Ultimately, focusing too closely on any puzzle solution misses what’s special about Humanity. In the days since playing, I’ve found myself most often thinking not about a specific mechanic, but what each level looks like once completed. By removing my ability to influence the stage, the completion screen presents the purest form of the game’s beautiful aesthetic: an unending river of people jumping, swimming, climbing. Orderly, but overwhelming. Moving, united, toward a singular goal.
Game lead Ben Esposito has described Neon White as “for freaks, by freaks.” And yet, identifying as a freak isn’t a prerequisite for enjoying Neon White. The game’s greatest strength may, in fact, be how welcoming it is. Its difficulty is perfectly curved, its story is disarmingly charming. But after an hour of restarting the same level, ignoring all my other responsibilities to cross the finish line just a little faster, I realized that Neon White may have turned me into a freak so gently that I didn’t even notice.
Exo One is not a mechanically deep game, nor a narratively enthralling one, but nevertheless, I see myself returning to it many times in the future. The game pulls off a fantasy I’ve heretofore only approached in my dreams: to leave all remnants of Earthliness behind and skim the surface of an alien world, the desert as smooth as polished glass.
This is all bolstered by strong art direction and technical design. Although the soundtrack and some instances of stiff character animation remind me that this was once a Skyrim mod, environments are nicely detailed, strikingly lit, and filled with era-appropriate pieces of clutter. If you want, you can even discuss the intricacies of Roman architecture with one of the NPCs and then observe those same intricacies throughout the city. The attention to historical accuracy is enthralling. I learned several things about real-life history during my playthrough, and not all were Roman-centric.