Why “Hello, Neighbor” Isn’t Working
Inspired by this smol bean ^
“Hello, Neighbor” was a heavily anticipated game by the gamer community. The concept? Try to break into your neighbor’s house to find out what’s in a secret room. The catch? He learns how you choose to break in, so that each time, you HAVE to figure out a different way to enter the house without being caught.
Now that three Alphas have come out, it seems like the game was a big letdown for the same gamer community that anticipated it. JackSepticEye cites some of the reasons the 2nd Alpha was so good, and why the 3rd Alpha may have been a big step down.
Personally, on most of his points, I agree. But this is in no way a stab at the developers or the end all be all opinion of this game. I understand that it’s in Alpha mode, and I am not a game developer so I cannot look at the game as such.
That being said, the 3rd Alpha seems a bit clunky in the following ways:
- The AI is a bit too aggressive, and there’s not any kind of warning system in place (although, that may be an issue that’s resolved once they’ve moved past Alpha). The only real sign you get that the neighbor is chasing you is a sort of “blurring” of your vision, but by then, it’s too late.
Auditory clues (footsteps, the neighbor whispers, etc) in stereo/fade as you/he move are usually used in horror games and in real life visceral reactions as a way to put one’s self into fight or flight mode, and it could help here.
- There needs to be a consequence to being caught, or it defeats the point of the AI. The second Alpha did this in a brilliantly simple way - He catches you: You are returned to your home without any of the objects you acquired in the house (unless you made it out of his house and put them inside of yours), and he places traps and cameras in the areas where you broke in.
The 3rd Alpha throws out the consequences like the first Alpha did, which makes the game more of a scavenger hunt than anything else.
- The story. I'm a big stickler for storytelling in everything. Everything has to have a story that at least the developer knows, and Hello, Neighbor doesn't seem to have a consistent story.
Why are we breaking into this person’s house? Why do we need to see what’s in the room? Did we see something that would make us want to investigate his house? Was there a murder? Did he steal something of ours? Did he kidnap our dog? Is he the one stealing all of the left socks from the dryer?
Are we the bad guy? Are we robbing houses in the area? Are we trying to kidnap his dog? Are we trying to give him a papercut? There needs to be something there, and it seems that the only reason we’re trying to break into the house right now is because the game says so.
Again, the 2nd Alpha(s?) gives a bit more reasoning as to the why of the story. In one version, the guy broke into your house and just started living there (weird, but it’s a motive nonetheless). In another version, the “final” door leads to a basement where he looks to be summoning Satan or Cthulhu or something. Either way, there’s a motive.
The story aspect could be because they're trying out brand new things with each alpha, but it's hard to understand why they'd try new things instead of building on the world they already have.
The developer of FNAF (Scott?) knows every bit of the FNAF story inside and out (or at least the basis/foundation), which is why he can keep making good games based around that. He'll leave it up to interpretation until the end of time for the rest of us, but the important part is that HE knows the story without making it obvious to everyone else for the sake of horror/mystery.
- At this point, it just may not be a horror game. It was advertised as such, but a lot of things don’t go to plan and are sometimes even better when it surrenders itself to that.
As far as the gameplay, everyone is a bit over jumpscares. They’re the equivalent of writing cliches - you only use them if you can do it EXTREMELY well - and I don’t think the neighbor’s jumpscares are doing it well.
The game is using some horror game tropes for sure, but that doesn’t make it scary.
- Horror “like” elements. The two things that irked me on this point is the fact that the 3rd Alpha takes place completely in the dark and the neighbor seemingly teleports at some points once the player is seen.
The 1st Alpha 1) ventured into a pretty cool concept - the transition between day and night. 2) It also kept the neighbor at a slower pace than the player could run, making it possible for the neighbor to catch them in the house labyrinth, but not eminent. There are a few examples in Jack/Sean’s playthrough above where his capture is immediate once he’s seen.
Mostly, making a setting constantly dark doesn’t make it scary; it makes your task difficult. That's why it's used as a device in horror games that are already scary by themselves. If you set Slenderman, Outlast, FNAF, etc. in broad daylight, they’d still be pretty terrifying.
But the fact that the neighbor’s house is already a labryinth already adds the difficulty factor (not to mention all of the random crap around his house), so I don’t see why it’s necessary to have the player stumble around the environment in the dark as well.
Even if the developers still wanted to make Hello, Neighbor a horror game, they may just have to retool the type of horror portrayed. There can be dark humor or a dark, creepy element to the neighbor, but the art style is a little kooky fun for a horror aspect (that’s just my opinion, though. It may work for some people), and his house doesn’t particularly look creepy - it looks comically weird.
Overall, it’s a cool concept, but I think that it can still improve a fair amount. Like I said, these are Alpha builds, so nothing is perfect yet, but there are parts that the gaming community and I are a little troubled by.
