Hello Neighbor: The ABSOLUTE WORST of Mascot Horror 

With all that talk of a bad mascot horror game, at least there was some positive things about this video That Phisnom collab and the new intro & backdrop

Hello Neighbour is a psychological horror for all the wrong reasons

The hello neighbour devs begging matpat to talk about them will always be hilarious to me

I love the fact that the devs probably sent you the game because of the fact that you are usually very positive when talking about a game and wanted some free publicity only for you to heavily criticize it

“Hello Neighbor” is the ultimate example of selling a mystery that just doesn’t exist. “Theory bait” is a great term and I appreciate Pastra for using it because it’s become a big problem with the over-saturated horror genre especially since Hello Neighbor

The fact that one of the earliest pre-alphas is vastly superior to the finished game is fascinating to me. I have never seen that before.

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 bad, and lo and behold.

Essentially it boils down to this: "They put mascot first, and horror as a second."

Old Hello Neighbor: Small house, learning AI, punishing mistakes, huge stealth involvement, go! Act IV: Holding a susaphone, a Mary Poppins umbrella, a shovel, and a credit card while standing on train tracks that float high in the sky while wondering "Where am I?"

If Markiplier, of all people, gives up on playing your game, I think that says more than any criticism ever could about its quality.

hello neighbor has tried their best to NOT redeem themselves over the years. its been quite hilarious to watch from afar.

Hello neighbor is pretty much the prime example of what happens if you stray far away from what you intended it to be or at least one of the most prominent

I think the phrase "theory fodder for the sake of it" perfectly sums up the entirety of Hello Neighbor, and honestly most mascot horror games.

I would’ve liked if the twist of the game was that there was actually NOTHING in the neighbor’s basement. The neighbor was a completely normal, albeit eccentric and reclusive, guy. The horror comes from how the protagonist (and the player) became so convinced of wrong doing that they terrorized an innocent man and broke into his house for no reason. The game ends with the protagonist realizing this and hearing police sirens getting closer and closer…

The worst part about the mystery being revealed in the first act is that it could be insanely interesting to do it that way but they just... don't do anything with it. Like imagine if it was a Monster House scenario, where the house itself is alive and attempting to lure kids in to investigate the basement, which the man is trying to prevent by setting traps and scaring kids away. Just imagine all the marketing depicting the basement as such an alluring mystery being flipped on it's head as it's revealed that's the house itself trying to lure you in, and you actually fell for it, as you spend the rest of the game attempting to escape.

The concept of this game in the alpha was super interesting. Breaking into someone’s house trying to reach the basement and each time you fail and get caught the neighbour will learn from how you play, placing bear traps and locking doors where you managed to gain entry before. It was promising, but the more updates that came the more the game just spiralled out of control and became so convoluted and filled with random puzzles nobody asked for. Such a shame what happened to this game

“‘Fad’ is just one letter away from the word ‘fade’. And that’s what fads do over time: they fade away. That’s why it’s always better to focus on being *good* rather than being *popular.* If you can be both, then great! But if you had to choose one over the other, always pick good over popular. Because once the general public loses interest and moves onto the next popular thing, there’s nothing of substance to bring them back. And the timeless message you CLAIM to have fought so hard for becomes just another passing trend to forget about.” -Nostalgia Critic, his review of “The Lorax”. Say what you will about him: if there’s any one thing that you should take to heart from his videos, this quote is it.

You know a game can't be saved when Markiplier refuses to play the full game

Hello Neighbor feels like the kind of game that was initially made to be a good game on its own, but during production the devs thought that it would be a good idea to switch gears and make a theory bait game and build its popularity off of theorists rather than off of it being a good game, if that makes sense

I like to imagine Phil got so much time to speak is because it took Pastra that long to tell the police how to perform the ritual needed to get to his house.

If a game ever needed a “FUCK GO BACK” button… this is the one

Originally, the game’s main selling point was the neighbor’s AI. Originally, the neighbor had some of the best AI seen in a game ever. He would do different things to get around obstacles, and had different ways of cutting you off. He could use the environment and objects around him, and that also got completely forgotten about and was never truly used in the games. Sucks to suck ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hello Neighbor is the first game to ever break Pastra's positive attitude. Now we get to watch him release his inner, constructively critical demons.

I DONT know how, but lankman scared the s*** out of me and I FR jumped cause I wasn’t expecting him at all ;-;

Uhhh Pastra… One of the main developers of Hello Neighbor said everything was real and nothing was a dream… …WHAT?!

Fr, markiplier is one of the most positive people I've seen when it comes to judging games. He is so encouraging towards indie developers even with the roughest games if the idea or the foundation is solid, and gives his criticisms with utmost care in order to not come off as aggressive but constructive. The fact that this game tests even his patience is a huge red flag. Edit: I noticed that a lot of people are pointing out his reaction to Welcome to the Game 2 in the replies and yeah I'm gonna be honest that I completely forgot about that game. Although I still think he was mostly patient with that game as well since it was really bullshit and I would've reacted much worse, more like how phil is in this video lol

I legit had no idea Hello Neighbour was a horror game until this video. I always thought it was just (supposed to be) an intense puzzle game with horror like suspense at times. And like… with THAT art style, I feel like this is a very reasonable assumption.

Lankmann saying "Holy Shit, he actually did is peak comedy."

I think one part of the problem was that the alpha provided people with such a satisfying experience. They felt like they needed to add more to keep the hype.

Man, the downfall of Hello Neighbor makes me so sad. The first Alpha was so promising, the premise was interesting, the puzzles were fun and the Neighbor's AI was INCREDIBLE. How do you mess it up just like that? I've seen franchises get worse as sequels are made, but it's the first time I've seen something deteriorate before it even starts

I feel like there’s two good ideas that could have come from this game: 1. a surrealist puzzle platform that devolves into a Dalí-style dream fervor. Psychedelic horror, if it was horror at all. 2. A claustrophobic stealth game about uncovering childhood trauma. Remaining horror in the way the original alphas were.

No you see that’s the idea of the game. It’s actually brilliant psychological horror. The idea of picking up the game and going through it again is so absolutely horrifying that you never will.

God you know a game fucking sucks when pastras talking shit without regret

I feel like, storywise, if they'd really leaned into the "childhood trauma" thing they kinda tried to do with the first two chapters and the ending instead of making it a jumbled vague mess, the plot might've been a bit better. Like, imagine this; you, the main character, move back onto the street you lived on as a child, in a house across the road from a neighbor you used to know. Not long after moving in, you hear a what sounds like a child's scream coming from your neighbor's house, and you discover he's keeping his basement tightly locked. Fearing the worst, you vow to get into that basement and save whoever is trapped down there. You sneak into the house, attempting to dodge your neighbor at every turn, exploring two floors (that's ACTUALLY built like a house), and solve a series of puzzles, eventually uncovering the keys and/or codes to open the basement door. You enter, walk down the steps, and down there, tucked away, huddled in a corner is... yourself. You, as a young child, trapped, scared, alone and shaking, all too similar to a memory you'd long since blocked out. Whether it be something as simple as getting trapped in a basement by accident, or even being kidnapped and held captive, you've never recovered from the event. You were alone back then, but you aren't now. The second half begins, this time the goal being the opposite. You got into the basement, now you need to get both of you out. But the neighbor knows you're down here, and is determined to not let you leave. It follows the same formula, this time with different puzzles and new codes/keys. And once you escape, you can rest easy, in your own home, behind your own locked doors. You wake up the next morning to find your younger self has disappeared completely, and the house across the street, while still there, is much emptier and less imposing than before. Now having faced your own trauma head on, you can finally start to heal. You should probably look into getting a therapist. Bam, just wrote a better plot in thirty minutes than the one they made with 4-6 years.

As a game design student, this game had a GREAT idea in its pre-alpha with machine learning. I think the dev team got too caught up in the success their initial alpha and felt like they had to keep adding content to keep they hype train going.

if i ever heard 28:20 start playing in a chase sequence i'd legit just pass away 💀

I recoil in my skin whenever I see the tweets begging matpat to dissect their comic or whatever it was. Genuinly makes me cringe.

I think that the basement being revealed early isn't bad in and of itself. What a smart game developer/ storyteller would do is make the basement a starting point to a mystery or objective that is far more important and compelling that the original premise. They could've made the neighbor a smaller cog in a bigger, more confusing, machine or had him be a victim of something, which would give the player incentive to defeat that larger antagonist.

I read a comment on another video that rewrote the ending: It kept the “it was a dream” thing but the mc is actually still a kid trapped in the neighbor’s basement. He dreamt that his “older self” saved him to cope. That would’ve been more interesting than whatever really happened.

28:21 That mouse shake told me EVERYTHING LMAOOOO

It honestly hurts to see such an ambitious game turn so sour all because they got ahead of themselves and wanted to follow a trend they were not prepared for. And the worst part is, some of these problems could’ve been easily fixed that they adjust thought through it first! They wanted a cryptic story to compel you to finish the game so you know all the secrets, except they left nothing for you to figure out and just left it as a weird destroyed story that went nowhere and ended completely unsatisfying. Take the binding of Isaac, the story was hidden within the items you pick up like Mom’s coin purse filled with pills and the various food items that were like a moldy sandwich or dog food to imply neglect, it wouldn’t have been hard for them to intersperse these items throughout the rooms that you could look at an interact with that could imply a deeper story about the neighbor. Even games that hello neighbor inspired their lower system off of like five nights at Freddy’s had those hidden secrets to theorize a story from, the problem is they took the system without putting thought into how they would do it and it ended miserably. In terms of gameplay, their problem was they wanted bigger and better but didn’t think about how it would affect the neighbor moving around. The bigger the house, the harder it is for the neighbor to navigate and find you. The solution? Have each floor be similar and how cramped and closed off they are and have the neighbor teleport to each floor if you enter it so that he can look for you to maintain the stress and urgency of making it through the house before the neighbor can catch up to you. The concept of the game is not bad by any means, it’s honestly super cool and I wish they had expanded on the horror aspect of it, they just got ahead of themselves and didn’t realize it until it was too late and they were forced to beg MatPat to make a video about them

I see Markiplier getting mentioned, but ManlyBadassHero is also very gentle about his reviews of indie games- although he always shares where he thinks improvements can be made, I can't recall him ever just straight up calling any game he puts up a video of bad. Closest I remember him coming to that was when he was done playing the second Hello Neighbor game, where you could hear in his voice just how done he was with it, especially having talked about in either the demo of the 2nd game or the final version of the first all the RU-vid-Lore-Bait pitfalls it was falling into.

I'm mostly mad they missed the opportunity to call the sequel "Hello again, neighbor"

I feel like they could've made more money selling cartoon style assets, but the devs just went "let's build a tourist trap in game form"

This game strikes me as just one of the biggest bag fumbles in gaming. The pre-alpha started super strong, and the idea of sneaking into your creepy neighbors house who learns your patterns is incredibly creative and sounds like it could be scary if done right. But, they went more along the lines of trying to appeal to the masses and children with the cartoony, over the top styling and circus funhouse-esque environment, yet managed to alienate both audiences by making the puzzles too difficult and the game not scary.

I love how Lankman is now like the unlockable version of the final boss that is nerfed to death

>Barges into home >Explains why Hello Neighbor is garbage >Elaborates non stop >Leaves only when federal authorities "arrive" Gigachad phisnom

I genuinely forgot that Hello Neighbor was supposed to be a horror game- I thought it was a puzzle game, because I played it and it was really really eugh and not scary.

“Nobody would be CRAZY enough to want to subject themselves to doing tha- HOLY SHIT HE ACTUALLY DID.”

I like Lankman as the one roommate who barely comes out of their room but makes it everyone else's problem when he does

Even if the game NEEDED to show us the basement in the first act, they could've made it so in the third act you hear another kid in the basement to try and save, it would've been an infinitely better incentive then just spawning outside his door

I'll say it here, the best thing about Hello Neighbor is the DAGames song. But there are definitely worse mascot horror games, like Banban.

Actually, the fact that the place was more coherent before the "dream" portion actually makes sense, because when you dream, things don't always make sense. Especially since it seems like the MC was dealing with some serious trauma from his capture and narrow escape as a child. The shadow person is his trauma that kept him from moving on, most likely, but they should've made it more clear.

I love how the developers actively called out Game Theory to analyze their stuff as if they specifically made it so they could get Game Theory to make a video about it.

The most disappointing part of Hello neighbor for me personally was the story. As a kid I was so invested in the mystery of what was in the basement and the horrors that laid within...only to be spoiled in the first chapter and having to go through hell for a dumbed down messy and disgustingly vague thing I've ever seen. This game could have been truly terrifying. Even the final game's concept (at least for the first 2 acts) of curiosity truly being what killed the cat. Being a curious kid and sneaking into a complete stranger's house only to be trapped in there with him could have been a terrifying experience. The game could have been purely stealth based having you sneak around the house while the neighbor patrols his home while you have to hide around closets and drawers and having to listen for sound cues and footsteps. Another thing that I hate about this game is how they tried to humanize the neighbor and make the story entirely about him. Completely undermining the sheer trauma the protagonist has to go through until that horrible end boss with the shadow demon. No matter how much of a sympathetic character they try to make the neighbor, he still kidnapped a child. And even with all that "lOrE" the neighbor is still flatter than paper, blander than cardboard, and as scary as a dulled fucking butter knife. A real disappointment for everyone.

Idk why but this is the pastra video I always come back to. It might be because it was my first, but man, the length, music, and everything else just made this an absolute perfect intro for me.

I feel that if Hello Neighbor was picked up by game developers that actually give a damn about their games it could be an amazing game.

I remember how eerie and genuinely scary the very first builds were, their choice to abandon the ideas I think made it doomed

You can tell they most likely made the house bigger because they wanted to extend the playtime so people couldn’t refund it. It’s insane because in a house, every room has a purpose, but once you pass the second or third floor, the rooms are just there to be there and nothing else. Even more baffling is that the neighbor can’t even reach the majority of the house which is HIS making me question why he built the house that way in the first place

The long. Pause. After "Oh." Made me cackle so hard

so, this is my first time seeing your videos thanks to the recommended section (probably the game theory binge I've been on) and I have to say I cannot believe how fair and unbiased you tried to be here. This is easily the most fair and kindest review I have seen of this game but you were also realistic and fair and if your other videos are anything like this I think I've found my latest binge, thanks for the video

I like how pastra is relatively chill about everything and then we have phisnom shouting and swearing like a sailor

25:24 'as the intruder who broke into my house brought up earlier' As much as I love the Phil cameo, I adore the idea of just a completely random stranger breaking in to steal stuff, seeing the half-written script on Pastra's computer and going 'No, no, hang on. Crime can wait, I need to add my two cents to this.'

I don’t understand why people call this a “mascot horror game”. Mascot horror is a genre where you take a kids character, real or not, and twist it in a scary way. The neighbor isn’t a fictional kids character for a resturaunt or something. He’s just a man. I can totally agree that Hello Neighbor isn’t a good “game franchise”.

I remember the team tweeting almost 3 times a day about how convoluted their story was and marking matpat

The fact Pastra genuinely apologised for not liking the game really shows that this guy is a true game critic

Phil and Pastra bounce off each other ridiculously well, we NEED more of these two together.

When I was younger me and my brother played Hello Neighbor on the family Xbox One all the time, the only reason we liked it is because we would glitch the game and steal the neighbors stuff, we never even tried to beat it.

The HOA hates him

I'm sorry, but that "holy shit, he actually did" was just too hilarious. Lankmann, an eldrich being of mass destruction, literally just went from sounding like a villain to genuine confusion. 🤣

I love how phil went from reading a script to speaking out of genuine frustration

@23:25 I Love that Pastra Used that siren to Get Phil out of their ****ing House!!! The House that Lankmann pays Rent for Pastra to allow him to stay at their House!!

For me, i wanted so badly to play the game after watching the older alpha builds. When i bought my switch it was one of the first games i bought. Biggest gaming regret ever. I played for probably 5-10 hours and gave up. Haven't touched it since. The only reason i EVER even touch the box is because my little cousin is obsessed with it.

Hello Neighbor essentially made Pastra do their equivalent of snapping. From optimism even in the face of opposing opinions and broken games, gushing about great horror titles, this one game was enough to not merit even a spark of that light. The closest to this I've seen before was when they talked of FNaF:Sister Location's story in UhYeah's video. PS: I just would like to point out that A Hat in Time's Subcon Manor is better horror than this entire game.

i definitely think that wanting convoluted lore so that matpat and other online theorists would talk about it was this game's downfall . if they had stuck with the original vision it would've been so much better

I remember EARLY (like really early) Hello Neighbor. It was really fun, and every indie game RU-vidr from Markiplier to 8BitRyan to mfing VanossGaming was playing it and having a great time. As the game updated and changed rapidly, and never lost its wacky charm and the enjoyable gameplay. What bugs existed at the time were hardly noticeable to the casual player, and were usually exploited to see out of bounds to discover lore and stuff. And, of course, we all wanted to know what was going on in the damn basement! The full release of the game is barely even a shadow of what the alpha and early access builds looked like. And it makes me incredibly sad

It’s like a beautiful well crafted cupcake with the most delicious butter cream, it’s simple but it’s amazing but as it went on it because a big mess of candy bars, and chocolate sauce, it looses the simplicity and the quality, and becomes a sickly mess

What makes the story of hello neighbor so much sadder is that the game was really promising from the first alpha, and they completely threw that opportunity away

I find it funny how pretty much EVERY indie horror game that's blown up over the years has found their footing and achieved legitimate quality that allowed them to maintain a fanbase even now (IE: FNaF, Bendy, Baldi, heck even Poppy to a degree simply because at the least Chapter 2 brought new things to the table) ...All of them EXCEPT Hello Neighbor. A game that prided itself on having an AI that "evolves" to counteract the player is the only one to have not evolved at all. In fact it feels like every version of the game and it's subsequent games has gone BACKWARDS in it's development. (Hello Neighbor 2 for instance started as a genuinely interesting spinoff called Hello Guest featuring a genuinely sort of freaky antagonist...only for it to be turned into a carbon copy of the original game but with more houses, day 1 DLC, and the antagonist from Hello Guest *literally not being in the game* )

Phisnom's entire section becomes much funnier if you've watched his stream beforehand, the resulting context makes it HILARIOUS!

The funniest shit ever are the tweets begging for MatPat's free publicity. Never seen a producer humiliate themselves like that

I love how Phisnom's swearing is censored but Lankman isn't. A nice attention to detail since Lankman technically works with Pastra. Edit: Gosh how did this get so many likes?

If you look at the earliest beta's for the game, it gets so much worse. Because they HAD a good game in the works, with actual challenge and mystery, they just completely ruined as we saw them "remaster" their game into something unreasonable and unrecognizable

What makes me so sad about Hello Neighbour was just how promising the original few pre-alphas/alphas were.

If every Mascot Horror game had one mental illness to define it, Hello Neighbour would be Dementia. It doesn't know what it wants to be, where it is, and can't make up its mind on anything.

You have to turn off the power to the house to thaw the ice in the fridge? Just unplug the fridge....

I absolutely adore the artstyle, aesthetic, and idea of Hello Neighbor. It's such a shame to me they failed to deliver on any of it.

I like how Phil's sensors are the Hello Neighbor sound effects

The way I would have done the game is, like in the game, the player is a curious kid wondering what is in his neighboor's basement of his normal sized house (not that Frankenstein thing it is in the game). Act one would be the player sneaking around the house, trying to find the keys that unlock the neighboor's basement door, but will get caught before being able to open the door. Then act two would be a quick one, the player attempting to escape the house, running as fast as they can to try and escape or hide, but eventualy, the neighboor catches up to them and is like "you wanted to see what's in my basement? how about you stay there" and then the player will be locked in the neighboor's basement. Act three will be the player, as an adult, attempting to use the plan he made over the years to escape, the neighboor, now old and slow, doesn't catch up to the player this time and they manage to escape. And the final act will be a dream the player is having, a scary one about how being locked up and closed off from society at such a young age impacted them, then the huge Frankenstein will appear, because that's how the player as a kid saw the house, huge and weird with many doors and locks and puzzles, and the neighboor will be that shadow monster that appears in the game, because that's how the player saw the neighboor, a quick blur that hides in the shadows, and you can't see it until it's too late

You know your horror game is bad when even Pastra can't find anything good to say about it...

Can’t get over this game blowing up as big as it did where as Little Nightmares, which I believe was announced around the same time, didn’t get the huge boost it deserved.

At least we got some bomb a songs from this game. "Leave Me Alone," "What Are You Hiding," "Hello and Goodbye," "No Keepin Secrets" which also reminds me, we also got Secret Neighbor, which was and is still fun to play.

Back when it was being built was way more hype and fun then the final product simpily because the community was chill af

The interactions of Pastra and, Lankman, and then Phisnom coming in, as small as they are, are fun to witness. The analysis being so different really shows how not to build a horror game.

I love how Lankman is just being kinda chill and humorous in this video, shows that he’s not JUST a tentacle psycho who forces Pastra to make videos against his will

Bro made this before Garten of Banban came out and it shows

ah yes the classic, put the globe in the fridge so that you can adjust the temperature and then something the crowbar idk i saw some youtuber get angry about that

I ADORE the way Lankmann says Pastra’s name, like he emphasizes the As and hisses at the S, and just the general vibes he gives off while speaking make him sound so creepy and menacing in a charming way. And then he says “holy shite he did” and it’s completely forgotten for the pure shock and I love it to bits

Remind me. Why are we supposed to be afraid of someone who looks like an npc that the devs don’t think we’ll look at for more than five seconds?

the game's difficulty is really easy to break too, you don't even need to open that first gate on the second floor, just jump onto the side table, then the wall lamp, then you're across and the neighbour is stuck downstairs, but I could break it further, I just grabbed every useless item that is grabable scenery and threw it down that first flight of stairs till the neighbour got stuck, then I would keep throwing stuff down their to bury him, ensuring he is never again a threat, I could also climb over and not get caught, even if he escaped the pile, he is physically incapable of climbing it