It was a pain to solve, and at some point, an ejection bug threw me out of the garden. The second act turned things around: there is a pipe puzzle to figure out in order to receive other items. I learned that the roof was to be avoided and tried to figure out where in the house I could find the key, and before giving up I looked online and saw that my initial plan was good, just that for some reason the game had decided to punish me the first time I tried. I tried another time by using an ejection glitch, and the same thing happened.

I managed it, only for the game to knock me out and force me to restart. It was clear from the first act that this would not be a pleasant journey: while the first act was supposed to teach the basics of the design of the game, there was some sort of makeshift ladder hinting that the roof could be accessed. Or jumping on bushes, only to fall in the middle of them and having no way out. Platforming such as piling up a stack of boxes, only to be ejected into the sky by the wonky physics. Not because they require advanced intelligence, but because many elements are hard to find and require platforming. Problem is, the puzzles can be infuriatingly hard to figure out. Thankfully, the developers thought about how a stronger Neighbor could hinder the experience of many players, and a friendly mode was added so the antagonist is slower and its toolset is limited. Isn’t it annoying to have to solve puzzles when you have to travel all the way to them again, and an increasingly smart AI makes it harder as you go along? During the alphas, I often found it better to straight up restart the game to remove all the new traps and cameras that the AI positioned all over my favorite spots. But how could it? Despite its brilliance, the concept was also flawed from the start. The short answer is: no, Hello Neighbor does not hold up.

Hello neighbor rating