Game Review: Hello Neighbor (Xbox One X)

Hello Neighbor is a survival stealth game that was developed by Dynamic Pixels. The game was released as an alpha build way back in 2015. A rocky development meant that it required the help of a Kickstarter campaign before eventually being published by tinyBuild. In Hello Neighbor, you take control of a boy who has just moved into a new home across from a mysterious stranger. One day, he hears a scream coming from the neighbor’s house and decides to break-in and investigate.

Hello Neighbor is split into 3 acts. In the first, the player’s task is to break into the neighbor’s home. From there, you must solve a series of puzzles in order to gather the items needed to unlock and access his basement. As the player explores the house, they must not be spotted. You will be chased down and must quickly hide or escape. If you’re caught, you will be sent back to your house and will have to break in again.

When you make it to the basement, you find it has been made into a makeshift underground dungeon. However, there are no signs of any prisoner. The boy then runs into the neighbor and is captured. In the second act, you’re now tasked with escaping the property by completing more puzzles and tasks.

In the final act, you’re still the boy but now a grown adult. His life hasn’t turned out very well. He decides to return to the scene of the crime and face his inner demons once and for all.

Hello Neighbor is a frustrating experience. Its controls are some of the most cumbersome I have experienced in quite some time. It take a lot of time and patience to get used to. However, it will be too much for many people. Doing anything in this game accurately is hard work. Moving around has a constant floaty feeling. Simply picking up an object can require multiple attempts. Getting caught is often a result of the lacklustre mechanics rather than any fault of the player. A game that controls like this one should never have platforming as one of its primary gameplay mechanics.

If you enjoy being dropped into a game world with no instructions or guidance, Hello Neighbor is the game for you. Figuring out most puzzles or knowing what to do at all is very confusing at first. Each feels more convoluted than the last. Still, I get that this is a game that wants you to experiment and explore. However, how anyone could figure out most of these puzzles without a guide is beyond me. There is a complexity to it all that is admirable but it’s far too difficult. You’ll need the most random items and manoeuvres to progress. Even when you get the things you need, you still won’t know what to do with them. It’s impossible to know which items are important and which are not, it gives you no indication.

Hello Neighbor is all about trial and error. The neighbor himself is more an annoyance than anything. Strangely, the game doesn’t really penalize you at all for getting caught. You get sent back to your house but everything else stays the same. I was happy with the generosity of the save system but it damages any suspense in the game.

While there are many visual and technical bugs in the game, visuals are one of Hello Neighbor’s biggest strengths. The game is bright, colourful and has almost cartoonish style that mostly looks great. While I’m on the subject of positives, let’s talk about the story. Buried somewhere beneath the madness is a fascinatingly dark story. It’s highly imaginative and extremely metaphorical. There are clues littered throughout but it still struggles to be very clear. I have my theory and I’m genuinely satisfied with the narrative. I’ve seen many complaints but I liked the conclusion.

Overall, Hello Neighbor has a fantastic concept that is full of creative ideas. Unfortunately, it loses steam quickly due to many infuriating gameplay issues.