The small bit of charm this has to me is how it looks alike one of these custom 3ds sound visualisers you could switch between when listening to music. Technically there isn’t much substance to go off of here, other than the shader spam and excessive typography, but the comparison gives me some warmth

I've heard some great things about Neural Pathways around the time it released, so I wanted to go back and play a 2.1 SGameT level to compare styles. I landed on A Thank You because of the song, also probably happening to be their last 2.1 level which I thought was neat. It's a very unfiltered level, one I think much of the community would call "object spam." I don't think this is an inappropriate term in itself, although the assumption that it results in something poor quality is definitely misguided. A Thank You is a nice level, nothing too amazing for me but definitely an interesting launching point.

I've often claimed that there are very few creators whose style truly evolved to fit 2.2's new creative offerings, and SGameT is potentially the most obvious case. There's no way to talk about Neural Pathways without starting with the shaders, and how stunningly beautiful they are. I've always been a fan of bichromatic color work, which is used predominantly throughout the entire level, but the shaders elevate the effect to something akin to travelling through parallel universes, and even so none are less phenomenal in execution. Other common effects such as the color-altering gradients (I think they just invert colors under them?) and the blur shaders only add to this feeling of paradoxically natural vertigo throughout the runtime. My favorite parts are probably the ball and the wave, both featuring phenomenal color work and the most memorable secondary effects in the level. I didn't mind the simple gameplay - I actually think it's crucial to be able to fully absorb the effects for them to be effective - but the song just doesn't do it for me. Maybe it doesn't fit the visuals, maybe it doesn't really work for any sort of GD level, or maybe I don't like it in the first place. For now I'd point to the second option, but it's not a total dealbreaker. You should definitely take this as a high 8 though, Neural Pathways and especially SGameT's other stuff from the last year show how much the update took hold of some creator's styles and ascended them beyond their 2.1 potential. It's not as if the progression from A Thank You to Neural Pathways is unrecognizable, but it's certainly a very promising jump.