Will the tech giants take over? Or is there still hope for a glitched utopia?

In Neon Hope, you have the chance to fight back against cyberpunk’s grim vision of the future. Dystopia seems inevitable, but the worst is yet to come. You can still change the world for the better – do not lose hope! This cooperative game takes interactive storytelling to the next level, where your multi-layered decisions will shape a branching narrative.

Neon Hope brings together strategic card play and captivating storytelling in a unique European science-fiction setting. Each game in Neon Hope is one part of a bigger story. Imagine it like an episode of a TV series, which culminates in a big season finale. After each episode, your characters recover their strength, improve their abilities, and continue their adventure in the next game.

The game combines both emerging and scripted narrative to tell its story. In each episode, several cards are randomized to provide a varied experience on repeat playthroughs. At the same time, a written narrative guides you through the story and presents you with various key decisions, branching out to one of many endings.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of NEON HOPE. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own. The components, rules and everything you see are all WIP at the time of writing.

Review:

Overview:

Neon Hope is a card based storytelling game set in a dystopian utopia. It can be played solo or as a cop-op game where you take on the roles of everyday people in the not so distant future, and where you stumble into situations that are much bigger than anything you have been prepared for.

The designers have stated that the game is meant to feel like you are playing through an episode of a tv show, where things that work against you and the encounters / people you deal with are represented by cards.

In the copy I got to review, there are 2 of the game’s characters for you to play, and a couple of difficulty levels for you to try, meaning that even with this slimmed down version there are a few different games / levels to experience.

The set-up took around 10-15 minutes as I had to re-read a couple of sections more than once to get the correct cards for the scenario / character I was playing correctly, and maybe this needs a little bit better clarity in the final rule book.

Despite it being a card game that was in a small box (less than A4 size) it did / will take up quite an area when setting up and during play to accommodate the cards and different areas you need to place them on your table.

There are quite a few pictures / diagrams in the Quickstart Rules guide that came with the game, and on the whole they are well done, and the sequence has been thought out to ensure they flow nicely, especially if like myself you haven’t played many games of this type.

The mechanics play smoothly, and the best way for me to describe it is that it feels similar to the old Fighting Fantasy books from the 1980’s (which I loved) where the choices you made influenced the story and whether you survived the adventure or not, so for me that was a huge plus.

Each player picks a character they will play in the game, and they then set up their hand of cards and anything else they are instructed to do before embarking on the story ‘episode’.

Each player’s turn consists of 3 actions, and these actions can be taken in any order, with other players taking an action in between yours if it is beneficial to do so, and all actions have to be taken by a player before that player can pass.

The players continue to take actions / turns until either the storyline objective has been met meaning they have completed and won this particular story, or they lose by either taking too much stress or the Surveillance has been increased / met the highest threshold level.

There are several Actions a player can take during their turn, and they are;

Change Location – Simply move your characters standee to another location that is in play, which can be at any setting.

Activate – To use certain abilities on cards you need to take the Activate action which is indicated by the ACTION icon.

Perform a Task – This particular action is the main way in which you will be interacting with the game, and there are 4 possible TASK actions you can do, which are;-

• • Investigate 

• Get Support

• Fight

• Hack

To perform a task, which are found on LEADS, ENEMIES, STATES & TOOLS cards, you must first determine the type, attribute and difficulty level of the task.

Your base value will be equal to your attribute matching the attribute of the task, namely;

• PERCEPTION
• COURAGE
• CHARISMA
• TECHNOLOGY

You can optionally modify your attribute by either playing an ACTION card matching the type of the task, or by spending a charge of the attribute support marker, again matching the attribute of the task. This adds a +2 modifier, and can be played by either yourself or other players at your setting.

However, when you perform a task you will need to reveal a random modifier from the grid of hidden modifier tokens, which will also modify your attribute, either positively or negatively. These modifier tokens stay revealed until the grid is reset, which is done when all the tokens have been revealed during the game. The only ones that aren’t counted for reset purposes are the three in / on the archive card, although these are included and replaced during any reset.

You can Investigate LEADS, which are double sided cards that represent places you visit, and people you talk to during your game.

You can Get Support from LEADS as an Investigate action, and if you do you gain a support marker of your choice for doing so, which is placed in your playing area. There are different types of Support Markers, which are

Attribute – which enters play with 2 ‘charges’, and you can spend 1 charge during a task matching the support marker to add a +2 modifier to your task.

Hope – which can be spent to prevent Stress.

Resources – which can be spent to purchase tools at specific points during the game.

You can FIGHT an enemy, and each successful fight deals 1 damage to it, and once an enemy reaches damage equal to or greater than its health it is defeated and removed to the encounter discard pile.

The last task on the list is HACK, in which you attempt to successfully hack a State, and if you do then you place a hacking cube on one of the empty cube slots, and if all of these are covered then the State is defeated and is again placed in the encounter discard pile.

Some tasks may also have a THREAT value, which is resolved if your modified value of the task is lower than the threat value of the task being attempted.

When you perform any TASK you must play a card from your hand, and the action type of that card MUST match the type of action you wish to perform. The played card is placed in your discard pile.

If you complete a task then you gain 1 resource as a reward for doing so, and a task is completed if you remove the last ‘secret’ from a card, or obtain the last Attribute Support Marker from it, deal the last point of damage to it or by placing the final HACK token on it.

If you have no cards left then you need to FOCUS. You then perform these steps;

Recover all cards

Lower your ENDURANCE by 1

Take a number of ACTION cards back into your hand based on your new Endurance level.

You can also at this point purchase a tool or tools from your tool kit, as long as you have the resources to do so, and place them in your play area.

For a prototype / review copy the quality of the components were top notch, right down to properly printed dice (not just blanks with stickers as with some I’ve seen), and the cards were also thick enough to take several handlings without becoming flimsy.

The artwork really does convey that feeling of a dystopian era / setting.

The game played nice and smooth, and the storyline narrative has been done to a very good standard from what I can ascertain via this scaled down review copy. 

I played the game on both Normal (1 character) and Hard (both characters) difficulty levels, winning the normal game, and losing the harder difficulty game, but thoroughly enjoyed both games.

If you are a fan already of these types of story driven narrative card games then I think you should certainly check out the current Kickstarter campaign, which I believe a 2026 delivery date, and if you haven’t tried one of these then you may well like to begin your foray into this genre with Neon Hope.

I will certainly be keeping an eye on this during its campaign to see what the designers have in store for the game.

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