Hello Neighbor

Its sense of tension is there from the beginning, though, so there’s no doubting just how evocative this game is. Once you’re into, it’s easy to lose a lot of time, rummaging through drawers and sneaking through rooms and revealing clue after clue to what your neighbor has really been up to. The house is truly enormous, so while it isn’t the cheapest game going, you do get a lot of play hours for your money.

Hello Neighbor could be fun, within the right parameters. The neighbour would hold a lot more terror if his actions carried any weight. The puzzling aspect of switches, hidden doors and traps would be more enjoyable were they staged within an inspiring world or using interesting concepts. But the game fails on all of these points, not holding attention, not really projecting any fear beyond the first few encounters, and the world feels as flat as the polygons used to build it.

All in all, Hello Neighbor is a massive disappointment and not a very good game in the slightest. While the game’s nail-biting AI can make for some interesting moments every now and then, it doesn’t make up for how hard the game is, how buggy it can be, and how bad the art style looks. At $29.99, there’s absolutely no chance I can recommend it to anyone, unless of course, you like games that tell you nothing about what to do.

If you don’t mind solving abstract puzzles and throwing everything (including the kitchen sink) at your objectives all while constantly avoiding a particularly annoying antagonist, then you might give this game a try. Please won’t you be my neighbor? I’ll pass.se won’t you be my neighbor? I’ll pass.

Other than the portability – which, without tilt aiming, feels like an opportunity wasted – there's no compelling reason to pick the Switch port of Hello Neighbor over any others. Worse still is the feeling you've already seen all the best bits, just like an all-too-revealing movie trailer, but that's an issue with Hello Neighbor on all platforms.

Sticking with Hello Neighbor takes a lot of patience and forgiveness. While the lure of the secret in the basement is a strong one, the glitches, complicated puzzles, and problematic AI all make for a giant slog. With improvements this indie could be a spine-tingling horror game, one which plays on deep childhood fears and leaves a lasting impression, but in its current state, we wish that we'd just stayed at home.