1. It always feels a little cheap to just describe a game in terms of its genre characteristics but it works really well for Neon Chrome. It is a rogue-lite twin stick shooter with a cyberpunk theme and destructible environments. It is exactly equal to the sum of its parts and that is not really a bad thing.
2. The setup is you are an elite hacker who has entered a giant building, which is named Neon Chrome... for some reason. You goal is to stop the overseer of this enormous structure... for some reason.
3. Neon Chrome is divided up into into a couple dozen levels, which are procedurally generated outside of boss battles and a few set pieces. Your character will obtain both temporary upgrades and currency on each playthrough. You lose the temporary bonuses on death but can use the currency to buy permanent upgrades before your next run. This is what a rogue-lite is. Welcome to gaming college, nerds!
4. I would describe the graphics in this as perfectly functional. Neon Chrome is not an outstanding looking game on any level except that you can absolutely always tell what's going on. You know where you are facing, you can tell the difference between enemy types at a glance, where they are facing, what environmental hazards there are, everything you need to know. I find this focus on gameplay over glitz to be really refreshing.
5. There are some really outstanding tunes on the soundtrack but there were definitely few enough that it got a bit repetitive. When you really get in the zone though, repetitive can be kind of good.
6. The sound otherwise is only okay. I liked the sound of most of the guns and explosions but there wasn't much to enemy noises and such. You don't really need directional sound in a top down game so this is all fine.
7. Gameplay has an appealing rhythm to it. There is a bit of stealth but it mostly veers towards more frantic action, sometimes reaching ever so slightly into bullet hell territory. I tend to approach each situation as I frequently do in open world action games. I sneak around the fringes to pick off as many enemies as I can before going in guns ablaze. This lends to a nice sense of tension and release.
8. This has a saving feature that I wish all games in this genre had. It doesn't allow you to save and retry the same section over and over but you can quit the game on any floor and resume when you start the game back up and there's not much progress lost. This keeps you from having to end runs prematurely or leave your system running for hours if something that can't wait pops up in real life.
9. I tried both keyboard and mouse and a controller for this and wasn't crazy in love w/ either. I ended up using a controller mostly. Both methods were responsive and everything but somehow neither felt quite right. Trying to explain this would be a waste of time.
10. You don't unlock the ability to buy the permanent upgrades until you beat the first boss in the game. This makes for kind of a weird early difficulty spike and I actually started Neon Chrome and stopped playing once because of it. It is only after you open the ability to unlock the permenant upgrades that you can really get sucked into the addictive upgrade loop.
11. After each death, you can start either all the way at beginning or at a few checkpoints in the building. I found that you could build up cash the fastest by starting at the highest level it let you but you were unlikely to progress unless you started from the beginning, picking up upgrades throughout the playthrough. This meant I kind of subdivided my runs into money-making vs. serious attempts to beat the game. A full run could take over an hour on its own so you've got to be ready to put some time in.
12. The final floors in Neon Chrome have another strong difficulty spike because there starts to be a lot more enemies and traps that can take serious health off you for making one quick mistake. It kinda sucks to blow yourself six way to Sunday after forty-five minutes of excellent play but that's the breaks. The final boss winds up being pretty easy after that and feels a little disappointing.
13. Neon Chrome ultimately feels like a very competent effort--and a game worth the time you put into it--but no particular instance of it every felt quite special. It is possible it might benefit from some more well-thought-out fixed levels rather than the procedural ones or maybe just needs a bit more panache in the graphical or sound design. Still, I got really pulled into this during many of my sessions w/ it and I don't have any major complaints. If you like twin stick shooters or roguelites, check this out. It is not going to find its way into some indie game hall of fame or anything but you'll probably dig it.
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