the controls, which is cool, but if you're the type who likes their controls precise i'd stay away from this one. i have no idea how anyone manages the camera though like, how many thumbs do they have ORIGINAL REVIEW: lots of potential for sure here, but i do wanna warn y'all that the controls are super weird and not entirely good. it's totally momentum based, which leads to a lot of fun chaining of manuals and flips, but it also means the only way to stop is to spin around which is extremely awkward and doesn't always work. another issue at the moment is the camera. the game doesn't automatically move the camera (usually. there were a few moments when the camera fought my trying to look at something), you have to do it yourself and this makes controlling your skater much, much harder than it would be otherwise. because of the momentum you tend to find yourself speeding into an obstacle you can't see or flying past your target with no way to adjust the camera in time to reposition yourself. the controls are further complicated by skating backwards, which flips your controls, which feels awful. going backwards is super important since you're constantly trying to manage momentum and the trick system relies on doing a lot of spinning, but it's implemented poorly and you'll find yourself, for instance, hopping out of a grind at a completely unexpected angle. and again, combined with the camera issues this makes things much more difficult than they should be. all that said, when the controls work the way you expect and the camera stays out of your way, this is really fun. i hope the devs polish up the camera and controls because this has a ton of potential. probably not a great buy at the moment, but i'm hoping with a bit of polish i can recommend this.

Lovable, creative and fantastic, but with quite a lot of problems. The style of this game is overwhelmingly colorful and shiny, with very recognizable and incredible characters, really good animations, designs and personalization, EXTREMELY good soundtrack and complex but engaging movement controls. Sadly, there are thing that weighed down my experience. The first, it's not well optimized, fps drops, stuttering, weird or even bad collisions, problems with the camera (it can help turning on the automatic camera though), etc. Second, I understand not giving you control when in the air, but jumping on itself is unprecise and irritating, specially when snapping to rails to grind is janky. Third, combat is meh, hitboxes don't work properly and attacking is boring. And fourth, not being able to open the menu or map unless standing still breaks any momentum and doesn't feel that good. I wish I could say that I loved this game, because I love the characters, the world, the story, the music, the sheer amount of passion put into so many things. But, the problems and decisions made the experience kind of frustrating and annoying. Overall, I did enjoyed it at the end, so I really recommend it to anyone willing to give it a try, this kind of games are worth supporting. Esp: Adorable, creativo y fantástico, pero con bastantes problemas. El estilo de este juego es MUY colorido y brillante, con personajes reconocibles e increíbles, animaciones, diseños y personalización bastante buenos, un soundtrack EXTREMADAMENTE bueno y unos controles de movimiento complejos pero interesantes. Lamentablemente, hay cosas que lastraron mi experiencia. La primera, no está bien optimizado, caídas de fps, stuttering, colisiones raras o malas, problemas con la cámara (aunque puede ayudar activar la cámara automática), etc. En segundo lugar, entiendo que no te den el control cuando estás en el aire, pero saltar en sí mismo es poco preciso e irritante, especialmente cuando el enganche a los raíles para hacer grind no funciona a veces. Tercero, el combate es meh, las hitboxes no funcionan bien y atacar es aburrido. Y cuarto, no poder abrir el menú o el mapa a menos que estés parado rompe cualquier momentum y no se siente tan bien. Ojalá pudiera decir que me encanta este juego, porque adoro los personajes, el mundo, la historia, la música y la cantidad de pasión que se ha puesto en tantas cosas. Pero los problemas y las decisiones hicieron que la experiencia fuera algo frustrante y molesta. En general, puedo decir que lo disfruté, así que lo recomiendo a cualquiera que quiera darle una oportunidad, este tipo de juegos valen la pena apoyar.

The game is slowly getting better but there are 3 major problems that make it difficult to recommend - the acceleration on the slopes, optimization, and general lack of meaningful content. Some people also mentioned that controls are not good - that is not the full truth, I think the problem with controls is mostly coming from issues in the environment and not from skating mechanics that work fine when mastered. There are many parts in the city where you will have awkward platforming due to having multiple sticky zones in small proximity or invisible walls, making it nearly impossible to fully control the character. It's not a problem in areas with more space, after playing 7+ hours I can execute platforming very consistently (it just has a learning curve). On that note, I would not recommend forcing new players to do tasks in small streets, or polish that level design so you not constantly hitting weird artefacts that you can't see. Now the game feels kinda clunky at first because it prevents you from instantly stopping to show momentum, you have to make u-turns instead by spinning and using that momentum, which is kinda the main gimmick in the game, you are roller skating after all. I don't understand why developers keep delaying the rework on the slopes, even though it's the most noticeable problem as it happens nearly everywhere you go. Now I get that going against gravity should reduce your speed (even though you can accelerate at 90-degree angles on rails), but you can't have little edges completely stopping you from moving, including the jump which will only work vertically from fixed position. I think an easy fix would be to allow the character to jump forward from a standing position, as long as you holding forward, she should cover some minimum distance. The game is also not very optimized, I just upgraded to RTX2060 and I get very sporadic framerate, the lag is not game-breaking but it is noticeable in some areas (keep in mind that store mentions nothing about graphics other than GeForce GTX 660 being minimum, I had that on old computer and the game was just stuttering the whole time). Why recommend the game if it has so many problems? The short answer, I am starting to have fun after the latest update and the devs seem to be doing their job so far. It's not a bad looking game, I like the verticality in the stage design, it's really cool to ride on the huge buildings and above the city, and the girl being super cute does not hurt either (I really love taking pretty photos next to random things, Is that how girls always feel?). There are not many activities, and those that are in the game can be hard to find, I guess they are still working on a map system. However, I am starting to see some potential, at this point it's just adding content and polishing a few mechanics. Sadly the city is still missing a huge chunk, as clearly shown by huge yellow ducktape. The developers did not address all of the things that I mentioned half a year ago, but they are somewhat accomodating, at least they finally added a way to change music, I was listening to the same song for so long I could now sing it myself (should probably make it automatic). [h1] Pros: [/h1] + I like the visuals, very colourful locations, fun to explore + the game feels somewhat unique due to movement mechanics + there are several stores with cosmetic unlocks (I don't think that upgrades are in the game yet) [h1] Feedback: [/h1] [u] Slope Movement [/u] - this has been a problem for way too long. Here is an easy way for a temporary fix okay. If the player is holding forward and presses jump, make her jump forward from any position, that way you are not stuck in the place jumping vertically. Maybe later in development, you can add minimum speed or animation for her running up the ramps, you know how people put skates sideways and just run - I don't know if that is a thing, I just saw another roller skating game do that, and it worked a lot better than standing still the whole time. [u] Soundtrack cycle & Store items [/u] - Why do I have to enable music cycling? It's not very pleasant to hear the same song for 10 hours. Even after you allowed me to change the soundtrack, you still have to do it manually from the save spot. One small thing about store items, make sure the colour is matching the character to some extent, it's so weird having brown items on a hot pink costume. Maybe something a little more bright. [u] Starting platforming quests [/u] - I think some of the early sections (like one in a small street district) are very hard due to clunky stage design in a small area. Be careful with designing platforming sections with a lot of objects next to each other, you just getting stuck everywhere and the camera can make it even harder. For a new player, I think your quests should be a bit more straight-forward, maybe with more flat space. If you really want to make a quest where you collect things, maybe make it like a long area where you can go forward and backward like a race track, not a vertical square where it's so easy to over jump and run into walls. Not sure if it makes sense - just don't put a lot of crap next to each other, you can't change direction quickly enough. [b] Overall Thoughts: [/b] There is a fun and stylish game somewhere in there, I can almost see it, screaming for help. Needs more work... but I do want to see the end of this project. With more content and at least some updates to that **** ramp freezing, it could be very enjoyable. There are only so many good roller skating games out there, I played only one on Dreamcast before this, so there is a big void in the genre that needs to be filled. [code] Here is my beautiful signature that does not lead to anywhere [/code]