How Dare You Stop Me From Breaking Into Your House?! Indy Reviews Hello Neighbor
Full disclosure – this game is broken.  So very, very broken.  I played this through several times to get achievements and there are sections that are borderline unplayable because of glitches hiding key objects or because of an invisible wall stopping me from reaching key locations.  It took willpower to get to the end, and even more to grind for the achievements.
Ah Mr Neighbor.  What secrets you hide.  A tragic backstory with his children being kidnapped and his wife dead in a car accident.  Still doesn’t give you the right to kidnap children however.  This is another Very Odd Game. You play as a male human throughout different stages in his life, navigating traps and improbably built houses to escape the Neighbor’s clutches and find out his secrets.
Well. Â I say find out his secrets. Â This is a little more open to interpretation than I would have liked. Hello Neighbor lacks a defined storyline. Â A lot is inferred but never clarified, which is a little frustrating. Â The only reason I know that he had a family was by finding a photograph in a room I had no reason to be in other than pure exploration.
Going by the silhouettes on the missing posters around the neighbourhood and the cut scene of the Neighbor sobbing while putting the posters up we can infer that these are his children that are missing.  Both of these things are missable however if you just burn through the levels as quickly as possible. Â
In fact, there’s rather a lot about this game that is unsatisfyingly vague.  The control system is anything but intuitive, with different buttons to throw or put down or pick up.  It takes a while to get used to and even hours in I was losing key items by throwing them out of reach accidentally.  They don’t respawn so I had to start the chapter again. Â
Then there’s the puzzles themselves.  I had to use a walkthrough to get anywhere in this game.  I don’t know if that’s just me being thick or if it is bad design, but either way I was a slave to a guide I found online.  You can find the keys to access the basement in act three but if you miss three other puzzles before going down there you will be trapped with no hope of escape (or finishing the game). Â
The puzzle clues are a bit hard to decipher as well, and usually involve you picking up every object you see and putting it safely in your house for future use.  For example, one puzzle requires you to freeze a model of a globe and put it in an unmarked holder.  How are you told to do this?  With a map of the world that looks like it’s frozen over in one of the rooms. No further explanation. Â
Maybe this just isn’t my kind of game.  I found it incredibly frustrating and disliked having to use a guide to know where to go next.  I really disliked the vague story.  The whole game felt like a bit of a waste of time.  And I wasted so much time playing it.  Not to mention the three hours required to attempt the Snow White achievement.
If you’re looking for a puzzle game I’d recommend the Monkey Island series instead.  Difficult puzzles but not insurmountable and a tangible storyline that feels like it’s going somewhere.  I feel like there was a lot of missed potential with Hello Neighbor and there’s nothing sadder than that.  I guess that’s life for you though.








