Neon City Riders

My first instinct when loading Neon City Riders was to just stand still and listen. That synth-soaked, 16-bit soundtrack hums with the kind of intentionality you only get when a small team has really decided what kind of world they want you to inhabit. Mecha Studios, a Mexican indie outfit that funded this on Kickstarter back in 2017, built something earnest here, a top-down action-adventure set in a crumbling cyberpunk city divided into four gang-controlled turfs, each with its own visual identity, enemy types, and puzzle logic. You play as Rick, a hockey-masked vigilante, starting the game as a duo alongside a companion named Evergray, working outward from the Neon District hub to reclaim territory from four super-powered gang bosses. Structurally, the game pulls hard from top-down Zelda DNA. Each turf functions like a dungeon zone with a boss at the end, and defeating that boss hands you one of four core abilities, things like a dash, a parry, projectile redirection, and a power that reveals hidden paths. Those abilities also gate progress through the wider city, so the open world slowly unfolds as you collect them. There is even a trading side-quest running parallel to the main story, a nod to the chain-trading puzzles in classic Nintendo adventures. Combat itself is fast and unforgiving: enemy attacks require precise timing to dodge, and button-mashing will get you killed quickly. Boss encounters have real rhythm to them, and the satisfaction of finally cracking a pattern after a few deaths is genuine. Here is where I have to be honest with you, though, because this game has real friction, and not all of it is the intentional, rewarding kind. The early stretch is rough. The game strips your abilities away almost immediately after showing them to you, leaving combat feeling limited for longer than it should. Direction is genuinely sparse, and while the Neon District hub has a for-coins hint line and an NPC who can mark important quest contacts, newcomers will spend meaningful time wandering into ability-gated dead ends. The world, so visually alive on the surface, starts to feel thin once you look for things to actually do in it: vending machines all serve the same function, many background details are purely decorative, and some NPC dialogue shows the seams of translation. Critics largely landed around a 66 average on OpenCritic, and that number feels honest. And yet. The pixel artistry in this game is something I find myself returning to mentally. The rain-slicked streets of the central hub, the distinct visual character of each gang's turf, the boss character designs, there is craft here that deserves attention. The soundtrack does exactly what a game like this needs, it pulls you into the decade it is celebrating without becoming a parody of it. The four different endings give completionists a structural reason to go back, and the companion and side-quest system adds thin but present RPG texture. For players who grew up with Double Dragon and Link to the Past and want to see what a small modern studio does when it genuinely loves both of those things, Neon City Riders has a heartbeat worth feeling. For players who need a tightly directed experience with clear quest markers and smooth pacing, the roughness will chafe. Kai, Scout Team