Hello Neighbor Preview

In the last few days we have had the opportunity to try one of the most talked about PC titles of the moment, and which will arrive in its final form during 2017. It is about Hello Neighbor, peculiar and decidedly unusual title developed by the independent team of Dynamic Pixels. The idea comes from one of the most common situations that can arise in any American citizen: you will drive a person who has just moved to a quiet neighborhood, who will slowly bring his things to his new home. But soon you will find that something strange is happening in the house in front of you, and that your neighbor is definitely hiding ...

You will quickly realize that your suspicions were well founded. Entering the house of your "neighbor" and wandering among the rooms, you will find the most bizarre and disparate things, and which will seem above all out of place. What is he doing? Why is there a shark upstairs? Why is there a grave in the house? Better start worrying. Hello Neighbor is a first person stealth horror game, in which we will have to measure ourselves against a very grim AI, which will adapt and anticipate our every move as we go. Horror? You will ask, given that the setting and the coloring of the title are not at first glance attributable to this genre ... yet and so! This game does not need terrible locations, monsters at every corner, and darkness everywhere, but it is all about anxiety, haste, and a lot of tension.. The movement controls are more or less the standard ones of every first person game and therefore you will not be long in mastering them, but we cannot say the same thing for the various action keys, which will require a little more patience. We will be able to interact with practically everything that happens to us, from the flashlight, to binoculars, to keys, to chairs, to boxes and garbage cans. All we have to do is manage to hide and not get caught. In the first part of the game, we will have to reach and open the door that will be shown to us in a cutscene. Will it be that easy? Absolutely not.

As I have already told you, artificial intelligence is really difficult, so much so that it will be almost impossible to get around it without being discovered! Getting "alone" to the door could be easy, but this is bolted, complete with boards, padlock, and numeric code to keep it closed. Know this, running will not be enough: you will have to use any possible hiding place to be able to escape, and the most varied tricks to distract him. The challenge is really of the highest level, because as we said our neighbor will always be able to guess where we will pass, and will play in advance. That's all? Not at all. Whenever we are caught by the mustachioed little man, in the place where we were captured he will set traps (the classic bear traps) that will block us in place, cameras, and so on. In short, the more game over we do, the more difficult it will be to reach the goal on our new attempt.

From a technical point of view, being the one we tried still a rough version of the title, it is normal to have encountered some bugs, such as door keys that once on the ground will act as a wall as if they were boulders, or some small interpenetration of objects with the walls, and other minor annoyances. Obviously we expect great progress from the team in this respect. The graphic style used by the team for Hello Neighbor could easily be defined as “Pixar-like”, with colors and models that very much recall the works of the famous company. We just have to wait impatiently for a beta of the title, or of course the final title, to see how far the guys from Dynamic Pixels will go. Will we be able to find out what Mr. Mustache is hiding in his basement? We can not wait!