At the time of this writing, the game has seen in excess of 30 million downloads, a truly staggering number for a game that was so harshly panned on launch. Against all odds, Hello Neighbor survived its harsh critical bashing and has gone on to become something of an underdog within the industry.ĭespite the poor reviews, sales for the game were surprisingly solid, perhaps in no small part due to its child-friendly approach to survival horror that no doubt fooled parents and relatives into thinking the game was full of whimsy and cartoony fun, rather than nerve-shredding tension and various assaults with Chinese takeout boxes. The original game sits at a 38 percent on Metacritic, with its user score barely scraping a 4.5 - which would typically mean curtains for any other game. Related: Rule of Rose: The Extremely Expensive PS2 Game is NOT Worth the Controversy All of this is set against a colorful, suburban backdrop that has a vague hint of something sinister lurking beneath - think Rear Window, if it was directed by Tim Burton. Its simple premise feeds directly into the stealth gameplay, which has players infiltrate the titular neighbor's house to discover what dark secrets lurk within. This prompts him to go inside and find out what's going on.

In Hello Neighbor, players take the role of Nicky Roth, an ordinary, small-town boy who hears a blood-curdling scream from his neighbor's house when he's outside playing one day. However, the game has since become a wildly popular franchise, largely due to social media. Some praise was lavished upon the colorful art direction and easy to grasp gameplay, but every other aspect of the game was uniformly hated.

Critics were not kind to Dynamic Pixels game Hello Neighborwhen it launched in 2017, with some evening going so far as to label it one of the year's worst releases.

Game hello neighbor