Neon White and the gaming subculture where speed is everything

What difference do a few seconds make? If you’re boiling rice or driving to work, not a great deal. But for the hero of Neon White, a single moment’s delay could spell the difference between a year of bliss in heaven and eternal damnation in hell. In this ultra-stylish indie hit from tastemaking publisher Annapurna Interactive, you’ve died a sinner and your only chance to earn a place in paradise is to win a series of madcap races across gleaming castles in the sky.

This is not your typical evocation of heaven — there is a coolness to the pastel tones of the Escher-esque architecture over which you run, leap and somersault to a blood-pumping soundtrack of drum and bass. In between races you socialise with your competitors Neon Yellow, Neon Red, Neon Violet — it’s basically Reservoir Dogs on amphetamines — having flirtatious conversations that are eccentric, adolescent and deeply rooted in anime culture.

Neon White knows exactly what kind of game it wants to be, which is surprising because its genre is so difficult to classify. At heart it’s a first-person platformer, evoking parallels with last year’s brilliant Boomerang X, but it also draws in elements from shooters, visual novels, puzzles and even card games. Each level is a short racecourse lasting no longer than a minute, where you compete to finish in times which will net the bronze, silver, gold or elusive platinum ace medals. Inevitably you will repeat each level many times, chasing that thrilling rush of adrenaline as you glide across glittering waterways and that sense of mastery as you chain moves and expertly anticipate every obstacle.

The game may not align neatly with any one genre, but it fits squarely within the remit of one of gaming’s biggest subcultures: speedrunning. This is a community dedicated to playing whole games or sections of them as fast as possible, in runs which might last tens of hours or mere seconds. Videos of speedruns are watched by millions, particularly during twice-yearly charity competition Games Done Quick, whose most recent edition raised more than $3mn for Médecins Sans Frontières.

Speedrunners are the Formula One drivers of video games: they might spend days learning every corner of a single level and play through it countless times to practise reducing their time by fractions of a second. When they finally embark on their record-breaking attempt, a single error could send them back to the beginning in a heart-stopping moment of frustration but, if they succeed, the rush can prompt euphoric celebrations so hilarious and uplifting that they have found a home in dedicated compilations on YouTube.

Speedrunners often specialise in classic game series — Doom, Mario, Zelda — but certain new titles, such as platformer Celeste, have become popular and there is even a community dedicated to lengthy Japanese role-playing games. The ingenuity of these players is remarkable — community members have specific roles such as “routers”, who pore over a game to work out the optimal sequence of actions to get the fastest time, or “glitch-hunters”, who look for flaws in the game’s code which can be exploited to gain valuable seconds.

In new release Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, a speedrunner realised that child characters cannot be killed, so if you hit one upwards and continually slash them with your lightsabre, you can fly infinitely through the air, bypassing all manner of enemies and obstacles. This technique has been dubbed “child flight”. 

Outsiders might expect the speedrunning community to be intimidating: a group fluent in complex jargon who are dedicated to breakneck competition and elaborate technical exploits. In fact, they are a close-knit community eager to share their knowledge — special exploits are sometimes named after the player who discovered them, as if they were a new species of plant. Successful runs are charted on community hub speedrun.com, which catalogues 3.1mn attempts to date, and might be chronicled by one of the scene’s dedicated historians, such as the Summoning Salt YouTube channel.

Alongside the thrills, a significant reason for the size and fervour of the speedrunning community is the compelling story that unfolds alongside each run: a speedrunner has spent many hours practising for a single pivotal moment, but behind them is the work of hundreds collaborating on that path. This requires such a deep understanding of the granular details of a game that, while motivated by a need for speed, speedrunning is at its heart an act of love. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself when I see the news that someone beat Elden Ring in 21 minutes last week — I’m 80 hours in and still haven’t reached the last boss.

‘Neon White’ is out now on PC and Switch