Hello Neighbor is a new stealth horror game from tinyBuild Games, the minds behind Punch Club, No Time to Explain and SpeedRunners. In Hello Neighbor, you take the role of a curious homeowner, suspicious of your creepy neighbor's house. The game has this peaceful, almost Pixar look to it with accompanying chipper music. Your goal is to sneak into the neighbor's house and try to get into his basement to uncover his secrets. Easy, right? Turns out, your neighbor is an evil mastermind.
Your neighbor comes equipped with some pretty elaborate AI, able to adapt to anything you throw at him. Sneaking into his house will not be easy, and will actually get harder as the game progresses. For example, in the trailer, the player distracts the neighbor by throwing a tomato at his window. The neighbor comes out the front door to investigate and the player slips in after he exits. If the player fails to reach the basement and the neighbor catches them, then next time that trick may not work. He may barricade the front door and walk out of another door. He'll even learn what routes you take in the house, blocking off hallways that you frequented in a previous run, making it even more difficult.
In the developer's words:
"The Neighbor gathers all the information about the player's actions, decisions, movements etc. Having analyzed it, he comes up with counter-actions, traps and a unique tactics against the player. The more one plays, the more experienced the Neighbor becomes."
Many stealth games have players meta-gaming and memorizing enemy movement and animations and sneaking past hundreds of goons. Hello Neighbor seems to beef up the AI to make one simple character intelligent enough to thwart a player repeatedly. It will be interesting to see how smart this creepy neighbor is in summer 2017 when Hello Neighbor releases. The alpha, however, is available now!
