What Went Wrong? - Hello Neighbor

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This is what went wrong with Hello Neighbor, a game that had a lot of promise at the start and hype between mid 2016 - 2017. However Hello Neighbor was not perfect. With many bugs, overly complicated puzzles and a story that's too deep for it's own good and an ending that left more people feeling confused than anything else, Hello Neighbor was doomed to be overshadowed by something else.

[@IDONTGETTHEPOINT]

The developers of Hello Neighbor really focused too much into making it into a 'KZbin playthrough' game. You can have fun watching someone else struggle through the puzzles, but to try and play it yourself feels like a chore.

[@Ice67333]

the fact that i finish the game in 11 minutes on mobile it's wierd

[@spiired6469]

This comment sums it up .

[@bloodyhell8201]

@@spiired6469 no, it divides it up.

[@snappieboi5026]

@@bloodyhell8201 no , it subtracts it up.

[@Cheese-0001]

@@snappieboi5026 no, it squares it.

[@mtallmen184]

The publisher desperately tweeting at MatPat to care about their game again is one of the saddest things I've ever seen

[@ayrtonjoga]

​@Levi Chicwown Did Scott Cawthon kept begging for marketing of bigger channels to make the FNAF series popular? No, because he just wanted to create a good game with detailed lore and was confident enough to just let the games grow naturally without looking desperate for attention And he didn't had a great record of creating games either

[@maybeoptify]

I feel an uncanny amount of second hand embarrassment from this

[@amsyarzero]

@@SanicConnoisseur_91 Ayrton Joga is agreeing with you. The reason they mentioned FNAF is because both FNAF and Hello Neighbor are well-known in MatPat's community

[@ayrtonjoga]

@@amsyarzero Exactly! Thanks for clarifying them

[@scarlett8782]

meanwhile MatPat is just chillin, sipping a Diet Coke not giving a f* about their games anymore

[@16Nire61]

Kinda feels like the devs saw everyone doing weird parkour in the early alpha builds and thought, “Oh, this must be how people want to play!” instead of realizing it was just folks poking around and exploring however they could in an incomplete game.

[@greened9406]

Holy shit you solved why hello neighbors full game is just parjour

[@Pairofscissorspng]

I think the best idea was to just add a parkour mode

[@gabrielguedes6166]

I simply despise games that force parkour into such a crude and bad engine. The physics in this game screams "Indie" and has the same jankiness as old Fallout games. It's just bad

[@unclebaba3463]

​@Gabriel Guedes hey, old fallouts physics engine is at least fun, I love seeing boxes flying across the Mohave like tumble weeds

[@Headspr0uter]

Probably 5% that and 95% the fact that creating and testing a parkour course requires a lot less time and talent than an AI that learns from your mistakes.

[@nickname_on8725]

I like how the neighbors AI seems to get worse at every single alpha release. It is literally evolving backwards.

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

I think that's why they added "CHAPTERS." They realized they couldn't pull off a good AI without screwing it up so they needed to start from a clean slate for each chapter in Unity. As long as they have a nice level plane for a starting area the neighbor AI can at least chase you around for a part of the level but as you progress it will probably just bug out after a while and they didn't want to deal with it, so time to click "New Scene."

[@user-wp7pt2kr3n]

Probably because they were too lazy to update the ai

[@Where_da_cheese_at]

@@user-wp7pt2kr3n why you cry

[@raisinwaisin]

“evolving backwards” you mean “devolving”? 😂

[@okimightcomeback]

​@@raisinwaisinno, *evolving backwards*

[@GreenHatter]

The fact Alpha 1 has the best shading sums up the whole game

[@zero.Identity]

had the alpha back then. liked it, hoped for the best. then alpha 2 came out. fonfused me a bit, was ok. then, i jus saw the update to alpha three, not even trying it, and never reading about it again. never playing it again or just having it on my pc

[@planescaped]

@@zero.Identity Sounds like a perfect game for the hidden folder.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

It really says something when both the announcement trailer and the very first alpha build are way scarier than everything that comes afterward.

[@HenryJr_T]

@@zero.Identity you took the right decision

[@wifieatscheese]

Ikr

[@atrinoch7437]

literally went from "horror mystery game" like Amnesia, to "zany platformer" in a few months. The drastic shift of tone killed this game

[@williamjames7293]

can't wait to see the second game flop

[@AgeraXXX]

James there's a 2nd one???

[@kyrianbilbao9073]

@@AgeraXXX Yes there is

[@kyrianbilbao9073]

@@AgeraXXX still in beta though

[@kyrianbilbao9073]

@Gabe tottaly a suprise

[@pandazzz5282]

Hell, a better ending would have been the player waking up from the dream, but they were actually stuck in the basement as the neighbour had kidnapped them as a kid. They were just dreaming of themselves rescuing themselves.

[@kydiasan21]

THIS! Every time I rewatch this video I think this would be the way to do the ‘just a dream’ ending. You never got out. You just imagined that you had, and imagined that your older self would come and save you.

[@nananakeson]

Jesus Christ that's awesome

[@lanaya3148]

Okay ngl this is good

[@simonmalmstrom9593]

Honestly this comment alone would have made the game soooo much better. Tbh I can’t even fucking remember the ending of it because all I remember is that it had amazing potential then completely dropped the ball at the end and the ending was just shite. But I can 100% see how this game being a dream fits sooo well because of how dream like and almost child like feel the world has. Hell they could even make the different betas/alphas cannon as different dreams with having the more fantastical ones being the later ones as the child loses hope and becomes more delusional with the idea of escaping.

[@MrLachapell]

Are y'all ok ?

[@Baconator96]

The early version was deemed too scary because the neighbor t-posed while he was chasing you

[@mapleflag6518]

They were intimidated by his dominance.

[@Moshmaschine]

For some reason, that actually does creep me out quite a bit. Just so unnatural to see a person approach you with no visible signs of movement.

[@omgnoi]

Yeah it was the only scary one to me lol

[@TheMostActuallyRealDonaldTrump]

@@Moshmaschine pu-

[@GROMSH_]

@@TheMostActuallyRealDonaldTrump tin

[@postagestamp8365]

That early footage with the player blocking the door in a room. That was scarier than the final game.

[@malte291]

The original concept was so good. An AI that can actually outsmart the player would be pretty much revolutionary in video games and could make horror games 1000x better.

[@reiverdaemon]

@@malte291 that's why alien isolation was so good

[@peautbuttersandwich7701]

true lol

[@belkYT]

It actually terrified me and made my heart beat 6x faster. I’m unironically serious.

[@uwu-chan]

Why is this true? I skipped it cause I got way to scared “lol”

[@nikolai6634]

Markiplier was incredibly smart when deciding to drop this game, he hadn’t even touched the full release, but by the final alpha, he knew this game was gonna be shite, and lo and behold

[@Noelle_Holiday]

"There's a lot more stuff, but I can't honestly say that the stuff is better. And that's the one thing that I'll say about it because I'm expecting as the game develops, it's going to get like more logical and sensible and, you know, it just seems even more nonsensical than it was before. So there's a lot more, but it's less refined." - Markiplier

[@3Guys1Video]

Damn

[@klol-ld8jr]

Wow he got it right on

[@Felix-Felix]

@@TuriGamer While I agree that people "would still have watched it", he's the one doing the playthrough, and I don't believe he's struggling for views at the position he's in right now, so he can choose not to play a game if he's not going to give genuine reactions about it. Imagine watching a Markiplier video where he just constantly complain about the game, just like GeneralMcBadass used to do for Payday 2 at some point he was sick of it but still doing it for views. Just trying to be fair here, Mark likes being as genuine as he can be nowadays, so it's understandable if he sees the game won't be actual entertainment for HIS channel. That said, we're all free to stream the game ourselves if we think otherwise.

[@nemtudom5074]

Did he ever say something about him dropping it, or did he just not play it anymore and moved on in silence?

[@DunkinDeeznuttz]

I always thought Hello Neighbor really should have ended with like you get in the basement and find out that, no nothing nefarious is down there and then you get arrested for breaking and entering like a psychopath.

[@lou9635]

It had always been my favorite theory: you are the crazy neighbor and this guy is the most patient and nice person.

[@TheReal_CelestialWolfGacha]

​@@lou9635he lost his family So he is just broken from that

[@tf_is_this_shit]

Just realized how much patient the neighbor has for the player

[@erlendvageskar3356]

That would have been a fun ending. Like imagine it turned out he was just hiding a really good halloween costume or something, and the neighbor doesn't want anyone to find out.

[@RobloxOverloadGames]

That would’ve been good, he was just hiding a toy that screamed that would never turn off

[@bellarora9478]

I like a cheesy “he was a murderer” or “he’s trying to bring back his wife and daughter in some Frankenstein fashion”. You don’t always have to be deep in order to make a good game. The AI was already fantastic. The Alpha could have been cleaned up a bit, adding small details to the environment, patch up the story, and it could have perfect.

[@unclebaba3463]

Same, a simple story can still be a good story

[@lunarsway]

i mean ain't that kinda deep enough anyway? having a guy turn a lil crayzee because his family died and having him keep people in his basement (either to recreate his family with his kidnapped victims or to frankenstein them idk)? that's pretty tragic. it works. having it be uncovered as you move around the house would've been neat, like maybe family photos or newspapers surrounding events, whatever. that works well enough to get youtubers to theorize and discuss the lore

[@olivercharles2930]

I would prefer some cartoonish shit with the neighbour actually trying to keep you discovering his goofy hobby or whatever. No need for a deep or dark story, and you can keep the horror up until the reveal.

[@princam_4775]

Mad Father moment

[@theoneandonlyartyom]

or like "turns out he's totally normal and you're some freak relentlessly invading his home"

[@alcerdemon9768]

This is the first time ever I've seen a case of a game reaching its peak during its first Alpha

[@MrBrandonStar]

alpha is better

[@dragonking528]

Have you heard about starforge?

[@CadChamberlain]

DayZ is the same thing except theyve been in the alpha stage for like 8 years

[@tobiasreiig5954]

cube world is a somewhat similar case...

[@dragonking528]

@@tobiasreiig5954 yes

[@testingphaze4853]

The early gameplay demo video is genuinely more terrifying to watch than the later alphas and even the full release. Says a lot about the downfall of the game

[@Aasha]

Right!?

[@acyde125]

Getting chased by a tposing unstoppable demon in an endless white space is infinitely more scarier than what we got

[@bobuxdoesmemes924]

Alpha 3 was terrifying though

[@averydavis5741]

@@acyde125 erase (more)

[@Unpug]

@@acyde125 haha

[@mastergecko1178]

I feel like the devs of this game was just like: “Let’s make the wackiest nonsensical story possible, have some KZbinr and Redditer come up with some theories and lore for the game and pretend that’s actually what we’ve meant to do the whole time.”

[@Nonesens8557]

I think its cuz the developers doesn't want to be not lazy to make the story good

[@Noelle_Holiday]

You could literally say the same comment to the developers of other indie horror games such as Bendy and Poppy Playtime.

[@Gabe413]

@@Noelle_Holiday because thats exactly what they did too

[@Noelle_Holiday]

@@Gabe413 According to Chris Portal's explanation video about the controversy surrounding Bendy itself, developers of that game openly acknowledged in one interview that they only wrote the beginning and the end, with the middle being developed as they went along.

[@LeviandTominHD]

Proof Redditors ruin everything

[@Stillbraixentho]

The neighbor actually learns from you,but since the game is so damn convoluted he just learns to be confused from your own confusion

[@Demogorgon4Breakfast]

Poor dude is living the existence of free guy except the game has more bugs than oogie boogie

[@torgranael]

So the "deep lore" of this game is summed up very quickly? Your curiosity as a kid get's you kidnapped and you break out broken, beaten and scarred. Then 20 years later, you have a weird dream. That sounds like there was supposed to be an on the nose metaphor about childhood trauma, but hit the mark about as well as that jar of pickles entered the trolley.

[@cats1970]

It’s so painful to me because the dream is very clearly based on a type of trauma therapy. It’s where you go back to your trauma and insert your current self to help the past you. You can use words, get the police to the scene, fight off the attacker, use magic. As long as it helps you in that horrible horrible situation. I’ve gone through that type of therapy. And it honestly did help so much to process a horrific thing I’d carried with me for years. But to put it in a dream makes zero sense. The protagonist used crack to cope with the trauma because he couldn’t resolve it by himself. It would’ve been so much less shitty of a plot point if they actually put it in context of trauma therapy. Sometimes you’ll visit the site of the trauma with your therapist to “defend yourself” as if it was happening today. To chalk that sort of intense treatment as “yeah sure you can diy it in your dream” is hollow, misrepresentative and frankly disgusting. Even a site revisit to point out the neighbour’s body after you murdered him or something would be stronger than this sad mess.

[@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley]

@@cats1970 How the hell do you have a game with a character with a crack addiction that then turns into a franchise for kids? 😂 I'm surprised that wasn't brought up.

[@stingerjohnny9951]

@@cats1970 So basically it’s lucid dreaming weaponized against trauma? That’s fascinating!!!! Also like the person above me said, the fact this is treated as a kids franchise when the MC is literally having a crack fueled fever dream is hilarious to me 🤣

[@icantthinkofanything798]

Yeah but that sounds like the beginning of the story, y'know? Only after that is there some kind of therapy and maybe meeting the neighbor again and there's this police type investigation where we learned what he actually did to the main character and what happened

[@royalblanket]

@@cats1970 Holy shit. This is probably what they were going for. The game literally ends with you defending yourself ...Why make it a childrens game?

[@AlexDayz]

I feel this game tried to be too many things at once. It’s a stealth game where you avoid the neighbor. It leans into horror elements. It’s a platformer. It’s a puzzle game. It’s got deep convoluted lore. While some of these could’ve worked together they should’ve just stuck with one or two. What initially drew people to the game was the AI of the neighbor learning from your previous failures (boarding up windows, checking closets, etc.). They should’ve focuses on that and stealth elements rather than try to make it a mix of everything

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Remember when Hello Neighbor was actually used to be a stealth-horror game about breaking into your neighbor’s house? Yeah, me neither. It’s depressing that they really transformed the game into some weird puzzle-platformer that desperately tries to leech off the popularity of FNAF or something…

[@PopIkiru]

I think they could have succeeded with all of these elements if the puzzles made sense, and they lessened their complexity. Same with the platforming. Plus if they had the neighbor be proximity based while in the house (or have a patrol mode) it would have fixed the issue. Maybe the items you’d collect would help you make less noise (quieter shoes, etc) or even have a way to disable the neighbor for a certain amount of time. In a way, I’d say that FNAF security breach’s stealth features would have also helped here (being able to throw something to get the neighbor to investigate it specifically) I loved the neighbor adapting to your choices when I watched it. I also loved how nonsensical the house became in layout. I fully agree with you though. The game tried to be too many of the popular youtuber games at once. They could have honestly separated the features into two different games.

[@marsybarz]

Honestly the house size was also so annoying

[@codym5352]

What happened was the creepy dev had a Matpat obsession and literally started screwing with the game JUST to get Game Theory to talk about it more as free publicity. Like LITERALLY started developing the game SPECIFICALLY based around Matpat playing it, it was disturbing.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

@@PopIkiru I think everything would've been far better if the developers introduced an option for procedurally-generated houses, each with its own different layouts, rooms, and puzzles. That way, it would give the game a lot more replayability and content without dragging out the pacing for too long. One reasonable explanation for this inclusion is that the Neighbor move between different houses to cover up his footsteps. I've also thought it would be cooler if there's an implementation of the AI Director from Left 4 Dead, which overlooks the progression and behavior of the player, by shaking up the difficulty to either reward or punishes them depending on their playstyle accordingly. For example, if you continue to play the game aggressively and loudly (i.e. breaking doors and windows, setting off cameras, vandalizing his property too many times, etc.), the Neighbor's AI will become more confrontational and persistent. However, if you continue to play the game cautiously and stealthily (i.e. tiptoeing carefully through the corridors, sabotaging his traps, distracting him with an alarm clock, etc), the Neighbor's AI will become a lot less suspicious of his surroundings.

[@FourDozenEggs]

"It's just a dream" is always a bad way to end a story. It objectively invalidates everything. None of the events mattered because they weren't even real. In order for a story to matter, there needs to be tangible consequences or at least threats of consequence.

[@HydragonofDeath]

There are ways to make the It's a dream ending work, but it has to be very carefully put toghether so that there still feels like a payoff for the entire experience, hello neighbor doesn't even try.

[@paulmahoney7619]

9/10 if you want to make the "it's a dream" ending work, it has to be very clearly telegraphed from the start, making it clear that this is meant to be more an exploration of the psyche.

[@Cinkodacs]

​@@paulmahoney7619Or make the dream matter in the end. Make the character do something due to the dream, maybe to avoid a tragedy. So many ways to handle it...

[@RAEOT7GT]

Kind of reminds me of Little hope.

[@frankisnot1148]

​@@Cinkodacs they could also lean into the hopelessness of it by having the player character wake up as a child in a neighbour's basement, if they REALLY wanted the "it's just a dream" ending.

[@dannytheman1313]

I remember the original story being about how the neighbor was actually your estranged father and how you were responsible for the death of your sister. That was where the whole thing with the coffin originally came in. Unfortunately once the hype machine started the game got too ambitious and thats where the downfall started.

[@ilhambrewok7860]

Isn't that the whole story of Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek, if I remember correctly? I mean, the difference is that you're playing as the Neighbor's daughter instead of his son.

[@novustalks7525]

That's what the story is nowadays though

[@geist6032]

​@@novustalks7525 Nay, that was a last minute retcon, the final achievement even alludes to this

[@novustalks7525]

@@geist6032 what is the final achievement?

[@geist6032]

@@novustalks7525 I believe it is "Like Father Like Son" which is earned after beating the giant Neighbor, maybe you have to do something to get it or if you get it either way... I wouldn't know

[@tellmeninetails5819]

I remember the main appeal was the fact that the neighbour adapted to your attempts to break in, I don't think anyone thought moving away from that was a good idea.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Blame the developer’s incompetence or the publishers for changing the direction and making it follow the horror game trends that FNAF popularizes. I personally do believe that the publisher, TinyBuild, is the one contributing to the downfall of Hello Neighbor since they kept begging Matpat to make a theory video on the animated pilot.

[@WhoAmIHmmm]

@@Noelle_Holiday if tinybuild is the reason of that then that sucks because I remember watching gameplays about the first game of the Tiny build owner but remastered (no time to explain!)

[@DeathnoteBB]

@@WhoAmIHmmm The game was “No Time to Explain”, to clarify for people who never knew it

[@WhoAmIHmmm]

@@DeathnoteBB oh, yeah thank you

[@chaosinc.382]

That's how I first heard of this game, through an article about the fantastic adapting AI.

[@dream__soda7900]

The game feels like a collection of the mobile game ads turned into a game.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

To me, Hello Neighbor felt like one of those cheap-looking Roblox clickbait obby games that you'll frequently find on the front page all the time.

[@dream__soda7900]

@@Noelle_Holiday yup

[@MrWolfSnack]

@@Noelle_Holiday Keep you active long enough to not notice the high memory usage and all your information being skimmed to a Russian server farm

[@slavdog3180]

That’s actually respectful to mobile games, they’re way worse than this

[@AndrewBarsky]

Can we just appreciate how we all understand EXACTLY how much of a trashing this is.

[@theomegablade6415]

"Act 1 has you starting out as a kid who looks about 30, kicking a ball down a street" Never has a statement been more true and baffling at the same time...

[@Buckets50]

I think the main issue they had was the concept for the AI is extremely ambitious and difficult to program. So I don’t think they necessarily chose the parkour route, it’s more that they reached their level of programming competency. It’s why most games like this have some sort of supernatural element so that the character chasing you can disappear and reorient without it looking janky.

[@PomMoei]

i typically don't ever cringe at things, the word itself bothers me, but seeing the publisher tweet out to matpat begging to make a theory video really did it for me. i don't think that will ever leave my head, it's engrained within my soul.

[@TheHypnosBunny]

I can't cringe at that because the only thing I think is that its so pitiful

[@troyshin3924]

@@TheHypnosBunny Right. It reminds me of those one hit wonders that continuously trying to fall back into relevancy. Very sad

[@ivgorm9365]

no fucking way

[@alliwantisapepsi]

I don't normally cringe either, but weeb profile pics do it to me.

[@joaotanekosy]

I believe matpat is going to enjoy this comment 👀

[@morphstarchangeling8024]

The part that hurts the most out of all this has to be the part of it where the devs kick you in the balls by saying all the lore was just a dream and none of that theory crafting led to anything.

[@thewhompingwampa2671]

Which is pretty fucking hypocritical of them, considering that HN begs MatPat to theorise about it all on Twitter.

[@Xegethra]

Theory stuff can get a bit iffy, fan theories are head canon that people take too seriously and con themselves into believing. But that being said, that's what you get when you don't bother to write a solid story/narrative. If you're going to leave stuff unmentioned then at least have an answer in the from of figuring it out, so people can find the truth and see what's going on, then there's some pay off, instead of leaving people to make up fan theories that don't go anywhere. But then you'd have actually write something. Otherwise fans are just pulling crap out of their arses.

[@undertyped1]

Not really, i've never played it but I have a working brain, so I can tell what this game is actually about. It's obviously telling a story about trauma. The kid gets traumatised, and it screws him up as an adult. When he comes back to the house as an adult, it looks scary and larger than life, because that's how trauma works. You remember things more terrifying than they were. The things he does in act three are obviously meant to break through the trauma the character was going through. Whether the game itself was any good, I don't care, but I AM sad to see so many "paragons" of my species in the comment section. Critical thinking is well and truly dead if a simple story is too deep for so many people to figure out.

[@enriquesanchez9016]

@@undertyped1 The story is not that complicated but it was executed TERRIBLY.

[@unknownsword9042]

@-Random- How dare people try and market their product to make money so they can pay bills. I swear it is like nobody in these comment sections are adults with real problems.

[@TheNasaOK]

I have a feeling the developer misunderstood the genre they originally had. Instead of going a wacky linear story route, they should have more made this like a semi endless / roguelike. Have the game be in the state where the Neighbour AI adapts, places traps etc and everytime you get caught the game becomes a bit harder until its game over. Then have something like multiple sets of multiple objectives, and at the start of a run the set gets chosen either by the player or at random. E.g. the base szenario is hes hiding something an you want to collect evidence / find out what, e.g. you find a bloddy hammer in the trashbin -> letters of a wife wanting a divorse -> blood on the floor in the attik and then a dead body in the freezer in the basement or so. Your goal is to take pictures from all the evidence once you found it and then escape. If you mess up to many times "Game over" and you start all over or a different szenario. Have it be everything from murder to kidnapping to organizing a surprise birthday party. they could even make multiple mid sized houses or even make the house modular and generate it, you have tons of replayability, can still put "deeper lore" hints with a low spawn chance that would be fodder for theorys etc. Have the player find random items that help him out for even more replayability. The bread and butter for this game, is the Enemy AI making it less predictable, and adapting to your playstyle, build the game around that and not around some lore

[@ilhambrewok7860]

You've literally made a better Hello Neighbor game than the developers in under 14 minutes. Congrats!

[@unclebaba3463]

​@Nasser doesn't matter, still better then the game we got

[@skeletonbuyingpealts7134]

I feel like 2 modes would be best, Roguelike and Story

[@quentinhans4755]

This is a really awesome idea and I would love to see this in a game. Nice Monokuma Profile Picture btw.

[@cutealiens]

Literally incredible that it went from that awesome, fun little tech demo to this giant, bloated, steaming pile of everything-but-what-was-in-the-tech-demo. Imagine if Hitman turned into a surrealist dreamworld platformer with puzzles that effectively require you to look up solutions.

[@dysphoria_1.040]

Imagine if we'd gone from original Hitman STRAIGHT to Absolution.

[@aliencafe]

@@dysphoria_1.040Absolution was my first Hitman game and man. I was SO confused.

[@jaycob1830]

The realistic look of the game in the first 2 versions made it way more real-feely and scary, when it got cartoony it almost felt like a joke

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Personally, I really enjoyed how the atmosphere of the Neighbor's house throughout the earlier builds was very reminiscent of "liminal space" buildings. I think it would've been better if they should have expanded the whole aesthetic by transforming the basement into some Backrooms-style elaborate underground labyrinth full of surrealistic environments, reality-manipulation puzzles a la Superliminal, and geometry-defying architecture that messes up with your mind. Make it look like something from either Anemoiapolis or Stanley Parable.

[@jaycob1830]

@@Noelle_Holiday I agree

[@zigsteenine8650]

@@Noelle_Holiday that’s asking way too much from these developers lmao.

[@kennypowers1945]

@@zigsteenine8650 or asking too much at all

[@Noelle_Holiday]

@@zigsteenine8650 That’s just a fun suggestion.

[@kriminal7009]

Imagine coming up with a killer concept for a stealth/puzzle game and then ruining it by making it a weird parkour mess. Like, the neighbor adapting to entry and distractions makes for an interesting play through each and every time. That’s what people were hooked on in addition to the mystery of the basement. The weird house additions, convoluted story, and poorly crafted puzzles really stunt this game.

[@migueeeelet]

A great stealth AI is hard to make. Parkour and nonsensical puzzles can be crapped out with your eyes closed though!

[@gamercentral2417]

@@migueeeelet but in alpha 1 the ai was actually good they just didn’t fix it

[@summergamer7650]

ngl, i feel like making the house bigger than it needed to be was one of the biggest downfalls

[@dionylescailles4409]

@@summergamer7650 seriously breaks immersion and adds too many issues. Normal inconspicuous house was the best by far.

[@jadehodge972]

@@dionylescailles4409 wouldnt even know how to beat it without youtube.... like dude who wouldve known to beat it ud need an umbrella out of everything.

[@xenobio7402]

i kinda knew this game was doomed after seeing plushies of the neighbor in Walmart in the kids section even before it was fully released

[@alexgo373]

This seems to be an issue with a LOT of russian game designers - for some reason they are incredibly contrarian when it comes to feedback and tend to double down on any system that players find frustrating. I guess the logic must be "if players are complaining that means they find this too difficult, meaning I should make it more of a focus because difficulty is good".

[@r3qu0]

Do you have any other examples?

[@alexgo373]

@@r3qu0 Older games mostly - havent played any for a while - Allods (aka Rage of Mages), Evil Islands, lots of things published back in a day by 1C.

[@hardVatsuki]

literally me fr

[@terrainrecords6038]

​@@r3qu0 War Thunder

[@AC-hj9tv]

My Russian dev friends fr

[@sodakuwun0707]

the devs have never heard the phrase "less is more" they just kept adding on tons of useless stuff until the game collapsed in on itself

[@Noelle_Holiday]

The developers of this game should have listened to Steve Jobs’s quote regarding simplicity: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential." - Steve Jobs

[@bobuxdoesmemes924]

@@Noelle_Holiday Yes

[@dysn3961]

Best guess is that the original idea was a horror-like, but the publisher decided to have it more geared towards a younger audience so that they could market it out in spin off's

[@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin]

There is a movie genre equivalent for this, called 'thriller'.

[@atanaZion]

Like FNaF, but bankrupt

[@chocov1233]

@@atanaZion Creatively bankrupt.

[@ilhambrewok7860]

Unfortunately, the same thing also happened with FNAF: Security Breach, which is so rushed and unpolished that it barely even considered to be a horror game anymore. I remember when the old trailers were originally going to be darker and slightly more mature, but the development team started to tone everything down to a minimum by making it family-friendly, marketable, and colorful, therefore killing off the atmosphere and unique charm of the original predecessors. Much like Hello Neighbor, FNAF: Security Breach had so much interesting potential, if only it wasn’t squandered by terrible execution and mismanagenent. I think everyone could agree that it’s quite ironic how FNAF is generally responsible and often stigmatized by some people for popularizing the whole “child-friendly indie horror game” subgenre into the mainstream (stuff like Bendy, Hello Neighbor, Baldi’s Basics, Poppy Playtime, etc), yet somehow deteriorated into its own stereotype despite establishing some of the cliches in particular (such as the bright, colorful characters and the so-called “hidden lore”). In fact, FNAF: Security Breach just felt more like a scathing parody of itself than an actual installment within the franchise.

[@jonolas1626]

@@Usammityduzntafraidofanythin Thats not what a thriller is tho

[@Bsznmsc]

The fact one of the KZbinrs they relied on so heavily to become popular could only beat the last few alphas by getting a step by step guide from the comments sums it up perfectly

[@Morgannin]

20:00 "We're now much older and struggling from a crack habit, leaving us-" Okay slow down. I think we missed some plot development here, writers.

[@mellow_mallow]

Jesus Christ that demo scares the shit out of me. Something about just seeing him floating towards you in the corner of your eye is really getting to me.

[@fenudel2734]

Thank god I‘m not the only one. Literally made the hairs on my neck stand up

[@munchmongoose]

The demo is the best product. Seeing something emerge closer to those concepts would have been amazing

[@Julia-lk8jn]

you're right, it has all the ingredients: he doesn't look or move really human, you only catch short glimpses, and those background noises! Oh boy.

[@dualtahunter4043]

The early version of the neighbor was genuinely scary. Cold, emotionless, silent as a mouse but when he sees you, he was just this terminator-like beast, chasing you relentlessly. In the later versions he was just this senile old fart who was more of a nuisance than a villian

[@C.I...]

It reminds me of that Sherlock Holmes game demo, where Watson's AI wasn't finished, so he just teleported next to you while you weren't looking.

[@charleschamp9826]

I can't believe this game gives backstory to the Spy from TF2. I mean how else do you explain the three hands, who else could use the Deadringer and reload their revolver at the same time?

[@Dr_Dan_]

i waited for this comment

[@avcables_]

I literally said the same thing omfg

[@Dabadi4834]

MEET THE SPY

[@cacovonluca]

Hello Fortress 2 confirmed

[@galaxymaster673]

best comment i’ve seen in a while

[@thesupergamer5894]

Literally taking a writing course right now and one of the big things was that you should (almost) never end with your character waking up or realizing it was all fake

[@superzockertvyt9630]

It probably works better if the world looks kinds weird or if they make sure you know theres nothing you havent seen before in this world(everything has a memory attached to it because thats how dreams work)

[@lucinda_null]

I love how in the concept gameplay the neighbor just *G L I D E S* towards you menacingly

[@namename2186]

Ight, pulling the "It was all a dream move" is the real warcrime here; not only because it robs the narrative of a satisfying ending, but because it allows the developers to make shit even more cryptic by including symbology and half baked psychological facts, which I assume was the point.

[@mattbar6]

absolUTELY

[@Zeromaru42]

It pulls the same Sin that Bendy Chapter 5 does and that Sin is unforgivable. It makes the entirety of the game you spent hours playing into a Dream out of nowhere with no prior hints or anything and it leaves the player unable to enjoy the experience. Unless you explicitly or somewhat hint at it beforehand it always just comes out as a Cop out. Of course the only way to hint at it in a cool way is to plan it from the start with actual thought and foreshadowing. Something very absent from a lot of the Games and Movies that pull it. When done right it can encourage theories and encourage replayability, but more often than not people just drop it in because they weren't able to come up with anything and they wanted to seem smart for something that better Games and Movies have done before.

[@hohuncho2341]

@@Zeromaru42 facts when it's all just a dream, there really is no point to giving a shit about theories or the symbolism. Like you did all that just for a dream?

[@Zeromaru42]

@@hohuncho2341 When Evangelion and Future Diary do it better because they had actual thought put into them.

[@Hephera]

the game literally tells you youre hallucinating and then you GO TO SLEEP next to a destroyed house and "wake up" to it having magically grown to a massive skyscraper with impossible physics. if you only realised it was a dream at the end that's kindve on you...

[@bobthebadbucket9061]

They ended it in the worst way possible for a story. "And then he woke up"

[@thorgidogofthunder]

i mean, you _can_ make that work. they just didn't.

[@reverxts4610]

@@thorgidogofthunder you can make it work but it’s one of if not the most basic and boring endings

[@amunago080]

@@reverxts4610 agreed, I just skip shit that "just a dream now" its played out and cheap now.

[@GeorgeDCowley]

They also only did it for part of the story, leaving us with questions about the rest.

[@timmyreobed5043]

@@thorgidogofthunder It can work, but not as an ending. Omori did the "just a dream" thing perfectly, because the dream still has a ton of relevance to the plot instead of being a last minute cop-out.

[@smocast738]

I remember hearing about this game near the beginning. "It gets smarter, man! The game ADAPTS to your strategies! Isn't that neat?" It was..

[@judyh3707]

I can't believe they went with that last act with a straight face, thinking it would be something besides a painful attempt at sentimentality

[@spenserdavis788]

The perfect case study of "Quit while you're ahead." I still remember getting hooked on this game watching Let's Play vids of the Alpha and Beta versions... only to buy the finished version and realize five minutes in that the new nonsensical puzzles and mechanics made it downright unplayable.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Again, this is why I've always highly appreciated some cartoons like Gravity Falls. When it became critically acclaimed and reached astronomical heights of popularity, Alex Hirsch intentionally ended Gravity Falls sooner after two seasons to likewise avoid falling into the problematic demands of surpassing the series past what he originally intended and preventing the show from overstaying its welcome. Everyone likely questioned his decision and really wanted a third season, but because he prioritized his ability over the franchise he was able to create memorable quality works. And because of this, Gravity Falls doesn’t suffer from a “seasonal rot” and everyone still fondly remembers this series in good memory ten years after its official premiere. Same thing goes with Invader Zim and Avatar: The Last Airbender, although the former’s cancellation was because of different reasons alone (low ratings and expensive production budget).

[@ilhambrewok7860]

@@Noelle_Holiday Agreed. I honestly respect Alex Hirsch’s decision to intentionally end Gravity Falls after 2 seasons. It doesn’t really need a third season at all because it wrapped up almost everything on a satisfyingly high note. If the show didn’t get cancelled, however, its quality would’ve quickly plummeted down into the abyss and that franchise may get milked to death.

[@Tony_Cardoza]

​​@@Noelle_Holiday He got that idea from Jerry Seinfeld, who had probably the original show that ended earlier than it could have (despite having 9 seasons), even after being offered something like several million an episode. (could have been a mil an episode, I cannot remember right now)

[@TheBreakingBenny]

That's part of why I never wound up buying Hello Neighbor.

[@salsatheone]

@@Noelle_Holiday or you can simply call it "avoid jumping the shark".

[@docplays6508]

Well like MatPat said in most recent theory, this game changed a lot lore wise cause some fan theories were able to guess the plot of the game but then they changed it just so people couldn’t guess how it was going to end

[@bignerd3783]

no that was security breach this one got shit because the devs chose theory bait/youtuber bait instead of making good gameplay

[@Williamwillow_]

@@bignerd3783 it was also the case for hello neighbor, the lore changed constantly with hello neighbor.

[@testerwulf3357]

@@bignerd3783 I think it was mostly hello neighbor that did that..I mean after hello neighbor changed they started spamming mat for theories to get more attention.

[@behindthecookie8653]

I think the story and game has changed because of the audiences full of children.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

@@behindthecookie8653 I remember when Hello Neighbor's setting was originally going to be a little bit disturbing and was targeted at a mature audience (from the information I've gathered about the older storyline, it was supposed to involve kidnapped children trapped inside the Neighbor's basement and satanic symbolism, both of which had already been foreshadowed by the Bible verses, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust book), but they somehow decided to scrap everything about it.

[@timesnewlogan2032]

Here's a better idea for the game: you get into the basement, and find out it's a sort of shrine to his dead son, centered around his grave. When the Neighbor finds you, you attempt to escape but nearly fall to your death, prompting him to save your life. After which, he sits down and reveals his son died in an accident while the house was being built, and he was never able to move on from it. The bizarre architecture was a means of coping, where each of the out of place puzzles was based on something his son enjoyed, or a moment they shared. You apologize, and he does the same, while smiling and thanking you, as the whole game made it feel like he got to play with his son one last time, and he feels like he can move on now. You return home, and out of your window, you see his house burning to the ground, as he smiles and waves goodbye before leaving the neighborhood for good, symbolically moving on from his past. It took me thirty seconds to come up with that.

[@chielvoswijk9482]

Oh many where hoping for something along those lines. The real result being that the villian of the story, is revealed to be the player who simply wouldn't leave a clearly troubled person in peace, subverting the at the time popular and rapidly tiring "speculation bait" trope by showing there actually wasn't one. If only...

[@Strafprozessordnung]

Sorry but also reads like something that you came up with in 30 seconds

[@gabrielguedes6166]

​@@Strafprozessordnung and still sounds better than the current story

[@Strafprozessordnung]

@@gabrielguedes6166 yup

[@Epic-ft2bg]

@@gabrielguedes6166 true

[@DreadlyKnight]

When I was playing this, I remember the absolute worst part of the game after alpha 3 was that it was just nonsense. There was no rhyme or reason to the puzzles. It made no sense, none of it was even possible without outside knowledge or just throwing yourself at impossibilities nonstop until something worked or you stumbled upon the solution by accident. This game is exactly what a puzzle game should NOT be.

[@roonkolos]

This game really could have spearheaded a "break & enter" sort of subgenre to Stealth games but they were way too busy trying to make a puddle appear deep rather than iron out the actual game itself

[@ilhambrewok7860]

I remember watching Cr1TiKaL's playthrough of a Hello Neighbor knockoff in which you’re breaking into Adolf Hitler’s house (no, seriously). There’s also a crappy mobile game ripoff where you’re sneaking into SpongeBob’s house to steal all of his belongings. It’s amazing how both of them were somehow better than the original game itself.

[@roonkolos]

@@ilhambrewok7860 yep. It's a strange sort of idea overall but it does have potential. At least I think it has potential. Just a shame one of the bigger potentials ended so poorly

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

Sad thing is, the mobile phone knockoffs that came out during the Alpha build days killed the possibility. Especially since none of those had actual endings. The genre was oversaturated with crap before the original was ever even finished.

[@ZorotheGallade]

I generally hate "simulator" games since they all appear samey and lazy, but Thief Simulator actually looks like what you would end up with if you went with that.

[@anap1680]

Mattpat did that

[@alexg9155]

The story is basically Act 1, and after you get caught the kid is probably abused or something in the basement until he gets out years later at the end of Act 2, being traumatized for the rest of his life and having nightmares and whatnot. That's it. So much for deep lore and story.

[@BallsInMyCup_]

there are plenty of fan theories that logically use what the game portrays, so plot-wise i'd say there's enough to pick apart to be somewhat satisfied. the gameplay itself just isn't as compelling as it could have been.

[@aboutthegiggins4236]

@@BallsInMyCup_ lmao fan theories

[@kennypowers1945]

It was good to me 🤷‍♂️

[@kennypowers1945]

@@aboutthegiggins4236 better than the theories you have

[@aboutthegiggins4236]

@@kennypowers1945 fucking what ? Lol Did that even really make sense to you when you typed it out ,

[@jj48]

When I first saw this game, I figured the ending was going to be that there was nothing sinister with the neighbor, and it turned out you've been harassing this poor guy over nothing, when all he wants is for people to stop breaking into his house. I still think that would have made a more fun twist.

[@Hunkonly6678]

It’s sad how the pre alpha was literally the best version it was the most realistic it was just a creepy man doing suspicious things in his basement and it would send chills down my spine when he would chase me

[@dangernoodle3343]

I'm glad you mentioned the art style change because I feel like no one mentions how much that hurt the game. IDK what it is but the new art style they went for just ruined the unique style the game had in their previous alphas and really makes the game feel too cartoony

[@adriansmith6708]

I am 12 and prefer old artstyle

[@kryzzan7039]

@@adriansmith6708 ? (How the hell did this get 80 likes?)

[@kaingussky7596]

I think the reason why the old art style is better is because the new one just has really no detail.

[@valrend7374]

It reminds me a lot of the cat in the hat movie

[@engineergaming1669]

Goofy ahh art style

[@PrimmsHoodCinema]

When they changed the chase music, I knew it was over lol. The first chase song was perfect. It was scary asf!!

[@Lucas_OBrien]

True shit

[@silentecho92able]

@@Lucas_OBrien i still get a heart attack when that song hits my ears.

[@CorruptTypes]

they really ruined the gam after taking that music away thern going to cartoony looks :/

[@TalkativeGoofball]

Yep. Man it used to be so nostalgic and it was sometimes pretty scary. Not all too scary but creepy for sure. Man i loved it

[@silentecho92able]

@@TalkativeGoofball its a shame this game went to hell cause off a lot of stupid additions later on. In fact this game could have been similar to an Alien isolation game.

[@flamingcroatan3739]

Employee: "What do we do about Lore?" Director: "Umm pfffffft EH throw in some vague clues, the theory hounds will fill in the gaps"

[@lepatpissang5760]

"what went wrong - Yandere Simulator" will be a huge one

[@pgbrown12084]

This developer is really focused on Let's Players and Theorists. If you look at their social media, they are desperately trying to get MatPat to make videos about their games. It's unfortunate. If they put the same amount of energy into making a quality game I feel like they could really succeed.

[@ck7993]

i remember when they directly pinged game theory 3 TIMES saying "YoU MiGhT WAnnA TaKe a PeeK a ThiS"

[@ryebreadthebread]

It feels like they care more about publicity than making a good and well rounded game

[@liesdamnlies3372]

They're Russian. It’s more likely that at this point they’re just desperate to get enough money for a ticket to leave.

[@elpenguinoofmexico1388]

Yeah. If we look at five nights at freddy’s, the game that kinda made Game Theory famous, that game started off w/ little to no lore at all. Just some animatronics u had to avoid and some sprinkles of murder surrounding the franchise. The story didnt get properly expanded until the 2nd game. Things dont happen in an instant

[@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD]

@@ck7993 did you remember it from this video at 25:49 ?

[@JustWowNick]

You can tell this was one of the devs personal project, and the company they worked for hijacked it because they saw it could make money.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Executive meddling at it’s finest.

[@WhoAmIHmmm]

I don't think the publisher was connected to how shit hello neighbor is

[@ilhambrewok7860]

@@WhoAmIHmmm Seeing how the publishers kept milking this franchise and kept bothering Matpat to make an analysis video on the animated series, I think it could be a possibility.

[@WhoAmIHmmm]

@@ilhambrewok7860 apparently the guy who tried to make matpat check out the game was someone joking around That's what I found in another comment

[@ilhambrewok7860]

@@WhoAmIHmmm But I’ve also heard that apparently, the tinyBuild employee who is responsible for tweeting those tweets in question, was (allegedly) a MatPat fanboy. They were reprimanded and got fired from the company according to a public statement. Or, you know, that's what they want us to believe.

[@boiledelephant]

"It's so awkwardly positioned that it doesn't feel like that's what you're supposed to do." This sums up everything in Hello Neighbor.

[@blo0dysmiles297]

I love even more matpat basically out right refusing them every time they talked about him. They was so desperate 😅

[@UltravioletNomad]

To me the biggest problem with Hello Neighbor is that it stopped being ABOUT the Neighbor. Most people will cite that the problems come when they seemed to revise the movement and took a downward spiral into a platformer, but coincided with that is the inclusion of the player model itself, and both of these signify a major negative change in the direction of the game. Mechanically it stopped being about the Neighbor and his learning AI to being about the house itself. Before the house was merely a tool for both you and the neighbor to interact with in this push and pull stealth battle, now the game lives and dies on the level design, and boy is the level design terribly loose. But then narratively, we also shift focus away from the neighbor and into the player character. Suddenly its a story about us and the neighbor is just the agent of chaos who sets the obstacles. While they definitely attempted to preserve the mystery of the neighbor, his motives and intentions are now secondary to this new story of a kidnap victim with PTSD. Its not really effective at telling this type of narrative, especially as the artstyle got more and more wacky as opposed to grim Burton-esque. The reality is, if you want to tell a mystery, then tell the mystery. The players role is just to be a new concerned neighbor, and as a video game we can fill that role, the player character doesn't need much of any backstory, just put something interesting behind that door and foreshadow it in the climb to achieve opening it. While the game wants us to dig into the motives of the neighbor, the big secret is blown in the first act, he has or was planning to hold a child hostage. It doesn't matter if hes doing it because his daughter and/or wife died, the secret is out before you even escape and hes taken care of after that. But then it gets worse with the flash backs, for one its confusing to understand what perspective any of them take, neighbor or the player, as they contain context for both characters. They use the dream thing to glance over the trippy stuff and the ridiculous final house, but that doesn't explain how the player's hallucinations elucidates us on the Neighbor's backstory. And while exact details are confusing and sparse, the big key points are right in your face with them. In fact I'd argue that between the flashbacks and cutscenes the game actually isn't cryptic enough and ruins any sense of mystery. Considering that they started to pour so much resources into the house, either for pandering to kids KZbin or a lack of ambition to actually refine what could have been really innovative stealth gameplay, they made no attempt to use the house to actually tell a compelling story, and the flashback sections are just a crutch to that affect, same as the box stacking is a crutch to any legitimate game design. The house isn't a place that is lived in and aside from that one room in the basement theres no context to who the neighbor really is hidden in the walls, its just wacky nonsense for the sake of wacky nonsense, and in that way, they failed to capture the reason why people love to dig into the lore of games like FNAF, the obvious success story they attempted to copy. Also yeah, I am now really suspect of the publisher of the game. I remember Tiny Build used to market themselves as a publisher that helps fund upstart devs with preserved creative control, but its obvious to me that you only get funding if they feel your product is marketable. Now that they have this IP that's big with children on KZbin, its become their sole focus, and the directions they are pivoting keeps turning towards this idea of shitting out content that either runs on potato pcs or on mobile keep kids buying, yet another way they are painfully attempting to copy the FNAF business model that was, until Security Breach at least, launching small but polished experiences that always brought a new mechanic to the table.

[@UltravioletNomad]

@@chronotone833 I remember when MatPat started playing the first two alphas, with the neighbor crying in the room, the Twitter post where he's reading Faust, it all seemed like we were heading somewhere really dark, but it ended up less frightening than an episode of Goosebumps. And it didn't even need to happen either. If Friday Night Funkin has taught me anything its that content does not need to be kid friendly to be marketable, they'll find it anyway and think the adult aspects are edgy and cool.

[@TheMonaamohammed]

TL;DR

[@13thKingMu]

@@UltravioletNomad sometimes kids just like things that they don't even know the actual thing which started it like Squid games. The show is very dark and basically have actual gore with very good writing but unfortunately having lackluster ending that they hinted there'll be next season which most ppl expected it would going to be ruin the show. The show is very popular so much that other countries tried to milk it as a bootleg version of Squid games just for views purposes,same as fnaf and Poppy's playtime(this game somehow popular in my country that there're bootleg shirts and toys about it). Ppl just try to milk the franchise if it popular to kids that isn't Nintendo properties because they're milking their own franchise which is why they can ruined things that you like though fandom are much worse that something like fnaf gotten downhill due to them Edit:sorry if my English bad

[@mugwithnocoffee2572]

Holy fuck, that's a lot of words

[@Penguinmanereikel]

@@13thKingMu your English was mostly fine, but it fell apart a bit near the end

[@orangexlightning]

It started out as a unique "horror" game with a good premise, but then it devolved into random junk for the sake of being random junk.

[@jcoolguy1548]

I'd say it's more of a thriller than horror

[@ilhambrewok7860]

The only reason it's categorized as "horror" is that when the Neighbor approaches you within a certain distance, there's an obvious thumping noise in the background and screen distortion (it was supposed to build tension but even then, they somehow bafflingly failed at that), and when you do get caught, being stared at by a guy staring right at your soul is more laughable than creepy, killing off all tension from the experience. They couldn't even do cheesy jumpscares right! It should’ve been considered to be a parody of horror games instead lol.

[@asampes]

4:45 this is litteraly exactly what it feels like being chased in a dream

[@ciindyylouwho]

The concept of this game was so good I am so sad it didn't go well for them, they focused on the wrong things. I loved this game before it got too confusing and didn't really understand why suddenly no one mentioned or played it.

[@Otakupatriot117]

It seems to me the biggest problem was there was a huge map full of items, but only one way to solve every puzzle. For example, if I needed to cool down a crowbar, I might think to stick it in the freezer. The fact there's only one way to do things is what always takes me out of games with "crafting" systems, and it seems like even the people who normally like those kind of games got fed up with how it was taken to the extreme here.

[@ZorotheGallade]

Yeah, Raft has the same problem. You can craft pretty much everything, but when you have to solve puzzles on the islands you need to find the fuses, crowbars, and other tools you could definitely make yourself (heck, you can craft a fully functional radar but not a crowbar? Do you have to find the one and only remaining crowbar in the world?) but you can't because the game wants you to find them in very specific places.

[@frozenfoxgames5300]

Or just do what Matpat did, and spend so much time trying to find a way to cool down the crowbar that when you do find a way its already cooled itself down.

[@elvickRULES]

It’s like a game with boards on a door, and having you need to chop it with an axe specifically and it won’t let you use a crowbar or hammer to pull out nails. One way only even though logically you could accomplish the goal already.

[@VGamingJunkie]

@@elvickRULES That's one thing I loved about Zelda Breath of the Wild. To some extent, it was a sandbox. They gave you the basic tools and said have at it.

[@vangoghsseveredear]

Fun fact: if the crowbar was red hot like that, it wouldn't be magnetic. It enters an austenetic phase and loses its magnetism. Therefore the puzzle was nonsensical from the start Source: I'm a welder and know metallurgy.

[@DresDEAD617]

Off topic but what type of welder do you use? I use an arc welder

[@vangoghsseveredear]

@@DresDEAD617 I'm a welder by trade. I use anything. Most of our work is stick and tig, but I held mig tickets too and worked in a shop before moving out to the field. Now I'm a boilermaker and work in power plants, refineries, shit like that.

[@cyncir]

I love your username

[@MrLego3160]

Can you confirm if a red hot crowbar stays red hot forever unless you use a watering can on it?

[@mitzuriki]

@@MrLego3160 THE FUCK?!

[@Eh-yf4qs]

Sooooo, the game called neighbors from hell was kinda popular in Russia back in 2000s So it feels like devs looked at a nostalgic game, said hey, what if we put a horror/thriller spin on it, created promising early builds, and at the end failed miserably to make something coherent with this idea

[@crystalgoddess4085]

The thing is, one other game did what Hello Neighbor tried to do initially with its A.I. and did a far better job of it, and that was Alien Isolation, the Xenomorph would learn the player's common hiding spots, try pinpoint the location of noises it heard and even try cut the player off, this made it the unsettling and imposing threat that Dynamic Pixels tried to make the Neighbor into.

[@viralium104]

I remember being so hyped to find out what was in the basement, but when the game came out and it was this weird linear story, I lost interest. Finding out all these years later that the full game doesn't provide any actual answers is just so disappointing.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Yeah, all of that foreshadowing in the previous alphas (the Bible verses, Wolfgang Von Goethe's Faust book lying on the couch, the candles and pentagrams on the basement in Alpha 2, the painting of the Neighbor kissing somebody we haven't seen them yet, etc) turned out to be nothing.

[@quinn799]

Saaaame

[@ilikebunnies7633]

​@Noelle_Holiday Noelle, how is your dad doing? (Deltarune)

[@cylerinque8354]

When you start the game it's so exciting but when you finish it. It's just like, alright cool.

[@todtrash7799]

This has a “you don’t understand this masterpiece” aura from the developers.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

My reaction: "This game is the biggest load of hoohaa I've seen. Why do you insist we play this stupid thing?" A 9-year-old Hello Neighbor fanboy: "Am I the only one who understands the complexity of this cinematically ambitious masterpiece?"

[@TheBonkleFox]

@@Noelle_Holiday Bruh I don't even remember kids having "hello neighbor" phases like we had with fnaf.

[@pawnstarrickharrison7225]

stop eating mah gawt dam corn

[@Noelle_Holiday]

@@TheBonkleFox Yeah, me too.

[@Fallensabre-uw7hb]

​@@Noelle_Holiday a fellow GAOBAM fan I see. This GAME isn't stupid! YOU'RE stupid!!

[@JustACanary]

Yeah, I remember playing Alpha 4 and literally getting so frustrated with that magnet puzzle. Also the room that opens with the red key. Just unbeatable

[@marigalante944]

I played the full release and I couldn't even get to the roof in Act 1 😭 I knew what I needed to do but the stupid platforming was kinda hard for me (I overdid the jumps and fell off)

[@polistinimdae]

This would have been a good product if it was made by one dude in his basement just emptying his mind into his art with no theory begging. the fact it was made by an actual production company blows my mind

[@PastelWorldDolls]

They really took the "kid friendly horror game" thing to heart and it hurt the game. Unlike FNAF, which manages to be scary and still not super inappropriate, they just changed this from being creepy to kooky, for no good reason.

[@dunsun6395]

Look at security breach though

[@_-Lx-_]

No FNAF is still definitely a huge offender, the series had jumped the shark and become trash by 3 and that was only months after the first game. And security breach is an absolute unfinished abomination desperate for the audience of small children and furries.

[@dunsun6395]

@@_-Lx-_ i don't think it became trash after 3. Fnaf 4 was a pretty good game Of course it wasn't the same fnaf but what you had to do was still the same. You had to protect yourself from animatronics by checking out places But unfortunately in sister location everything went down

[@Unknown-rm8zp]

@@_-Lx-_ I think FNAF security breach might have a good game in paper but when you give your mature audience a 5 yo type of game, than obviously they are going to hate it. Not to mention Scott leaving the company after being called for his support of republican. Also, after seeing the game being hyped a lot, playing it for yourself might be unscary considering you have seen on animation 6900 times.

[@CallForGrandPappy]

Fnaf went just as if even more off the rails, they turned a horrifying and intriguing premise into a convoluted mess which makes the Cod zombies storyline seem “simple” in comparison. Fnaf just sold very well.

[@LadyTeaBlossom]

I think it would've been interesting if they twisted the story. At first you think your neighbour is hiding a terrible secret (keeping people in his basement, murderer, etc.) And you try to find proof/release the victims. But when the game ends you're actually the antagonist, YOU are the nightmare neighbour breaking into the house because you're either crazy or a massive nosy Karen. Multiple endings would be great too like you either get arrested, the neighbour kills you in self defence, you can frame your neighbour oooooorrrr... You actually were right about him and you become his next victim.

[@kakyoindonut3213]

your plot twist is great, but I didn't buy it. It's just to me that the original story could've worked if they did a better way at telling it, not by pursuing game theorist or big youtuber, just tell the damn story, and make good games

[@thisperson345]

In the time you wrote this you already came up with a better story than the devs, congratulations

[@pajwubx1809]

This sounds legitimately better

[@MervinXavier]

@@thisperson345 fax

[@joel9104]

That sounds really good, you made a better plot in probably 10 mins than the devs did in about 2 years

[@frozenfoxgames5300]

They spent too much time chasing Game Theory, instead of letting Game Theory chase them.

[@blyat79]

0:28 The Concept. 5:16 PreAlpha. 8:30 Alpha II. 9:37 Alpha III. 11:53 Alpha IV. 16:44 Full Release. 20:42 Minigames. 22:49 Story.

[@-xiirusthetwat-5481]

10 points to gryffindor mate

[@maybewafee]

there are literally timestamps given already

[@falloutfanfam9734]

Alpha 1/Pre alpha was so much fun. I wish they sticked with the less “stylised” mysterious stuff. I way preferred breaking into a house and being genuinely scared with a good adaptive AI rather than being chased by a big squiggly thing.

[@connordorman117]

Saiko No Sutoka at least seems to be delivering on the premise of an adaptive A.I

[@danitho]

Genuinely just being helpful here: stuck not sticked.

[@Pers0n97]

A combo of the two good ol pitfalls that plague most indy games: - trying to put parkour in your game when the controls are just not good enough to pull it off - rely on a lot of object manipulation with clunky physics It even hit the other grand classic : Puzzle with only ONE solution despite the environment offering a lot of obvious alternative.

[@seancrosby6837]

Sometimes physics manipulation works perfectly fine, like in Amnesia or Penumbra, both made by Frictional Games

[@Pers0n97]

@@seancrosby6837 because their physic wasnt clunky.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

@@Pers0n97 Half-Life 2 has better physics manipulation and platforming than Hello Neighbor and that game is 18 years old. How did the developers screw up what’s already been perfected in the past?

[@migueeeelet]

@@Pers0n97 No, because Amnesia didn't rely on physics as a crutch to make its game interesting (same as Half Life 2).

[@Pers0n97]

@@migueeeelet That too.

[@CalloZxn]

7:32, that tire killed me 💀

[@iowasucks9494]

So it went from “find out what your scary neighbors secret is” to “youre a crackhead who’s jonesing”?

[@judithsandoval8289]

The first version seemed so good. Having the AI get smarter every time he found you while you try to solve puzzles. If they kept that the main focus it would’ve been soooo much better.

[@kitkatty52211]

Some people are theorizing that it was a script and not actual AI but either way it was cool.

[@lemons1559]

@@kitkatty52211 That's what AI is.

[@kitkatty52211]

@@lemons1559 i mean that it wasnt an ai that adapts, that it was more of an animation of sorts.

[@lemons1559]

@@kitkatty52211 Oh the trailer specifically? Yeah it looks more like a theatrical script.

[@powdereyes2210]

I think the game mechanics in the 2014 version was way more interesting It made Neighbor seem more like he had much more control over your surroundings and would even freak you out by doing something unexpected And how the player could just block the door by pushing something in front of the door

[@bloonsfamily2066]

also when you open a door in alpha 1 and the neighbor is standing there as if he knew you were there, oh and when you block a door with a chair and the neighbor just breaks the door off

[@shadowsbane3]

you could lock the neighbor out in the first version by making him board up all the windows and then blocking the doors with him outside.

[@forrestmacleod7848]

@@shadowsbane3 yes but that seems more like an exploit/cheese rather than an intended game mechanic. It probably took a while to set up and you most likely had to finesse the AI a bit, where as now you can just take two seconds to push a box in front of a door and he can’t get to you.

[@HydragonofDeath]

@@nemo1716 I dont think he intended that as saying he preferred the updated gameplay but moreso explaining how in the older versions you had to go out of your way to cheese and break the AI but in the newer versions you can do it without even trying. Meaning he meant the older versions were better.

[@forrestmacleod7848]

@@HydragonofDeath thank you this is exactly what i meant lol

[@BoredPodcaster]

Hi, writer/author here. The "it was just a dream" cliche is considered to be one of the worst endings in the writing community. Mainly because, as you stated in your video, it's a kick in the balls to the reader, and sends the message that nothing really mattered. It's considered one of the tell-tale signs of an amateur writer who lacks experience in crafting quality fiction.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

Does that mean the whole "overcoming your own childhood trauma" message is completely invalidated by the fact that everything was all just a dream and therefore nothing that you did throughout the game actually mean anything?

[@gameavengerryley3618]

The animated series made the first game’s story make sense. Also pre-alpha and alpha 1 are the best versions since they are actually scary with scary chase music. Also it really ticks me off that the ai in hello neighbor 2 was supposed to be controlled by a “neural network” and the ai is somehow worse than the first game.

[@SoulcatcherLucario]

they never advertised a _good_ neural network, just _a_ neural network

[@noirlavender6409]

the true problem with this is that the premise seemed okay innocent enough and fun, just a kid spying on his neighboor, that's all it should have been. Act 1 should have ended with something shockingly sad or creepy, like the Neighbor was just being overly protective because in that room he had his super ill wife or child, ending with a fun game and a short good experience. But they wanted to milk it as much as they could so instead of making a good cake they keep adding shit on top until it tasted, well, like shit.

[@videoms1271]

IIRC the "lore" was he killed his kid in a car accident, that's why he's so reclusive and wierd

[@EonTheAien]

@@videoms1271 His wife was killed in a car accident he had a part in, and his son pushed his daughter off his roof

[@EonTheAien]

@@videoms1271 And yeah nah, lore's still shit

[@videoms1271]

@@EonTheAien exactly why I said "lore"

[@jiggycalzone8585]

I figured at most you go into the basement and its a larger than expected maze that reveals itself to be a secret backdoor to all the houses in the neighborhood including your own. You open the final door and find a clone of yourself. And information that says you were programmed to test his home defense system prototype so he can sell it to... lets say.. Black Mesa. Right before he sneaks up behind you and hits your off switch like every other time you get caught

[@thesyndrome43]

Wait, so the whole time the story was basically: As a kid you see your neighbour acting weird, so decide to break into his house for some reason, only to find a bedroom in the basement, revealing him to be a kidnapper, then he captures you and locks you up, you escape and run away. Years later you go back home, the neighbour is long gone, you fall asleep on a couch and have a convoluted dream sequence about getting over your fears from that traumatic childhood event. that's it? I never played or watched much of the game but I remember seeing the hype and the "mystery" behind it, so for that mystery to be fairly common (albeit dark) and everything else just be LITERALLY made up nonsense because it's a dream must have been really disappointing for people looking forward to it. Also "it was a dream all along" was a trope that was tired 20 years ago, I remember watching shows in the early 2000's making fun of it, so for a writer to willingly choose to do that in this day and age is baffling, because I don't think I've ever once seen someone like that as an ending

[@troodon1096]

"It was a dram all along" was already a tired trope when Wizard of Oz did that in 1939. It's a lot older than a 20 year old cliche.

[@barryfraser831]

I've read that officially, nothing that happened was a dream. Everything really happened.

[@GiubileiFernando]

Never played the game, when he mentioned it seemed like the basement opened up to a street and I saw the Exit sign over the door I assumed it was a door to parallel universes. The different houses could have been explained that way too.

[@valletas]

"Its all a dream" only really works into serialised series where one episode can be as crazy as the director wants without breaking cannon When a fully fledge story ends with "its all a dream" not only do the viewer end up being let down but it also kills any potential the series has Why would you play a hello neighbor 2 if the first one already stablished that there are no consequences since its a dream? Like even if the gameplay was good i doubt many would want to play the sequel

[@Hammerhead0276]

It's exactly that, plus each time you get caught you have dreams that will indirectly tell you the trauma that made your neighbor a kidnapper. However, in a hilarious twist that I'm guessing they wanted to do for more game theories - They insist that despite going to sleep before Act 3 and waking up at the end of Act 4 - there is no dreaming in the game.

[@ShadowisAlive]

As someone who tried playing Hello Neighbor 2 blindly, I immediately got stuck, lost, and confused, I had to look up a guide for the whole game

[@ailexx3377]

Regarding the parcour: Dynamic Pixels is a russian based studio and at the time of making this game irl parcour was all the rage in Russia and surrounding countries. I guess they wanted to appeal to kids more like that? As to the minigames and the shadow figure, xthose were supposed to be snippets of lore and of neighbour's/ours (don't remember which one it is) past. Don't remember what the pantry and the shopping ones were supposed to symbolise, but the school one was supposed to symbolise the neighbour/ourselves getting bullied in school (hence the mannequins being aggressive) and finally standing up for himself at the end, gaining the push ability.

[@panqueque445]

Honestly, the simpler this game was, the better it was. I never cared for the lore, it just kept getting more and more in the way. The lore is garbage and they bloated the hell out of an interesting game.

[@Noelle_Holiday]

I personally don't really care about Hello Neighbor's lore that much. The explanations regarding the lore stuff just felt not fully accountable and extremely shallow, as all we got were told in half-assed symbolisms about childhood trauma, the Neighbor's background story being a metaphorical roller-coaster ride, and something about overcoming your fears? What? I've always just wanted a stealth horror experience about breaking into your neighbor's basement, nothing else.

[@panqueque445]

@@Noelle_Holiday Yeah. I was interested in the game when the story was just "your neighbor looks sketchy and is hiding something in his basement". The more they tried to complicate things, the more boring it got.

[@jonathanpilcher337]

Now I'm just waiting for a developer to come along and make a serious stealth horror game that takes influence from alpha 1

[@ilhambrewok7860]

@@panqueque445 Hello Neighbor’s lore just felt pretentious and lazy to me, as it constantly shoves obvious "symbolism" down the player and never does anything with it while acting "deep and serious" without any real effort. I don't think any of the elements they added in the final release, like the house on the neighbor's back or the childhood trauma stuff were truly symbolic. They basically wanted to slap everything together to make sure the game had enough content for $30 and to get it out as quickly as possible so it doesn't become obsolete. I was bored of the fucking vistas of plain white emptiness and bizarre stuff in the backdrop throughout the entire game. It was so amateurish and unintelligible. The rollercoaster cutscene was an extremely sloppy exposition dump, attempting to feed you the “plot” about the Neighbor’s background while putting no effort to the lore whatsoever. The minigames serves absolutely no purpose beyond either dragging out the game’s pacing, or providing us with poorly-told, blatant symbolisms about the main character’s childhood (such as frequently bullied in school by his classmates, being locked inside a pantry and starving for several days, and almost getting kidnapped by strangers while trapped in a supermarket).

[@beansworth5694]

@@Noelle_Holiday It's possible to do that kind of thing well, and they dropped the ball with it. You can include intrigue with an actual meaning behind it in the stealth game, but you have to actually make it intriguing and not railroad the player into it while pretending to be profound with a half-assed product trying to do too many things at once without the proper development necessary to make any of them really work.

[@galaxy-eb9sp]

fun fact! the person who bothered matpat on twitter got fired!

[@WickedWiz]

That is in fact, one fun fact!

[@lexo632]

Yahoo

[@Nebulous_Neuhaus]

Fun fact: MatPat hurled mad shade at this game in his Portal 2 video.

[@hanzofactory]

Good. I got major second-hand embarrassment from that shit

[@kry4853]

Context?

[@Piggynatorgaming]

Those desperate Matpat tweets hurt😂

[@TheGaslightDistrict]

Pre alpha-alpha 3 was a huge part of my childhood like I was insanely obsessed with them so playing the actual release was quite depressing

[@funkyfranklin]

Same

[@corkplane3408]

The problem wasn't so much the narrative evolving or art style changing slightly. It was definitely the inconsistency of the puzzles, the game design directions with the platforming and the buggy gameplay surrounding those design choices. This is also a testament that you should do a closed-beta/alpha because people may like the early stages more and think that this is what the entire game should be. Then when you start taking things the direction you had originally planned, the public may resent these changes.

[@YourFeelingsSucks]

They went from interesting ideas and concept to a nonsensical "horror" game with broken gameplay and frustrating puzzles.. They catered to the younger audience instead of the audience (regardless the ages), as a whole. Plus, they begged MatPat to make theories of their game..

[@Infomaniac_Moment]

Half Life 2 Beta anyone?

[@ilhambrewok7860]

@@YourFeelingsSucks Personally, I find the direction where they start appealing to the younger demographic to be a rather idiotic move and alienated their mature audience. It restricts the freedom to do whatever they want with their initial concepts and forcing them to tone everything down. Originally, the game wasn’t always had an overcomplicated story told through fragments, you just have to break into the Neighbor’s basement and that’s all about it.

[@YourFeelingsSucks]

@@ilhambrewok7860 I agree with you, when they catered to the younger audience, hell i’m sure a kid can’t complete the game alone.. This game is based on stealth, i don’t see the horror.. nor i understand how this is labeled as such.

[@MetroidChild]

It went from a 3d take on clock tower (snes) to breath of the wild parkour, but vastly more scuffed. Add to that money grubbing (which was there from the start) and you got a recipe for disaster.

[@justabearbrowsingyoutube4968]

I don’t think you were being “petty” when you mentioned the design change. It is strange to change the visual design of a game drastically that sudden between betas. From a somewhat neutral environment designed consistent with the overall game theme, to Loony Toon style without plot reasons would catch anyone off gaurd lol!

[@DeathProductions200]

However it is good to note that if a design change does happen, its better to do so during the development stages rather than after you upload the full release

[@matthewmiller257]

The third hand makes so much sense! That's how you got the ability to push the neighbor, you needed three hands to do so.

[@emilyofjane]

I can guarantee you that at least half of this was TinyBuild’s fault. There’s a reason why other indie devs who partnered with them jumped ship after Hello Neighbor’s release.

[@TheBappin]

I love this concept of "big hyped game that disappeared almost instantly without anyone even noticing". How many games have I forgotten about that I was once hyped up about? How can i remember if i don't know what i need to remember? will you remember for me?

[@Unknown-rm8zp]

I have seen the same with every bad game of today, for eg Cyberpunk 2077 or else cyberbug 2077

[@avenged-khaos]

@@Unknown-rm8zp except everyone still remembers cyberpunk

[@dainyvick8262]

More like subnatica 2.

[@williamrhea-banker3005]

You remember a year or two ago when everyone was talking about that game "New World" and they claimed that it was the next step in gaming and everything? Like they made this game seem like it was going to change how developers made games, completely... and then it just disappeared... As far as I know, it still came out and everything, but it's really just another lackluster open-world RPG

[@standardhuman8675]

idk if it made it big at all, but what about tattletail?

[@haphazardv4lles961]

"Act 1 has you start off as a kid who looks around 30" 17:12

[@Mr.Samuraiii]

🤣

[@kyleevogel8312]

I love how no one is talking about this

[@TheAmazingMaxwell]

Hello Neighbor was pretty unique in it's kind, you're not getting chased by a killer or monster, but by a normal neighbor securing his privacy hiding something in the basement, that was pretty simple but intriguing.

[@bigmancozmo]

The simple answer for what went wrong is that they did quantity over quality, instead of quality over quantity.