| My Friendly Neighborhood | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) |
|
| Publisher(s) | DreadXP |
| Engine | Unity [1] |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Survival horror |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
My Friendly Neighborhood is a 2023 survival horror video game published by DreadXP and developed by John and Evan Szymanski. Players control a repairman attacked by sentient puppets.
Years after a children's show has ended, the studio begins broadcasting again. Players control a repairman named Gordon O'Brian sent to investigate the signal. When now-sentient puppets from the show attempt to hunt down and kill Gordon, players must evade or defeat them while solving puzzles. Defeated puppets revive when players re-enter a room unless Gordon's limited supply of duct tape is used to permanently incapacitate puppets. [2] Gordon can find and use several improvised weapons, such as a shotgun-like weapon that shoots letters of the alphabet. [3] Limited amounts of other power-ups can also be found, including items that allow players to save their progress in the game. It is played from a first-person perspective. [2] The game features multiple endings based on the players' actions, such as choosing to help puppets with their problems rather than killing them. [4]
Set in 1993 in a world where sentient puppets are acknowledged, Gordon J. O'Brian is a cynical handyman who is on probation from his employer due to his "sullen and impolite" behavior towards clients. One day, the City Network Broadcasting Group's abandoned building on 123 Sunrise Street suddenly turns on and begins broadcasting signals for their long cancelled puppet show My Friendly Neighborhood. The last job of the day, Gordon is sent to the building to find things out of place. He meets Ricky the Sock who is surprised that he wants to shut down the antennae. After encountering malicious puppets, Ricky reluctantly allows Gordon to use a gatling gun as a way to protect himself against the felt beings.
Throughout the game, Gordon is helped out by Ricky and encounters other major puppets who are in disarray over their current state. Gordon can either kill or help the puppets. Doing the latter will result in Gordon opening up and becoming more cordial about his own living situation. Eventually, Gordon makes his way up to the broadcasting tower where Ricky appears, stating his belief that the reason why their show was cancelled was because people preferred to be dark and cynical rather than happy. Despite his attempts to convince him otherwise, Gordon shuts off the tower, only for a lightning bolt to hit, sending Gordon falling and landing in the basement of the building.
Through a phone, Ricky reveals why the puppets have turned malicious: when the show was on, the producers would not allow them to watch television. After they left, the puppets finally saw it for the first time, only to be horrified by the content that they saw, driving them mad. With the elevators locked, Ricky tells Gordon that he must venture through the abandoned set, now called "The Unfriendly Neighborhood" and turn on the emergency switch. Gordon faces off against the monstrous Almagamuppet and successfully defeats him.
Upon leaving the building, Ricky comes out and asks Gordon if he could help run the studio instead. If the player says yes, after having helped the puppets, Gordon explains that his bosses found out about what he has done and fired him. Nevertheless, Gordon is happy and feels at peace. Agreeing without having helped any of the puppets, has Gordon revealing that he stopped showing up at the studio after a while, but still thinks about what happened to the puppets. If Gordon says no, his bosses congratulate him and he gets a promotion, but begins to think about the Neighborhood and its inhabitants, only to forget about them. If Gordon leaves early without having done anything, it is similar to the no ending, except he gets fired.
DreadXP released My Friendly Neighborhood for Windows on July 18, 2023. [5]
My Friendly Neighborhood received positive reviews on Metacritic. [6] Although Slant Magazine said My Friendly Neighborhood "isn't all that scary or all that tense", they praised the game's setting as "truly exceptional" and said that it showed "a tangible love and care" in bringing it to life. [2] Polygon similarly called the worldbuilding "remarkable" and praised the strategic choices players have to make. They recommended My Friendly Neighborhood to people looking for survival horror games that are "light on gore and heavy on spine-tingling thrills". [3] Adventure Gamers described it as " Resident Evil with chattering Muppets" and recommended it as a "charming and genuinely fun" game made by people who are clearly fans of survival horror. [4] Hardcore Gamer recommended it as "a pleasant surprise and a genuine delight", praising the story, characters, visuals, and puzzles. [7]
James Maury Henson was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) and as the director of The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986).
Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created and originally performed by Jim Henson in 1955. Kermit is the pragmatic everyman protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably as the showrunner and host of the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show and a featured role on Sesame Street. He has appeared in other television series, feature films, specials, and public service announcements through the years. He also served as a mascot of The Jim Henson Company and appeared in various Henson projects until 2004.
The Muppets are an American ensemble cast of puppet characters known for an absurdist, burlesque, and self-referential style of variety-sketch comedy. Created by Jim Henson in 1955, they are the focus of a media franchise that encompasses television, film, music, and other media associated with the characters. Originally owned by the Jim Henson Company for nearly five decades, the franchise was purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2004.
Fozzie Bear is a Muppet character from the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show, best known as the insecure and comedically fruitless stand-up comic. Fozzie is an orange-brown bear who often wears a brown pork pie hat and a pink and white polka dot necktie. The character debuted on The Muppet Show, as the series' resident comedian, a role where he uses the catchphrase "Wocka wocka!" to indicate that he'd completed a joke. He was often the target of ridicule, particularly from balcony hecklers Statler and Waldorf. Fozzie was performed by Frank Oz until 2001, after which Eric Jacobson became the character's principal performer.
Big Bird is a Muppet character designed by Jim Henson and built by Kermit Love for the children's television show Sesame Street. An eight-foot-two-inch-tall (249 cm) bright yellow anthropomorphic bird, he can roller skate, ice skate, dance, swim, sing, write poetry, draw, and ride a unicycle. Despite this wide array of talents, he is prone to frequent misunderstandings, on one occasion even singing the alphabet as a single word. He would refer to grocer Mr. Hooper as "Mr. Looper", among other mispronunciations. He lives in a large nest behind the 123 Sesame Street brownstone and right next to Oscar the Grouch's trash can. In Season 46, the nest sits within a small, furnished maple tree, and is no longer hidden by used construction doors. He has a teddy bear named Radar.
Ernie is an orange Muppet character created and originally performed by Jim Henson for the children's television show Sesame Street. He and his roommate Bert form the comic duo Bert and Ernie, one of the program's centerpieces, with Ernie acting the role of the naïve troublemaker, and Bert the world-weary foil.
Survival horror is a subgenre of horror games. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical action games through limited ammunition or weapons, health, speed, and vision, or through various obstructions of the player's interaction with the game mechanics. The player is also challenged to find items that unlock the path to new areas and solve puzzles to proceed in the game. Games make use of strong horror themes, such as dark mazelike environments and unexpected attacks from enemies.
Mr. Dressup is a Canadian children's television series, starring Ernie Coombs, a former understudy of Fred Rogers, in the title role. It ran on CBC from 1967 to 1996, soon becoming an iconic presence in Canadian media.
Brian Henson is an American puppeteer, director, producer, voice actor and the chairman of The Jim Henson Company. He is the son of puppeteers Jim and Jane Henson.
Richard Hunt was an American puppeteer, best known as a Muppet performer on Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and other projects for The Jim Henson Company. His roles on The Muppet Show included Scooter, Statler, Janice, Beaker, and Sweetums and characters on Sesame Street included Gladys the Cow, Don Music, and Forgetful Jones.
Subspecies is an American direct-to-video horror film series produced by Full Moon Studios and Castel Film Studios. The series ran from 1991 to 2023, and followed the exploits of the undead Radu Vladislas, portrayed by Anders Hove, and his efforts to turn Michelle Morgan into his fledgling. A spin-off film, Vampire Journals, was released in 1997, which featured characters that would go on to appear in the fourth installment. Ted Nicolaou wrote and directed all six films, including the spin-off.
The Muppet CD-ROM: Muppets Inside is a PC computer game based on The Muppets franchise produced by Starwave in 1996. The title is a play on Intel's advertising slogan, "Intel Inside." The game's plot consists of several Muppets characters getting trapped inside a computer, and Bunsen sending Kermit and Fozzie Bear into the computer to rescue them.
A wide variety of characters have appeared on the American children's television series Sesame Street. Many of the characters are Muppets, which are puppets made in Jim Henson's distinctive puppet-creation style. Most of the non-Muppet characters are human characters, but there are many characters that are animated.
"The Fight Before Christmas" is the eighth episode of the twenty-second season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on December 5, 2010, and consists of four short dream segments that all take place during Christmas. In the first segment, Bart travels to the North Pole and sets out to get Santa into giving him the dirt bike he has wished for every year. In the second one, set during World War II, Lisa has to cope with the absence of her mother who has been deployed as a soldier overseas. Martha Stewart arrives at the Simpsons' home in the third dream segment, helping Marge save the family's Christmas. Finally, in the last segment the entire family has become puppet characters in a theater show that also stars Katy Perry.
Walter is a Muppet character that first appeared in the 2011 film The Muppets. Performed by Peter Linz, he is one of the film's main characters, along with Kermit the Frog and the rest of the Muppets. Walter also appears in the 2014 sequel film, Muppets Most Wanted; though still a major character, he plays a smaller role than he does in the previous film.
Allan Trautman is an American puppeteer, best known for his work with The Jim Henson Company.
Gonzo, also known as The Great Gonzo, is a Muppet character from the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show, known for his eccentric passion for stunt performance. Aside from his trademark enthusiasm for performance art, another defining trait of Gonzo is the ambiguity of his species, which has become a running gag in the franchise. He has been considered to be of various origins, including a Frackle, in his debut appearance in The Great Santa Claus Switch; extraterrestrial in Muppets from Space; or avian creature.
Muppet Babies is an American animated television series featuring toddler versions of the Muppets characters that began airing on Disney Junior and Disney Channel on March 23, 2018 and is aimed at a target audience of children from aged 4–7. It is a reboot of the original 1984 animated series of the same name. 71 episodes were produced.
Puppet Combo is an American independent video game development studio founded by Benedetto "Ben" Cocuzza in 2012 as Pig Farmer Games and based in Brooklyn. Puppet Combo's games, such as Nun Massacre (2018) and the critically acclaimed Murder House (2020), are mostly survival horror games developed solely by Cocuzza and modeled after early PlayStation games and VHS. They are also frequently inspired by 1980s horror films, specifically grindhouse and slasher films. Puppet Combo primarily releases their games through Patreon and Itch.io. Cocuzza launched Torture Star Video, a video game publisher for lo-fi horror games, in 2021.
Heartworm is an upcoming 2023 independent horror video game by Vincent Adinolfi developed for Windows and MacOS. Described by the developer as a "lo-fi retro horror" game, the game integrates elements of survival horror and psychological horror set in an abandoned house rumored to be able to revive the dead. A demo of the game was published on January 30, 2020, with a revised demo released on the 2020 horror game compilation Haunted PS1 Demo Disc by Irish developer Breogán Hackett.