Another game that I loved at first and slowly dribbled away my affection for it by outstaying its welcome. Neon White's gameplay of speed puzzle platforming through levels prioritising visual clarity of the intended path over aesthetics (well, until the later levels when seemingly the opposite approach gets introduced) and trying to optimize your times to get better rewards in a way giving players the taste of regular speedrunning but without the massive time investment. The levels are short and as such (generally) avoid the frustration of making you replay a 10 minute level to then fuck up at the end and have to do it all over again.

Not that Neon White is without its frustrations, certain sections were kind of annoying in all the bullshit they threw at you, and the inherent anger that comes with messing up on a run where you were going to get an excellent time but due to a weird quirk of the physics engine, or a genuine fuckup you arent able to. For the most part though, I was hooked, trying over and over until I could get the ace medal for every level (of the first 8 Missions) and even combing through to get the collectibles needed to advance the side character storylines which also open up new levels.

This was until mission 9 when quite frankly the game started to lose me, as well as in general I started finding the conceit and mechanics of the game kinda tiresome and repetitive. I just stopped aiming for ace medals, I'd take anything I got (as my rank was sufficiently high enough) and honestly started to just fast forward through most of the inane dialogue. So I honestly don't know what goes on for most of the last 5th of the game but given the first 4/5ths, I doubt it was anything worth experiencing.

Also why does this game have boss fights? They're bad. Its a poor idea executed poorly