Hello Neighbor came out to a great deal of fanfare, only for players to discover that it was a bit of a mess. There have been a few more games released in the same basic universe sense, each building upon that foundation.

Secret Neighbor is an asymmetrical multiplayer game that combined elements of prop hunt and capture the flag to make it something unique. Whether it redeems the franchise, though, is up to the individual player.

Find out what's going on in your weird neighbor's house

If you have ever played the original Hello Neighbor, you already know the basic concept of this game. There's something weird going on in your neighbor's home, and it's up to a local kid to solve the mystery.

a game that's very much about deception

In this version, things are a little clearer - not only do you know that your neighbor has done something evil, but you'll have the other kids in the neighborhood on your side. If you peel back the layers, this is also a game that's very much about deception.

The threat of the neighbor felt omnipresent in the original game, and it's dialed up a notch in this version of the game by having the neighbor hiding among your group of players, which is an incredibly useful way to make an already-tense setting feel a lot tenser.

Better all around

In a game that's based mainly on feelings of stress and tension, the atmosphere is everything. Fortunately, this game does seem like a step up from its predecessor. It's not that the graphics or music vastly improved from the base game, but rather that everything is used a little better.

There's something about knowing that any one of the kids running around with you could turn out to be the big bad of the game that makes every shadow seem a little bit deeper. A lot of praise needs to go to the sound effects in this game. The music is appropriately tense, and all of the sound effects work very well to build up a sense of real terror.

There's not too much in the game that should seem scary, but the score and the sound effects work in tandem with the graphics to create something unique.

Tight gameplay

This is definitely one of those games that work better on a conceptual level than it does in real life. It's not that there's anything wrong with the gameplay itself, but it's instead that the developers didn't have the foresight to understand how this game could be broken.

At its heart, Secret Neighbor is an asymmetrical game. Unfortunately, the neighbor has too few tools at his disposal, and it's depressingly easy for the kids to use some simple items to eliminate the neighbor early on. This isn't something that's going to be discovered by players in their first round of play, but once it has, it really does ruin the gameplay. It's a shame, though, as the gameplay is otherwise quite tight.

A step up from the past

Secret Neighbor really is a step up from Hello Neighbor. The glitches and the bugs aren't quite as bad. Playing along with friends boosts both the level of suspense and the level of fun in the game.

This game probably isn't enough to prove that the Hello Neighbor platform is everything that it promised, but it makes a remarkably good showing. More iterations on the concept could turn this into a spectacular game.

TL/DR

Secret Neighbor is a fun twist on the Hello Neighbor formula that shows the strengths of this franchise.