NeonPowerUp! Review | TheXboxHub

We wouldn’t normally start a review by complimenting a game’s girth, but NeonPowerUp! is huge. We’re not talking Baldur’s Gate 3-huge: we’re taking huge for a sub-£5 game. Eighty levels would be a lot for anyone, but NeonPowerUp! makes that number feel so much larger by encouraging you to take your time. Mostly because you will die if you don’t. 

With the girth conversations out of the way, we can get to the game. NeonPowerUp! is a combination of precision and puzzle platformer. That means the double-threat of trying to figure out how to solve a level, and then having to actually pull it off. Neither of those two halves are easy. 

In NeonPowerUp! (we’re not sure the capitals and exclamation mark are needed), you play an android in a far-flung future, where artificial intelligence has gone rogue. You’re employed by humanity to charge up some batteries. We assume the batteries are for something vital like an antique walkman, but it’s never made clear. Whatever it is, you’re being pushed into levels that are riddled with enemies but also crystalline batteries. Collect all of these collectibles, and the level is done. You can move on. 

It’s a simple deviation from the traditional indie platformer. Most of the time in similar games, you’re required to find an exit at the end of a level. Here, you have to collect everything. It’s a vital difference because the order of collection is suddenly vital. Which battery must be left till last? Often there are batteries that hang over a chasm: they definitely need to remain till the end. 

There’s always a risk with this approach, that you can spend ages collecting every last collectible, only to snag a pixel on an enemy and have to do all the makework again. But NeonPowerUp! dodges the problem by only including a few batteries per level. You’re not collecting hundreds, you’re grabbing a few. Death isn’t quite as rage-inducing when you only need twenty seconds or so to get back to where you were. 

With one tiny exception, the controls in NeonPowerUp! are very much on point. They have to be, as the platforming is so precise, so demanding, that dodgy collision or laggy movement would be a dealbreaker. But the jump, double-jump and the rest are all exceptional. You can be confident in playing NeonPowerUp!.

The tiny exception is with one of the game’s many power ups (there was a clue in the title that these were present). There is a blink-teleport, activated with a tap of the X button, and it’s both poorly explained and initially confusing. It blinks you in the direction you’re facing, but to a set distance (three ‘squares’ to be exact). The thing is, if that square isn’t free, then the teleport will move you to the closest space to you. Now, this isn’t explained particularly well, and – if you’re like us – you will spend a good five minutes on how the sodding thing works. Why can you pass through some walls and not others? The answer is because there’s something blocking your way. Once you comprehend this rule, it starts becoming easier. 

These power-ups are the little gems within NeonPowerUp!’s game design. Without them, the game would be reasonably mediocre: a polished but been-there, done-that platformer. But NeonPowerUp! leans into them hard and reaps the benefits. 

Around the level are little boxes containing various benefits: there’s a double jump, a teleport and a pistol. We’ve already explained the teleport, and the rest are reasonably self-evident. While they aren’t anything you haven’t seen in thousands of other games, they’re special because you can only use one of them at a time, and they’re finite. Now you have the outlines of a puzzle: which of the power-ups do you need now, and which batteries can that power-up snag you? Then you’re moving onto the next power-up and the next, ensuring that you’re ending on the correct battery. 

That gives you more permutations than you might expect. The order of batteries and the order of power-ups are two questions that overlap and complicate each other. It makes the puzzle-half of NeonPowerUp! exceptionally clever. And we’ve already mentioned that the precision-platforming half is good too, so in combination it is very hard to criticise. This is the complete package. 

And should we remind you of the girth? Eighty levels is a lot, especially when you’re taking your time with every jump, and meticulously planning out the puzzle. We’d estimate that there’s four or five hours of gameplay here. That’s blooming marvellous, considering the £4.99 outlay. 

It’s hard to find an issue without delving into nitpicking. For a game where you die so much, the time it takes to restart is slightly too long. We’ve probably spent a tenth of our time in NeonPowerUp! watching the little android come back from the dead. And while the level design is clever, veering from platforming to puzzling, it’s not radical or new. We’d have loved to see the designers attempt something more long-form, perhaps the length of a Super Mario level – and we can only imagine what the team could do with a bigger budget, as it’s still your simplistic indie platformer. It’s limited to only a few level ingredients. 

But within the category of ‘budget platformer’, NeonPowerUp! is almost unsurpassed. It’s big, it’s hard, and it’s clever. The triple-lock. 9Ratones should be immensely proud of what they’ve done here with the most limited of tools. £4.99 has never been easier to spend.

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• Source: https://www.thexboxhub.com/neonpowerup-review/