Re: Game Hello Neighbor
Austin Vermont
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Hello Neighbor is committed to supporting our newest neighbors - recently resettled refugee and immigrant families. Since our founding in 2017, we have provided support to over 3,000 refugees and immigrants from more than 48 countries of origin, helping them feel more comfortable and confident in their new lives.
Our work begins the moment our newest neighbors step off the plane in Pittsburgh, providing them with everything from furnished housing to access to basic food and necessities, employment services and school enrollment support, access to health services, cultural orientation, English language classes, and more.
There are over 82.4 million forcibly displaced people around the world today seeking protection. We are committed to being the warm welcome they deserve from the moment they land in Pittsburgh throughout their journey of rebuilding their lives with dignity and respect.
In the game, players play as Nicky Roth, who witnessed some strange happenings at their next-door Neighbor's house.. Their goal is to successfully sneak into the basement of the neighbor's house to uncover a dark secret while avoiding being caught by him.[3] The game's artificial intelligence (AI) modifies the neighbor's behavior based on the player's past actions, such as setting traps along paths the player followed in a previous attempt.[4][5][6]
While the initial alpha versions of Hello Neighbor were received positively, the final product was met with largely negative reviews. The gameplay, control scheme and technical performance have been heavily criticized, though the story, the story elements and the art style were praised. The game spawned a franchise, beginning with a prequel, Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek, released in December 2018. Two multiplayer spin-offs, Secret Neighbor and Hello Engineer, were released in October 2019 and October 2021, respectively. A standalone sequel, Hello Neighbor 2, was released on December 6, 2022.[7]
In Hello Neighbor, the player finds themselves moving into a rickety old house across the street from a mysterious neighbor who is behaving abnormally and seems to be keeping a secret in his basement. The player's task is to find the details and brutal secrets of the neighbor's house and solve a series of puzzles to gather the items needed to unlock and access his basement. As the player explores the neighbor's house, they must not be spotted by the mysterious neighbor, or they will be chased down, and if the player is not quick enough to hide or escape, then they will be captured and be sent back out onto the street. The player can stun the neighbor by throwing objects at him for an easier escape. If the player is caught (or suffers a serious injury on the main point), they will be sent back to their own house and will have to break in again. Upon starting again, the player must be more careful, as the neighbor will deduce movements from the last attempt and set up traps.[8] However, the player can use the game settings to turn on "friendly" neighbor mode, preventing the neighbor from setting these traps and causing him to be less aggressive in his pursuits. However, he is still to be avoided at all costs.[9]
The game is divided into four parts: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and Act Finale. The game is played in a first-person perspective, and the player must aim a reticle at certain objects to interact with them or to throw or use a currently held item (for example, throwing a ball at a window or aiming a crowbar at nails to remove them). Up to four items can be kept in an inventory space. Items of the same kind cannot be stacked together in one slot.[10]
A boy named Nicky Roth is chasing a beach ball down the street before stopping nearby his neighbor, Theodore Peterson's home. He hears what he presumes is a child screaming and approaches Theodore's window, witnessing Theodore locking a child inside his basement only to get caught and thrown back on his side of the street. From here, Nicky must access Theodore's basement using a red key. Upon doing so, Nicky enters Theodore's labyrinthine basement and descends further into the maze, before reaching a door locked with locks of all colors while being pursued by Theodore, the Act ends with Nicky being captured by Theodore, and locked inside a desolate room with windows displaying fake outdoors, ending Act 1.
Nicky manages to escape his cell with the help of Theodore's son, Aaron and escape the basement, only to find that Mr. Peterson has erected a massive fence around his property to prevent escape. Nicky is forced to solve several puzzles to find a way to escape Mr. Peterson's property. Once he crosses the fence, he flees back to his home, and Mr. Peterson, hearing a loud smash implied to be caused by his son Aaron, does not give chase instead staring Nicky dead in the eyes, before locking back up his house, ending Act 2.
Years later, an adult Nicky is evicted from his apartment and decides to return to his old family home. His childhood town had finally succumbed to its cruel fate, and he finds the house in disrepair while Mr. Peterson's home is also nothing but a pile of ruins. While inspecting the ruins, Nicky is haunted by a dark shadow-like creature ("The Thing"), which is implied to be a manifestation of fear itself, and he returns to his home where he finds an old picture of himself as a child before the phone starts to ring. After answering the phone, Nicky sees the shadow entity again. Believing he's hallucinating, he falls asleep as an act of self-therapy. He is awoken by a child's scream and discovers Mr. Peterson's house is back, and more surreal than before, due to his trauma. Nicky navigates the house and has surreal experiences, such as learning to double jump by overcoming his fear of the dark, or overcoming his school fears. Eventually, he enters the basement, now older and more surreal, with exaggerated architecture, with a run-in by The Thing, at the end of the basement is a parallel to Act 1, with Theodore attempting to chase Nicky through the basement.
After doing so, he must protect a younger version of himself from The Thing. Each time The Thing attacks and Nicky protects his younger self, Nicky grows larger until he can fight The Thing. After The Thing is defeated, Nicky sees Mr. Peterson in a small two-room house.
These sequences depict major events in the Hello Neighbor timeline, with Act 1's showcasing the Neighbors' wife being injured in a car crash, and subsequently dying in the hospital, and with Act 2's showcasing the Neighbor's daughter, Mya, falling to her death at the hands of her brother, and subsequently burying her body, before locking his son, Aaron, up in the basement, all of these topics are further explained in the books, and the prequel game, Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek.
The house extensions in Act 2 and 3 are part of these Nightmare's influenced by Nicky's trauma, in Act 2 the house is the same as it was in Act 1, being morphed by the distorted memories of a now-adult Nicky remembering his past.
While Act 3 is implied to be a dream, Nikita Kolesnikov insists that it is not, and that "that would be lazy of them", implying that the events of Act 3 are real to some extent. [citation needed]
Russian studio Dynamic Pixels started development of Hello Neighbor in 2014. The game was released as an alpha build on Dynamic Pixels' website in 2015. It was later approved for sale as an early access game by the Steam Greenlight program and a Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund further development. The studio later signed a deal with tinyBuild to fund and publish the project.[11] The Pre-Alpha version of the game was released on September 29, 2016.[12][13][14] The Alpha 1 version of Hello Neighbor was released on October 26, 2016.[15][16][17] Alpha 2 was released on November 22, 2016. Alpha 3 was released on December 22, 2016. Alpha 4 was released on May 4, 2017.
The game went into the beta phase on July 25, 2017.[18][19] For Halloween 2017, a promotional mod was released including multiple elements from the indie game Bendy and the Ink Machine. The mod includes a black and yellow tint, ink, music from the game and multiple appearances of Bendy.[20] The game was originally set for a full release on August 29, 2017,[21] but was delayed until December 8, 2017.[22][23]
The game was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One on December 8, 2017. A timed Microsoft exclusive, Hello Neighbor was later ported to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and mobile devices.[24] The mobile versions of the game are only supported on a limited number of devices and come with a free trial that allows players to play through Act 1, with the option to unlock the remaining two Acts and the Finale with an in-game purchase.[25]
In July 2020, tinyBuild acquired the development team from Dynamic Pixels to establish a new studio by the name of Eerie Guest Studios and invested US$15 million into the Hello Neighbor series.[26]
Hello Bendy was a Halloween version of Beta 2 released on 27 October 2017, with several elements of Bendy and the Ink Machine. This game mode includes a yellow-and-black background, music of the game and a multitude of Bendy appearances.
Hello Guest is a spin-off of Hello Neighbor made by tinyBuild. The game takes place in the mysterious Golden Apple Amusement Park, and the game revolves around playing as Quentin or Beatrix, two security guards at the Park. Solving puzzles and outsmarting the guest, a learning AI similar to the neighbor from the first game, all while attempting to restart the roller coaster. This game was dropped onto mobile devices, but was deleted to "ensure standards" across the franchise, despite this, the game is still available for download on Xbox and PC as a "Hello Neighbor 2 Pre-Alpha" and the Guest character continued to be an antagonist of several pieces of media in the franchise.
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