Hello Neighbor Guide
Hello Neighbor doesn't clearly communicate what he can see, what he will be disturbed by, or what will trigger a search. I've had him run past me unfazed because I've got one ankle concealed in an inch of shadow and I've had him launch at me like a heat-seeking missile from 20 yards away when I was sure he was looking in the other direction. Only one section of Hello Neighbor really forces you to deal with the game’s supposedly-brilliant AI, and it’s a complete ordeal. The end of Act 1 plunges you into a series of narrow, mostly-linear underground corridors that the neighbor AI clearly wasn’t designed for. If he decides to stake out a choke point you need to get through, you’re pretty much screwed. You just have to hope he has a brain fart and decides to stare at a wall while you stroll right past him, which is how I finally got to Act 2. Your neighbor is either a sucker or, in this one case, an omnipresent pain in the ass – there’s no middle ground.
Each level has a fixed solution, with limited room for meaningful decision making. Once you've figured out the correct sequence of blocks to stack, doors to unblock, tools to find, power switches to flip and pipes to tinker with, Hello Neighbor devolves into a series of trial-and-error solution attempts. The neighbor exists to frustrate those attempts, but getting caught isn't a big deal: you keep any pickups that you've found and the level state remains much as you left it. In fact, it's often better to get caught rather than get drawn into an escape attempt.
Getting reset back to the start of the level is a more effective way of shedding the neighbor's attention than trying to engage with Hello Neighbor as a stealth game which is a clear sign that this isn't really a stealth game at all. As Hello Neighbor progresses it becomes distinctly stranger, and the solutions to its puzzles move further and further away from the core premise. The house grows into a teetering, unlikely labyrinth full of egregious leaps of logic think full-on Gabriel Knight 3 cat moustache territory. Aside from hanging around the general area where he last nabbed you, your neighbor doesn’t adapt in any meaningful way and is easy to game. Want him to stay away from a certain room? Just let him catch you a time or two in, say, the kitchen, and he’ll blindly focus on that spot as you loudly trash the rest of his house. In most cases, he doesn’t even fix the damage you’ve done. If you moved a chair that was barring a door, it won’t be replaced after you’re caught. This gives game a bit of a Dark Souls vibe, as you gradually open up the house even as you fail repeatedly, but it doesn’t speak well for your neighbor’s intelligence. You’re not going to see this guy on Jeopardy any time soon.
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. 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. Without a word of anything from anyone. 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.
A more traditional vein of horror comes from your interactions with the neighbour himself. 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. He might install a security camera pointed towards it. He might - and this is getting well beyond rational home security measures - place a bear trap on the floor below it. 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. Early 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. As a curious child peeking in at his windows, you can see that this is a troubled man. A man with secrets. A man with a Rube Goldberg approach to keeping those secrets. 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. 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.
