It has been suggested that this article should be split into a new article titled Hello Neighbor (franchise) . (discuss) (May 2024) |
Hello Neighbor | |
---|---|
Developer(s) |
|
Publisher(s) | tinyBuild |
Engine | Unreal Engine 4 [1] |
Platform(s) | |
Release |
|
Genre(s) | Stealth, survival horror |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Hello Neighbor is a survival horror stealth game developed by Dynamic Pixels and published by tinyBuild. Initially released as public alphas from 2016 to 2017, it received a full release for Windows and Xbox One on December 8, 2017, and later for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android on July 26, 2018.
In the game, players play as a citizen, who just moved into the neighborhood, and try to break into their neighbor's house. Their goal is to successfully sneak into the basement of the neighbor's house to uncover a dark secret while avoiding being caught by him. [3] The game's artificial intelligence (AI) modifies the neighbor's behavior based on the player's past actions, such as setting traps along paths the player followed in a previous attempt. [4] [5] [6]
While the initial alpha versions of Hello Neighbor were received positively, the final product was met with largely negative reviews. The gameplay, control scheme and technical performance have been heavily criticized, though the story, the story elements and the art style were praised. The game spawned a franchise, beginning with a prequel, Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek, released in December 2018. Two multiplayer spin-offs, Secret Neighbor and Hello Engineer, were released in October 2019 and October 2021, respectively. A standalone sequel, Hello Neighbor 2, was released on December 6, 2022. [7]
In Hello Neighbor, the player finds themselves moving into a rickety old house across the street from a mysterious neighbor who is behaving abnormally and seems to be keeping a secret in his basement. The player's task is to find the details and brutal secrets of the neighbor's house and solve a series of puzzles to gather the items needed to unlock and access his basement. As the player explores the neighbor's house, they must not be spotted by the mysterious neighbor, or they will be chased down, and if the player is not quick enough to hide or escape, then they will be captured (Get sent back to the street). The player can stun the neighbor by throwing objects at him for an easier escape. If the player is caught (or suffers a serious injury on the main point), they will be sent back to their own house and will have to break in again. Upon starting again, the player must be more careful, as the neighbor will deduce movements from the last attempt and set up traps. [8] However, the player can use the game settings to turn on "friendly" neighbor mode, preventing the neighbor from setting these traps and causing him to be less aggressive in his pursuits. However, he is still to be avoided at all costs. [9]
The game is divided into four parts: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and Act Finale. The game is played in a first-person perspective, and the player must aim a reticle at certain objects to interact with them or to throw or use a currently held item (for example, throwing a ball at a window or aiming a crowbar at nails to remove them). Up to four items can be kept in an inventory space. Items of the same kind cannot be stacked together in one slot. [10]
A boy named Nicky Roth is chasing a beach ball down the street before stopping nearby his neighbor, Theodore Peterson's home. He hears what he presumes is a child screaming and approaches Theodore's window, witnessing Theodore locking a child inside his basement only to get caught and thrown back on his side of the street. From here, Nicky must access Theodore's basement using a red key. Upon doing so, Nicky enters Theodore's labyrinthine basement and realizes that no one is there before Theodore discovers Nicky's presence and locks him inside a desolate room with windows displaying fake outdoors, ending Act 1.
Nicky manages to escape his cell and reach the surface, only to find that Mr. Peterson has erected a massive fence around his property to prevent escape. Nicky is forced to solve several puzzles to find a way to escape Mr. Peterson's property. Once he crosses the fence, he flees back to his home, and Mr. Peterson does not give chase.
During Acts 1 and 2, if Nicky is caught by Mr. Peterson before he can finish his objectives, he will have vivid nightmares about Mr. Peterson's past. These nightmares gradually reveal Mr. Peterson's backstory, implying that he was once a happy family man. However, after his wife and daughter were killed in two separate accidents, he became a recluse and, in his grief, locked his son in the basement to prevent him from getting hurt. Mr. Peterson's backstory is further explained in the book Hello Neighbor: Missing Pieces and the prequel game Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek.
Years later, an adult Nicky is evicted from his apartment and decides to return to his old family home. His childhood town finally succumbed to its cruel fate. He finds the house in disrepair while Mr. Peterson's home is also nothing but a pile of ruins. While inspecting the ruins, Nicky is haunted by a dark shadow-like creature ("The Thing"), and he returns to his home where he finds an old picture of himself as a child. After answering the phone, Nicky sees the shadow monster again. Believing he's hallucinating, he falls asleep as an act of self-therapy. He is awoken by a child's scream and discovers Mr. Peterson's house is back, and more surreal than before, due to his trauma. Nicky navigates the house and has surreal experiences, such as learning to double jump by shrinking down and trying to turn on a light that is far out of reach. Eventually, he enters the basement, now older and more surreal, with exaggerated architecture, while being chased by The Thing.
When Nicky gets out of the basement, he soils himself trying to knock down a giant Mr. Peterson to get inside a house on his back. After doing so, he must protect a younger version of himself from The Thing. Each time The Thing attacks and Nicky protects his younger self, Nicky grows larger until he can fight The Thing. After The Thing is defeated, Nicky sees Mr. Peterson in a small two-room house. When he spots Nicky he runs in desperation towards the window as if to ask for help, but then shrugs his shoulders and turns away with sadness. In the other room is a much smaller Thing. Mr. Peterson has boarded the door up on his side and placed a chair against it, signifying that Mr. Peterson never overcame his fears. The Thing is seen standing right by the door on the other side. Behind him is another door with an exit sign above it.
It is implied throughout the events of the game that most of Act 3 and the Finale is a nightmare occurring in Nicky's head and that his escape from the house signifies him finally coming to terms with his kidnapping as a child at the hands of Mr. Peterson.
Russian studio Dynamic Pixels started development of Hello Neighbor in 2014. The game was released as an alpha build on Dynamic Pixels' website in 2015. It was later approved for sale as an early access game by the Steam Greenlight program and a Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund further development. The studio later signed a deal with tinyBuild to fund and publish the project. [11] The Pre-Alpha version of the game was released on September 29, 2016. [12] [13] [14] The Alpha 1 version of Hello Neighbor was released on October 26, 2016. [15] [16] [17] Alpha 2 was released on November 22, 2016. Alpha 3 was released on December 22, 2016. Alpha 4 was released on May 4, 2017.
The game went into the beta phase on July 25, 2017. [18] [19] For Halloween 2017, a promotional mod was released including multiple elements from the indie game Bendy and the Ink Machine . The mod includes a black and yellow tint, ink, music from the game and multiple appearances of Bendy. [20] The game was originally set for a full release on August 29, 2017, [21] but was delayed until December 8, 2017. [22] [23]
The game was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One on December 8, 2017. A timed Microsoft exclusive, Hello Neighbor was later ported to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and mobile devices. [24] The mobile versions of the game are only supported on a limited number of devices and come with a free trial that allows players to play through Act 1, with the option to unlock the remaining two Acts and the Finale with an in-game purchase. [25]
In 2019, development was started for a standalone sequel, Hello Neighbor 2, (previously called Hello Guest, codename Late Night Shift). Teasers in a sibling game, Secret Neighbor, had started the speculation about a new game.
In July 2020, tinyBuild acquired the development team from Dynamic Pixels to establish a new studio by the name of Eerie Guest Studios and invested US$15 million into the Hello Neighbor series. [26]
Hello Bendy was a Halloween mode released on 27 October 2017, with several elements of Bendy and the Ink Machine . This game mode includes a yellow-and-black background, music of the game and a multitude of Bendy appearances.
Hello Guest is a spin-off of Hello Neighbor made by tinyBuild. The game takes place in the mysterious Golden Apple Amusement Park, and the game revolves around playing both Quentin and Beatrix solving puzzles and outsmarting the guest, a learning AI similar to the neighbor from the first game, all while attempting to restart the roller coaster. This game was dropped onto mobile devices, swiftly deleted, and has not been acknowledged by tinyBuild as part of the franchise, despite their continued use of the Guest character introduced in this game.
A prequel to Hello Neighbor, titled Hello Neighbor: Hide & Seek, was announced during PAX West in August 2018, and released on December 7, 2018, on the same platforms as the original game, including non-Microsoft systems. [27] Set several years before the events of the original game, Hide & Seek deals with the events in Mr. Peterson's life that caused him to become a recluse. [28] The gameplay is similar to that of Hello Neighbor, but instead of Nicky, the player controls Mr. Peterson's daughter Mya as she plays hide-and-seek with her brother, Aaron (who takes the place of the neighbor), in various fictitious scenarios. The story is told through cutscenes in-between levels, which reveal that the children's mother dies in a car crash sometime during the events of the game. In his grief, Aaron later pushes Mya off the roof of the house, resulting in her accidental death.
Secret Neighbor, a multiplayer spin-off of Hello Neighbor, was announced on June 10, 2018, and released on October 24, 2019, for Xbox and PC. [29] Set between the first two acts of Hello Neighbor, it follows Nicky's friends (dubbed the "Rescue Squad") as they try to rescue him from Mr. Peterson's house. The children are represented by different classes, each with their unique skillsets and abilities, and must collect keys required to unlock the door to the house's basement. However, one of the children is Mr. Peterson in disguise, and also has various class-based abilities at his disposal that can be used to confuse, trick, capture, or otherwise prevent the children from achieving their goal.
Hello Engineer, a multiplayer machinery-building construction game set in the Hello Neighbor universe, was announced on October 20, 2020. A gameplay reveal trailer was released four days later. In Hello Engineer, the Rescue Squad explore an open world based on the abandoned Golden Apple Amusement Park and must collect scrap to build various machines while avoiding Mr. Peterson's attempts to catch them. The game was released for the cloud gaming service Google Stadia on October 26, 2021. [30]
Hello Neighbor Diaries, a mobile spin-off to the first Hello Neighbor, was released in 11 regions on June 22, 2022, as a test launch. The game was released globally on December 6, 2023. It was originally released as Nicky's Diaries on the mobile port of the first game. Set in the book franchise, young Nicky Roth must piece together the mysteries from his childhood.
A new Hello Neighbor game initially titled Hello Guest was later revealed to be the Pre-Alpha of Hello Neighbor 2 and on July 23, 2020, it was announced as the official sequel to the original game. On this same day, Alpha 1 was also released, with Alpha 1.5 releasing on October 26, 2020. [31] The sequel was announced to be available for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S. [32] On December 10, 2021, it was announced that a closed Beta would be released on April 7, 2022, which would only be available to those who pre-ordered the game. On February 10, 2022, it was announced that Hello Neighbor 2 would also release on PlayStation 4 and 5. tinyBuild announced that the full game was expected to release on December 6, 2022, which it did. [7]
The game follows Quentin, a reporter who had arrived to Raven Brooks to write about the story of the disappearance of Aaron and Mya, however he would soon learn that Mr. Peterson has taken refuge in the closed museum, to which he must sneak inside the homes of the other residences of Raven Brooks in search for keys in order to enter it. As Quentin progresses, he would eventually learn about the deep secrets about the town and avoid a strange figure known as "The Guest".
A VR title in the Hello Neighbor franchise titled Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue was announced on November 3, 2022. The game is made by Steel Wool Studios in collaboration with tinyBuild. The game was released on the PlayStation VR and PlayStation VR2, Meta Quest 2, and PCVR Headsets via the Steam Storefront on May 25, 2023. The player once again plays as the Rescue Squad, who had dug a tunnel to sneak inside Mr. Peterson's house, switching between each of the children to solve puzzles and rescue Nicky inside the basement.
Upcoming game for the Hello Neighbor universe. The main plot revolves around a multiplayer experience where you play as an intruder attempting to steal loot from the protectors of the house. Playtesting for the game was initially open to the public on February 16, 2024 at Steam, but concluded on February 19, 2024.
An animated series based on Hello Neighbor titled was announced on 17 April 2020, with a pilot episode releasing on YouTube the same day. [33] [34] The pilot was watched by more than 11 million viewers within the first week, which to tinyBuild's CEO Alex Nichiporchik, "demonstrated the strength of Hello Neighbor as a franchise". [35] A teaser was released on tinyBuild's Youtube channel on 1 December 2022, as well as the title for the show, Hello Neighbor: Welcome to Raven Brooks. The first episode of the series was released on 11 December 2022, produced by Man of Action, with the rest of the show's episodes being released before the end of 2023.
The series follows Trinity Bales, a new kid who just moved to Raven Brooks near Mr. Peterson's house across the street. She then meets with Nicky Roth and his team the Inventors Club (Maritza, Enzo and Ivan) as they plan to sneak inside his property to figure out what he is hiding. Along the way the kids soon discover a major conspiracy within the town relating to fatal incidents, gold coins and the presence of ravens.
Aggregator | Score |
---|---|
Metacritic | PC: 38/100 [36] XONE: 42/100 [37] NS: 39/100 [38] |
Publication | Score |
---|---|
Game Informer | 3.75/10 [39] |
GameSpot | 3/10 [40] |
IGN | 4.1/10 [41] |
Nintendo Life | [42] |
Official Xbox Magazine (UK) | 3/10 |
PC Gamer (US) | 38/100 [43] |
Push Square | [44] |
Review aggregator website Metacritic reports "generally unfavorable reviews" for Hello Neighbor on all platforms. [36] [37] [38] Criticism was directed towards the gameplay, control scheme and technical performance, though it was praised for its story aspects and art style.
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited. In 1999, it became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first 15 years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, leaving Bethesda Softworks to focus on publishing operations.
Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Irvine, California. It was founded in June 2003, shortly before the closure of Black Isle Studios, by ex-Black Isle employees Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, and Chris Jones.
Neighbours from Hell, known in the United States as Neighbors from Hell, is a puzzle strategy game developed and published by JoWood Productions. It was originally released for Windows in 2003, with later releases for GameCube, Xbox, Nintendo DS, Android and iOS.
The Sims is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and is one of the best-selling video game series of all time. It is also part of the larger Sim series, started by SimCity in 1989.
Minecraft is a 2011 sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios and originally released in 2009. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being fully released on November 18, 2011, with Notch stepping down and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten taking over development. Minecraft has become the best-selling video game in history, with over 300 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active players as of 2023. Over the years following its release, it has been ported to several platforms, including PC, mobile and various consoles.
Prison Architect is a private prison construction and management simulation video game developed and published by Introversion Software. It was made available as a crowdfunded paid alpha pre-order on September 25, 2012 with updates that were scheduled every three to four weeks until 2023. With over 2,000,000 copies sold, Prison Architect made over US$10.7 million in pre-order sales for the alpha version. Prison Architect was an entrant in the 2012 Independent Games Festival. The game was available on Steam's Early Access program, and was officially released on October 6, 2015.
Majesco Entertainment Company is an American video game publisher and distributor based in Hazlet, New Jersey. The company was founded as Majesco Sales in Edison, New Jersey in 1986, and was a privately held company until acquiring operation-less company ConnectivCorp in a reverse merger takeover, becoming its subsidiary and thus a public company on December 5, 2003. ConnectivCorp later changed its name to Majesco Holdings Inc. on April 13, 2004.
DayZ is a multiplayer only survival video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive. It is the standalone game based on the mod of the same name for Arma 2. Following a five-year-long early access period for Windows, the game was officially released in December 2018, and was released for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2019.
7 Days to Die is a survival horror video game set in an open world developed by The Fun Pimps. It was released through Early Access on Steam for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X on December 13, 2013, and for Linux on November 22, 2014. Versions for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were released in 2016 through Telltale Publishing, but are no longer being developed. In late 2022, The Fun Pimps announced that the game will be re-released on consoles targeting Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.
No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival game developed and published by Hello Games. It was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in August 2016, for Xbox One in July 2018, for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S consoles in November 2020, for Nintendo Switch in October 2022, and for macOS in June 2023. The game is built around five pillars: exploration, survival, combat, trading, and base building. Players can engage with the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open world universe, which includes over 18 quintillion planets. Through the game's procedural generation system, planets have their own ecosystems with unique forms of flora and fauna, and various alien species may engage the player in combat or trade within planetary systems. Players advance in the game by mining for resources to power and improve their equipment, buying and selling resources using credits earned by documenting flora and fauna or trading with the aforementioned lifeforms, building planetary bases and expanding space fleets, or otherwise following the game's overarching plot by seeking out the mystery around the entity known as The Atlas.
Gamer Network Limited is a British digital media company based in Brighton. Founded in 1999 by Rupert and Nick Loman, it owns brands—primarily editorial websites—relating to video game journalism and other video game businesses. Its flagship website, Eurogamer, was launched alongside the company. It began hosting the video game trade show EGX in 2008. ReedPop acquired Gamer Network in 2018 and sold it to IGN Entertainment in 2024.
Planet Coaster is a construction and management simulation video game developed and published by Frontier Developments for Windows. It was released worldwide on 17 November 2016. Frontier had previously worked in the amusement park construction and management genre with RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Thrillville, Thrillville: Off the Rails, and Zoo Tycoon. A version for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, known as Planet Coaster: Console Edition, was released worldwide on 10 November 2020. The PlayStation 5 version was released in North America and Australia on 12 November 2020 and in Europe on 19 November 2020. A macOS version, developed by Aspyr, was later released on 17 November 2020 on both Steam and Mac App Store.
Ark: Survival Evolved is a 2015 action-adventure survival video game developed by Studio Wildcard. In the game, players must survive being stranded on one of several maps filled with roaming dinosaurs, fictional fantasy monsters, and other prehistoric animals, natural hazards, and potentially hostile human players.
tinyBuild Inc. is an American publisher of indie games based in Bellevue, Washington. The company was established by Alex Nichiporchik and Tom Brien in 2011 to expand Brien's game No Time to Explain into a commercial release. Building from the success of the game's Steam release in 2013, tinyBuild partnered with DoubleDutch Games for the development and release of SpeedRunners, which landed tinyBuild further publishing deals. Since March 2020, the company has been founding or acquiring new studios to expand. It became a public company on the Alternative Investment Market in March 2021.
Clustertruck is a 2016 platformer game developed by independent Swedish studio Landfall Games and published by tinyBuild. In the game, the player jumps on trucks to avoid the ground and other obstacles. The concept for Clustertruck was formulated when Wilhelm Nylund was stuck in traffic; on his way home from Gamescom, Nylund pictured himself jumping on trucks to escape it. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in September 2016 and for the Nintendo Switch in March 2018. Clustertruck has been met with a mixed reception.
Dauntless is a free-to-play action role-playing game developed by Phoenix Labs and published and distributed by Epic Games. The game initially launched in beta in May 2018 for Microsoft Windows. An early access version launched on May 21, 2019 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, including full support for cross-platform play, and was fully released for those platforms on September 26, 2019. A Nintendo Switch version was released on December 10, 2019. Versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S were released on December 2, 2021.
Bendy and the Ink Machine is an episodic survival horror game developed and published by Joey Drew Studios. It was initially released to Game Jolt on February 10, 2017, as the first of five chapters, with a full worldwide release on October 27, 2018. The game was also released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on November 20, 2018, being published by Rooster Teeth Games, and for iOS and Android on December 21, 2018.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS) is a physics-based strategy video game developed and published by Landfall Games. An alpha version of the game was initially released in 2016 to a small audience. The game was released for macOS and Windows in April 2021, for Xbox One in October 2021, for Nintendo Switch in November 2022, and for PlayStation 4 in September 2023. It has since received numerous free title updates that have added new content, such as maps and units, in addition to fixing bugs and improving the performance. Versions for Android and iOS are currently in development.
Gigantosaurus is a CGI-animated preschool series created by Franck Salomé, Nicolas Sedel, Fernando Worcel and directed by Olivier Lelardoux based on the book by Jonny Duddle. The series is a co-production between the French animation studio Cyber Group Studios and Kaibou, with animation done by Canadian studio Blue Spirit Studio, with participation from Disney Channel and France Télévisions, and support from other Canadian companies.
Bendy is a horror game series and media franchise created by TheMeatly and Mike Desjardins.