Neon Tail Review | A Rollerskating Indie Adventure Game
Developer: Rocket Juice Games
Platforms: PC
4 years ago, I interviewed Feili from Rocket Juice Games, who was working on an open-world adventure RPG game which was set to stand out in one key way: Your sole means of transport is rollerskating! I love the idea of checking back on projects I've done interviews on. Feili and his very small team have now taken Neon Tail out of early access, with plenty more updates set to come and I was excited to see if their hard work had paid off!
It's clear from the offset that the traversal and physics of rollerskating was one of the most important aspects of the game. There is a balance to be made in most sports games between realism and fun, and Neon Tail strikes that balance brilliantly.
That's not to say the physics will not take a bit of getting used to for most players. The game does things a little differently to obvious comparisons such as Tony Hawks Pro Skater or Jet Set Radio, by taking momentum into account a lot more. There's no dedicated button to brake. To slow down and stop you have to make sharp turns which is a more true-to-life, kinaesthetic mechanic.
The same is true of skating backwards, which will become key to pulling off tricks. The directional input is reversed, and rather than pressing R2 to skate forward, L2 is the button for skating backward. I can guarantee some will find this unintuitive and frustrating upon first getting to grips with the game, but it can also be extremely satisfying if you give it a chance.
Grinding on things is as simple as landing on them and a massive amount of the environment can be grinded on. There's no balancing required, but perhaps just as challenging is keeping track of whether you are skating forwards or backwards as the reversed control applies to jumping off the rails too. Often I would intuitively point my analogue stick in the direction I wanted to jump, forgetting I was actually skating backwards. A skilled player will be keeping track of this anyway, however a stronger visual cue would be nice.
The tricks themselves are actually rather simple and almost entirely depend on how you start vs how you land. They also hard require some kind of turn, either 180, 360 degrees, or any multiple of those. For example, you could manual to a 180 then land normally, start reversed then 360 to a rail grind, or rail grind jump off with a 720 spin and land with a manual. If you do the same combination of these twice within a certain time frame, your trick combo will end. This is a good way to incentivise skating backwards and whilst you are essentially doing a similar thing repeatedly, to pull it off in a long combo chain whilst also making it look good is challenging.
I'm not embarrassed to admit, I am not particularly good at this game. In fact, I've had to outright give up on some of the race missions which task you with following a set route as quickly as possible. The first one of these I tried I couldn't even figure out a way to get to the second checkpoint. I'm sure some people will get really good at the game and these speed runs but those people are not me!
One of the main reasons for this is the difficulty to land on some rails which are often the only way to reach the higher platforms in the city. One instance in a main quest had me attempt to land on a specific rail about 20 times before I pulled it off...Silly me, I didn't even need to land on this one for the mission in the end, but still, things like this interrupt my flow quite a bit.
I would strongly recommend not making the same mistake I did by turning on the automatic camera. It is much easier to judge landings of tricks without the camera constantly wanting to turn back and forth. Once I turned this off, I had a much smoother experience and it just flat-out looked better too.
Neon Tail follows the adventures of a young woman who is looking to become a pro in the world of rollerskating in a futuristic city with surprising depth and scale. Though the skating is grounded on the whole, there are a few upgrades you can buy that suit this setting, such as speed boosters and wall running.
There's also a little bit of combat, but the majority of this serves as another convenient way to extend your trick combo rather than a real threat to the player. This is against a mysterious, otherworldly threat that you gradually learn about throughout the main quest.
The game is full of quirky characters and the sidequests spread across the different districts of the city generally follow a similar structure to the main one. You'll probably want to be doing these as this will earn you money to upgrade skills like acceleration, speed and module slots for those aforementioned rollerskate upgrades.
Another way to earn money is by starting a livestream from your PDA menu at any time which will throw up a follower count. Depending on how well you chain skills until you close the stream, you will gain or lose followers and these followers might choose to donate. It's an immersive addition that allows the player to challenge themselves on their way to different objectives on the map rather than simply going there with no thought to the actual point of the game.
Some quests are surprisingly well thought out. Even when simplified down to a basic concept, still just a fetch quest, one tasks you with finding a cat by following pawprints scanned by your handy drone. The cat's owner claims it loves cheese and so a cheese merchant clues you in that it's nearby. When you take some cheese to it though, it refuses to follow you. The merchant mentioned that the cat loved him and, without trying to spoil it, after realising why, it's clear what to do.
It's here I have to levy a big criticism at the game though. Whilst this quest structure is reminiscent of classic games that respected the intelligence of the player with open-ended objectives that don't tell you exactly what you need to do at all times, it also forced me to go back to the cheese merchant for a final hint, even though I already found the solution. This is moreso a general problem with modern gaming and the common expectation that the player cannot use critical thinking skills. Overall I was pleasantly surprised that a sidequest in this kind of game forced me to think outside the box, even if for a moment.
Neon Tail has a distinctive art style that is very reminiscent of the Dreamcast and PS2 era, with plenty of its own style. Unfortunately it took me a bit of tweaking to get it to look right, vsync caused the camera to jitter, yet taking it off caused screen tearing and there is also a lot of pop in which is very noticeable. It's clear the game still needs some polish, however, the core gameplay isn't affected by these technical issues.
Futuristic cars zip around the city which is also full of colourful neon lighting both indicating the intertwining paths you can trick your way through and simply looking cool. I am particularly a fan of the fact that certain lights and objects will flash and bounce along to the game's eloctro dance soundtrack, which is absolutely banging by the way.
I would certainly like more tracks to be added in future as I feel there aren't many at the moment, but what we do have fits so perfectly with this game and its neonpunk vibes. Having pumping four-to-the-floor bass, epic saw synths and playful vocals.
There's still a way to go for Rocket Juice games, but I think you'll agree, the flaws I've pointed out in Neon Tail are majority hold-overs from early access. I'm confident they can be fixed easily. There is enough core gameplay here to satisfy almost anyone into this kind of game and possibly others looking to try it out too. It's very niche, and a challenge to boot, but if you ask me, those can only ever be good things. I'm happy I followed up on this game and congratulations to the team on finally delivering it!
Pros:
Original, semi-realist rollerskating concept.
Banging soundtrack.
Quirky, colourful characters.
Cons:
Some finicky controls.
Visuals can be garish with extreme pop-in.
Some tutorials are not clear.