Just over a year ago, Crescent Moon and Tasty Poison Games released Neon Shadow (Free), a mobile first-person shooter that was meant as a throwback to the old-school frag fests of the ’90s, and they totally nailed it. Neon Shadow had awesome visuals and a really cool sci-fi single-player campaign, but it also featured an online multiplayer mode that was breezy, fast-paced and fun. I love the more complex FPS games with weapon upgrading tiers, different playable classes, and tons of bells and whistles, but on mobile some of the funnest fragging I’ve had is with classics like Doom and Wolfenstein. Neon Shadow feels like a modern game that somehow captured the soul of those old classics.
Unfortunately, while it seemed to do pretty well just after release, popularity faded for Neon Shadow and getting decent online multiplayer matches going was tough due to a lack of players. This week, Tasty Poison has released a new update to Neon Shadow which both addresses the fact that it can be hard to find online players by adding in an offline mode against bots, but also adds in 5 new multiplayer maps and two new multiplayer modes to hopefully spark up interest in the game again and get people playing more online.
The 5 new maps bring the total number of multiplayer maps up to 10, and the two new modes are Mutant and Instakill. Mutant is a deathmatch mode where the first player to score a kill becomes the “Mutant" with increased speed and strength. They also become the target for all the other players in the game, and each new person who defeats the Mutant becomes the Mutant themselves. Instakill is also a deathmatch mode where all players have laser rifles that will kill players in just a single shot, hence the name Instakill. Both new modes are fun and nice complements to the regular deathmatch mode, and all the multiplayer modes are fun to play against the AI bots.
If you like first-person shooters and haven’t checked out Neon Shadow before, I definitely recommend it. Even if you’re not into playing online matches the single-player campaign is a blast and the new AI bots offer unlimited replayability without ever having to go online. If you do like battling online, hopefully this new update will bring a new influx of players to this underrated shooter.
