What Went Wrong? - Hello Neighbor

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

"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.

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

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.

"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...

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.