Howdy Neighbor 2 is all about its open-ended puzzling

Howdy Neighbor from 2017 was a thematically creepy sport. It adopted the story of protagonist Nicky Roth, who, via the participant’s enter, infiltrated the labyrinthine home of an unhinged man with a couple of too many darkish secrets and techniques rolled up his sleeves. With out giving an excessive amount of away, the unique’s three primary acts have been full of the identical type of horrors one may anticipate finding in the event that they have been to rummage round of their shady next-door neighbor’s basement in the midst of the night time — solely to search out the aforementioned neighbor creeping across the nook with a hatchet and a menacing glint of their eye.

However the common neighbor doesn’t hold macabre secrets and techniques behind traps and puzzles of their basement, which suggests Howdy Neighbor 2 might be the following massive factor for anybody who ever fantasized about fixing mysteries at the hours of darkness. Don’t do this at house — er, your neighbor’s house — however do strive Howdy Neighbor 2.

I went hands-on with a demo of Howdy Neighbor 2 at PAX West a number of weeks in the past, and what I found was a pleasant 30-minute chunk of tinkering and toying amid the hiding and frightened scurrying that shortly adopted.

Neighborly comforts

The primary moments of my Howdy Neighbor 2 demo have been fairly humbling. I awakened in a barn, dazed and confused, with nothing greater than a crowbar and a few tchotchkes to bang collectively till a large door unsealed itself so I may meander off to the nice outdoor and, in the end, into my neighbor’s house. It took me a couple of minutes to determine the physics and stock techniques. Nonetheless, I finally realized that I may throw a rock to interrupt a glass case containing considered one of a number of gears required to open the massive door, and that alone was a victory value celebrating.

I scampered out of the barn and off to the massive clearing outdoors, the place I bought my first have a look at the home I used to be meant to be sneaking round in. The Howdy Neighbor 2 demo presents a fairly compact map, specializing in a two-story home with a porch and the encircling grounds. Regardless of not really managing to unravel any of the puzzles, I used to be fairly delighted to poke round and get a sense for the intricacy of Howdy Neighbor 2’s stage design. There have been loads of random objects to choose up with completely different prescribed makes use of, like a shovel I used to dig up a sure treasure.

There was additionally a reasonably neat part the place I wanted to shortly alter a collection of image frames in a set allotment of time with out being caught, an affair which proved far more difficult as soon as the neighbor took discover of my presence.

Squeaky wheels

Breaking right into a neighbor’s house wouldn’t be fairly so exhilarating if there wasn’t a continuing looming menace of being caught and, probably, turned in to the authorities. Full-time neighbor and antagonist Theodore Masters Peterson, the exact same from the unique Howdy Neighbor, tends to do issues in his personal (and normally violent) method. Fortunately, when you get caught within the first stage of Howdy Neighbor 2, he’ll merely ship you outdoors with none of the objects you might need collected in your stock. That’s in all probability a good deal, particularly contemplating what he did to the final individual he caught snooping round his home.

The AI is as sharp as ever, and I felt just like the devilish neighbor was ready across the subsequent nook. That’s as a result of the home can also be fairly open, with rooms intersecting each other in a spiral form. This left loads of alternatives to be ambushed. Getting used to the home took a little bit of follow, and though I realized the format fairly shortly, the added stress of being adopted or chased was ever-present.

Noise is one thing that you simply’ll must be acutely aware of as effectively, as the ground is roofed in glass shards. Some puzzles, akin to opening a protected, require you to make noise, but it surely’s additionally potential to confuse the AI assailant with sound as effectively. As an example, I lured the neighbor right into a room stuffed with squeak toys whereas I ran in the wrong way. This was simply considered one of many potential methods, and I’m very excited about seeing how Howdy Neighbor 2’s open-world method performs out afterward after I supposedly have a a lot bigger play area to occupy.

In the event you can’t wait to get your palms on it, you is perhaps pleasantly shocked to listen to the identical Howdy Neighbor 2 demo I attempted at PAX is on the market to the general public. You may at the moment obtain it without spending a dime on Steam. I can confidently say Howdy Neighbor 2 is value maintaining your eye on forward of its slated launch date on December 6 on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Swap.