Boson X is an endless runner set inside a particle accelerator. In it, you’re a rogue physics professor attempting to discover new exotic particles by running and jumping along a tunnel of Planck-length platforms, which perpetually coalesce, folding inwards from the accelerator’s neon-pulsing edge and forming a path along which you must run and leap with sub-atomic precision. In more pragmatic terms Boson X is a game about hitting keys at the correct moment while pretty things happen, and it’s out today.
Blue panels increase your energy level, which raises your speed and ratchets the free-running challenge. The goal is to hit 100% energy, unlocking the particle that you’ve set out to discover, though you can keep going for as long as you’re able to after that, raising your energy past 100% by reacting ever more quickly to the rapidly approaching, swiss-cheese tunnel before you. Everything gets quicker, including the music. There’s no gravity, you can use any part of the tunnel to traverse it, and later levels demand faster responses, braver jumps and defter fingers.
Boson X is super basic, but its cleanly psychadelic style, simple inputs, gradually quickening, tempo-matching music and quick restarts transform it into something weirdly compelling. That, and the idea of a professor with leather patches on his elbows attempting to unlock the secrets of subatomic particles byrunning into them really quickly is fundamentally pleasing. Give it a go, it’s free and it’s almost hometime.