Shipped · itch.io · platformer for speedrunners

Neon
Red

Neon Red is a platformer for speedrunners. By utilizing the red line connecting your arm and hand, you'll need to use momentum and swings to reach the goal as quickly as possible. Defeat enemies and strive to improve your times.

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Trailer

The line is the whole verb

Trailer · ReleasedWatch on YouTube ↗

Core loop

Swing

The red line between arm and hand is the traversal tool. Everything else follows from where you anchor it.

Carry momentum

Speed is inherited between swings, so a clean route is a chain rather than a series of jumps.

Beat the time

Enemies and the clock both cost you. The run is the score.

What I owned

Enemy roles, honest telegraphs, encounters built to teach.

Combat designEncounter design

Discipline: Combat · encounter design
Platform: PC — itch.io
State: Released
Team: Student/indie team

Design problems

Combat inside a speedrun: Enemies have to be readable at full momentum — a telegraph a runner cannot see at speed is a random death, not a challenge.

Encounters that teach: Placement introduces one idea at a time so a first run explains the swing and a tenth run optimises it.

Systems in the shipped game

~/projects/neon-red

Movement

Red line tether between arm and hand
Momentum-carrying swings
Route optimisation as the skill ceiling

Combat

Enemies placed against traversal lines
Telegraphs readable at speed
Times as the progression metric

Team & pipeline

Notes pending

Team size, how the work moved between departments, and what the pipeline looked like day to day — tell me and I will write this section properly rather than guess at it.

Postmortem: What you would change with another pass. Same as above: give me the notes and this becomes a real section.