Reviews - Chackr

unfair

The mod introduced quite a few interesting ideas, that I haven't seen in other HN mods, such as:
- levers around the map that can be used to open doors
An interesting concept that lets the player choose where to insert a lever, and therefore introduces a variety of ways of progressing in the mod.
- there are multiple important objects of the same type (e.g. wrench, crowbar, lockpick, lever)
One may decide to get a certain item in one particular area of the house due to various reasons (them being if the player only knows about the item located there, it is closer to the player, farther from the neighbor, and so on) which in itself is good and adds variety to the gameplay, as well as encourages remembering item locations, and with that eliminates the annoying problem of many mods, now you don't have to spend way too much time to find an important item.

However, it is not balanced well, since for most items it is a lot easier and faster to remember only 1 location of them, which usually lies relatively close to the player when they start the mod, and therefore the variety suffers. Puzzles in general are inconsistent with the above-stated concept.

The player is given multiple ways of entering the house, which is very good and is one of the things that make this mod stand out. But it does come with a cost: the AI's navigation is broken. It can not go through custom or open windows, which makes it possible to abuse such places or even never open the way to the second floor so that it will be free from the threat. It is theoretically globally fixed for the AI is faster than the player, but in reality, coupled with the rooms being cluttered with furniture, that makes it more annoying to escape, it discourages the player from interacting with the AI and encourages abusing mechanics.

Custom mechanics (crates that you open with a crowbar, one-way windows) feel clunky and unintuitive to use, they are never properly explained, and you are never told about them.
(As well as you are never told why you are doing all of it, but suppose it will be explained in newer versions)

I will admit that the house layout design is way better than in other HN mods, but it is still not perfect and sometimes inconsistent (plus the aforementioned overuse of furniture).

The visuals are overall good, but there are problems. A lot of objects are copy-and-pasted (which is understandable given the lack of assets), and the color palette is very different from what HN was originally meant to look like (which is also fine, but it does not look appealing, the colors do not match). Lighting is average for HN level (does not mean good). The
lightshafts are too bright (similar to how almost every HN modder likes to put dense volumetric on every light possible), and they used together with volumetrics looks out of place.

To sum up, the mod is very good for the Hello Neighbor level and despite it having issues, I enjoyed playing it, which is the main indicator.

Very good. Everyone should play this beautiful creation. 9/10 because tomato

Poor level design, that makes it impossible to hide from the AI. Visuals are mostly nice, puzzles are not bad. Good relative to HN1