A complex magnet device, which you use to activate switches from afar in a couple of puzzles, is lying around in a place obvious enough to stumble on it by accident. Hello Neighbor hearkens back to the dark ages of point-and-click adventure games in terms of nonsensical solutions to simple problems.

But the further you progress in the house, the more convoluted the neighbor's security system turns out to be. The controls are bizarrely unintuitive, with an unusual and confusing button layout that can't be remapped. While it's commendable that there's so much leeway in how you can approach the neighbor's house, Hello Neighbor tips the balance from player freedom to player neglect. In practice, even with the game spending significant time in Early Access, it feels unfinished at launch. Unfortunately, that's where the coolness ends. The aesthetics are also a bit unusual, with a sort of warped 1950s retro design to everything that truly stands out. Conceptually, it's a promising twist on the usual neck-snapping military shenanigans of the average stealth game. The neighbor-a gruff gentleman with an all-time great mustache-doesn't take kindly to intrusions, though, and each time the child gets caught trying to sneak in, the neighbor sets new traps, locks doors, and patrols that area more often. Hello Neighbor is based around a stellar idea: In the game's first act, you are that aforementioned child, who has taken it upon himself to sneak into his neighbor's house any way he can and get into the basement.

What is he hiding down there? A prisoner? A nightmarish genetic abomination? Hello Neighbor has answers to that question, but not only is getting to those answers an enormously frustrating experience, but the answers themselves aren't worth the effort.

You run over and peek in the neighbor's window just in time to see him barricading the basement door. Suddenly, there's a terrible shrieking from your neighbor's house across the road. Imagine you're a small child in a quiet suburb, playing in the street on an idyllic afternoon.

Hello neighbor basement