Will Hello Neighbor 2 Win Back Its Community?

The title of Hello Neighbor brings out a mix of nostalgia and disappointment for many. A game which rose to fame through its community and an aggressive campaign of keys given to big Youtubers, yet fell out of grace in an instant.

Now, after 5 years, a proper sequel is about to be released, with the demo now available to play on steam, and I, and others, wonder if the failings of the original game will overshadow the new release, or if the community is ready to give Dynamic Pixels a chance to prove they learned from their past mistakes.

Hello Neighbor released its first alpha in 2016. Its concept of a cat and mouse game with an ever evolving AI getting smarter as he catches you stuck out to many as a breath of fresh air, and the game's community became its biggest supporter and marketer.

Dynamic PIxels released three more alphas after that, and with every release, seemed to be getting further away from the core which had charmed so many at the beginning. With convoluted nonsensical puzzles and parkour using cardboard boxes taking precedence over the chase and intricate AI. On each release, the house got bigger, the puzzles got stranger, and the community prayed for the final game to be better.

Then, in 2017, with a bigger house, more parkour, more puzzles, and two whole chapters ending with crowd favourite: "it was all a dream", the final release seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for its community. Youtube went from a flurry of speculation and theory crafting to just pretending the game didn't exist. It wasn't bad enough to warrant anger filled videos that fans could huddle to. It was just, there. It lost the spark from the first alpha, and quietly vanished from people's consciousness.

Those who didn't forget flocked to the first episode of the TV series, or the books (7 in total), or the board game, but the height of its fame is long behind us.

But maybe Hello Neighbor 2 could fix that. The playstation pre-order trailer alone has almost 2 million views, and the xbox trailer nearing 3 million. A short xbox video explaining the AI that charmed the public sits at over 1 million views.

Still, Youtube is far from being flooded by Hello Neighbor content from the demo like it was from its original alpha. Though the demo itself is receiving praise for being what the community had expected the original game to be.

I cannot tell you if the game will be a success. The studio has gone from a small indie company making their very first PC game, to collaborating with Playstation and Xbox for their trailers and preorders, but bigger budget and acclaim does not a good game make, and Dynamic Pixels still have much to prove to their community.

I want to believe that the developers chose to make a sequel as a gift to those who raised them to fame. Make the experience they promised to make all those years ago, and not just slap the Hello Neighbor name on an average game for a quick cash grab. But only time will tell.

Keep an eye out on December 6th to find out.