izigame.me

It's wild to me that this game only has 10,000 reviews and a ~3,000 concurrent player peak. This is by far and away one of the most fun games I have played in my entire life, and I have played a lot of games that I love dearly.
In Neon White, you are a dead criminal who went to heaven, but you only get to stay if you kill more demons than everyone else that was also brought up with you. Only one of you get to stay. This is the initial premise, and it only gets more absurd/fun as it goes.
This is a "speedrunning" game where you will play levels with the goal of reaching the end, but the exit only unlocks after you kill all of the enemies present.
Pushing for fast times in the very creative and well designed levels, full of shortcuts and optimizations, is an extremely satisfying experience. On top of that, the movement feels so, so smooth. Combine that with the abilities stored in cards you find in each stage, you can find a bunch of different ways to complete most of them. It just feels so good to play.
On top of how good the movement feels, it is also very precise, making for gameplay that you can always improve upon. How fast you complete the levels is all about how you can land that one difficult jump, meet that time window to make it to the shortcut, saving your cards until the perfect moment to create your own shortcut, etc.
The dialog is kinda bad/cringe throughout most of the game, but to be honest that didn't detract from my experience much at all. The premise of the story is already absurd and unbelievable, so I personally didn't need realistic conversations to be invested in the experience the developers made. It can get so bad sometimes that it circles around to being hilarious and sort of engaging. I can definitely see how this would be a downside to some, but it wasn't for me.
What the devs spent a lot of time on is the core gameplay, which in my opinion is as perfect as it gets for a small studio making a game like this. It's obvious that they put so much care into how the game feels, and all of that work shines through in nearly every possible moment.
If there are any downsides in the level design, it would be in the final stretch of the game, where you gain a very powerful ability that simplifies the last few levels quite a bit. Even then, those levels were still a lot of fun and full of spectacle, so I can't say it is an actual downside, but rather an explosive and fast paced finale.
They included hints in the game similar to a ghost in a mario kart time trial. These show you how you can achieve the good medals without too much thought. The best part about these is that they make sure that anyone can figure out how to get decent times to proceed the story, but they are usually not the actual fastest way to beat the level. You've gotta make a plan while exploring and execute good movement to really push better times.
Also, I won't talk about it much, but the soundtrack is CRAZY good. It matches the energy, theme, and tempo of the levels very well.
With hidden collectibles to find in most levels (these affect the ending of the game, while providing you a meaningful reason to stop and actually learn the level you are playing), time thresholds to get better medals (which affect your progress), extra challenges and time attacks, you really get your money's worth here.
If you have 25 bucks, buy it and try it out, you will find out if it is for you or not within an hour, it starts out quickly showing you what to expect.
This game is clearly a passion project made by talented developers, and they knocked it out of the park and all the way to Heaven. The vision they had I feel is pretty obvious, make a fun and stylish speedrunning game that rewards creativity and paying close attention to the details and clues they provide. They took that and ran away with it, making a very unique and wonderful experience that will stick around in your brain for quite some time.
tldr:

creative, well thought out level design
fast, precise movement that leaves a large amount of room for problem solving and your own personal style/pace
Great soundtrack
Amazingly fun game

I can't recommend Neon White enough, just give it a shot and find out for yourself, trust me. The biggest downside is that no more content has come out since release, that's genuinely the only real negative for me. I played the game close to its launch and my opinion hasn't gone down one bit, I only appreciate it more.
I was only going to write a quick review just to give this game another recommended score, but once I started talking about it I got carried away and wrote this essay. It's that good.