The same goes for accessing areas of the house you didn't know existed, and all right under your neighbour's nose while he patrols the lower floors, grunting. The first time you actually cross the threshold into his house - and what a piece of architecture it is, shifting and expanding in nonsensical directions act by act - there's a real buzz. A man with a Rube Goldberg approach to keeping those secrets. As a curious child peeking in at his windows, you can see that this is a troubled man. Seeing these measures put in place isn't inherently scary, but having a predetermined plan sprung by his extra provisions and hearing that ominous walking double bass line audio cue that lets you know he's in pursuit of you - that is.Įarly on in act one, this combative interaction between you and he forms the basis of Hello Neighbor's narrative, and propels the whole endeavour forwards. He might - and this is getting well beyond rational home security measures - place a bear trap on the floor below it. He might install a security camera pointed towards it. He's designed to learn from your behaviour and fortify his house accordingly, so if you make a habit of trying to break in via a certain window in his back garden, he might board up that window. It's enough to make you wonder whether you didn't, in fact, succumb to your diet of strong cheese and hallucinogens at the loading screen, and are now simply sitting slumped and open-mouthed, dreaming of a nonsensical home invasion game while in reality another gritty survival sim awaits your input.Ī more traditional vein of horror comes from your interactions with the neighbour himself. It's a nightmarish, irrational kind of horror borne of breaking into someone's house without knowing why, and of trying to solve a world of opaque puzzles without a word of instruction from the game. There is a prevailing sense of unease, but it's the kind of unease you get from inhabiting a world that flatly refuses to harbour anything made of straight lines and right angles in which there are doors on the floor that lead to nowhere, and the same thirty seconds of an old noir movie playing on loop in your neighbour's front room.

I've seen it pitched as a horror game, but Hello Neighbor isn't about jump-scares. It's stitched together from the component parts of those prior builds, but in a very real way, it's a completely new experience.

For the faithful who've braved its bugs and sifted through its detritus for clues all this time, this final release is a fitting reward. Hello Neighbor's numerous alpha and beta releases over the last year have taken on an almost episodic adventure-like quality, each new build deepening the mystery of the eponymous neighbour and a couple going so far as to completely redesign his abode. More surprisingly, the journey through Early Access and into this final release reflects the same platitude.

Hello neighbor real ending