Thoughts on the Hello Neighbor 2 Demo

When I woke up Saturday morning, I was greeted by an email from one of the PR people representing tinyBuild Games. These emails always give me a sense of joy as they often share details about upcoming games and occasionally keys to review games. This email was a little different as this one contained a key for early access to the Hello Neighbor 2 demo, which is now available on Steam. This demo shows off all of the newest mechanics and the type of atmosphere that they are planning to put into the full game when it releases. I still remember the first time that I ever found out about Hello Neighbor, when UberHaxorNova played the early builds in 2016.

Before we get into anything, it is important to note that I will not be spoiling anything about this demo. You might be asking, “why does that matter?” Well, the demo is a standalone adventure from Hello Neighbor 2 that will be released in December. This means that there are things to discover here that could hint at a story element of the full release of Hello Neighbor 2. Due to this, I want each of you to experience this demo on your own, which should now be available to everyone. Now that we have got that out of the way, let me go into some of my thoughts.

The first thing that I noticed from the Hello Neighbor 2 demo is that the AI for the NPCs has been greatly improved. Eerie Guest Studio notes, “every character in Hello Neighbor 2 is powered by a neural network AI, learning from the players, doing everything in their power to protect their gated community and its secrets.”

This is something that I truly got to see during my time playing the demo. I initially thought that I had gotten Mr. Peterson’s movements down so that I could explore his house, but I quickly found out that his entire pattern changed as soon as I entered different rooms. This made me constantly switch tactics on what to explore next or even how long to stay in a room before worrying about getting caught.

The other big takeaway that I had during the demo was how toned-down the spooky audio is. For example, when Mr. Peterson catches you, there isn’t the great worrisome chase music or even the banging of his feet as he runs towards you. This proves, however, to be a situation where less is more for me. When I was sneaking through the house, I had to be acutely aware of the slight gasps of Mr. Peterson or the doors that I would hear open and close to know where he was. This definitely caused me to hide in closets that are scattered throughout the house a lot more than I thought I would initially.

Overall, I think the demo for Hello Neighbor 2 is a fun little bite of the excitement that we’ll experience once Hello Neighbor 2 releases on December 6th of this year. You can now download the demo on Steam to check out this standalone adventure and to get a true feel of what is to come in your quest to pull down the veil that is cloaking this mysterious community

A PC review copy of the Hello Neighbor 2 demo was provided by tinyBuild for this preview.