NEO CEO Da Hongfei has rung in the new year with a rare tweet promising to “work harder to improve infrastructure” and focus on modules that “…deliver the best developer experience.”

Happy NEO Year! In 2019 we will work harder to improve infrastructure. Personally I’ll focus on modules that can be added to NEO incl. distributed storage, identity, layer2, to improve NEO’s crypto-economics, and to deliver the best developer experience. https://t.co/RCT5yjMaye pic.twitter.com/bPPYbxuzSB — Da Hongfei (@dahongfei) January 2, 2019

Da Hongfei, who has traditionally been more reticent to take to social media than some of his peers in the crypto space, did not make any specific reference to any of the projects on the NEO group’s roadmap for 2019, but one such project from NEO’s developers appears set to cause a stir.

Mobile Dating Simulation

Brought to life in a venture between BlaCat and YYMOON Network, Luna is the star of NEO.Girl, a mobile dating simulation game that purportedly “combines virtual reality, non-fungible blockchain assets and artificial intelligence.”

An alpha version of the game was awarded JPY 500,000 in prize money after impressing judges at the inaugural NEO Game Development Competition last summer.

The objective of the game is open-ended and is said to simulate the complete life-death cycle of an individual’s personal relationships. Users are encouraged to form a friendly – and even romantic – experience with the Luna character including, bizarrely, taking care of Luna’s wardrobe, with the game’s ecosystem maintained through the buying and selling of limited edition clothing which will be rendered as “scarce, non-fungible token assets.”

However the type of clothes, as well as other aspects of the game, appear not to be going down well with NEO’s active reddit brigade.

One member, ZenoftheBaron, was traumatised enough to write “I saw the face of God and it was weeping” while Up-vote_cat_stuff responded with the less-poetic but perhaps more succinct “This is creepy AF.”