My Friendly Neighborhood preview

Horror is an interesting field for gaming and other media in general. There are plenty of things to fear, from the horrors of the unknown and right to things grounded in reality. Spiders, clowns, and the dark are some of the top things to spook you out. But even things seemingly harmless and even friendly and lovable can be dread-inducing. Could you imagine the Teletubbies being a family of murderous cannibals? The Muppets worshipping the forces of evil in a satanic cult? Or Sesame Street killing off anyone who dared enter their studio in the dead of night?

Well, two brothers have decided to venture into the unknown of the Puppet world and bring you a terrifyingly colour and nerve-wracking time in My Friendly Neighbourhood, where puppets meet Resident Evil! Prepare to learn your A, B, Cs and how to avoid certain puppet death!




What is MFN?




MFN is a first-person survival horror, inspired by the likes of the recent Resident Evil games, namely RE7. Players control a guy who finds himself trapped within an old, abandoned TV studio, which was once home to a popular Kids TV show featuring an assortment of colourful puppets. A place that should be filled with fun and laughter, is instead filled with murderous mumblings and insane chanting.

Gordon a repairman is sent into the studio after the long-abandoned place has begun broadcasting once again. A strange call for those who dare investigate what is going on. Gordon is unaware of the true horrors that await and finds himself plunged into the depths of the Studio, along with plenty of colourful and insanely murderous puppets.

It’s time for Gordon to find his way out from the massive Studio, which is made up of multiple areas, all featuring different thematic elements, death traps, puzzles, and killer puppets. With only the aid of a single sock puppet that tries his best to help him, Gordon is on his own for the most part. Players will have to explore the studio, find key items and weapons for defending themselves and find a way out before they’re consumed by living puppets that sing creepy songs … all … the … time!




Demo overview




The demo features a rather large segment set within the confines of the Studio’s basement. After a brief exchange with the friendly sock puppet, Gordon is left to explore the surrounding areas. You’ll need to find an exit out of the basement, which is easier said and done. There are multiple obstacles in your path, including many locked doors and many murderous puppets. But Gordon has a trusty gun that shoots letters at his enemies, but this will only keep them down for a short period.

Exploring the surrounding areas will allow Gordon to find a few key items, some of them will come into play later on, while a handy new weapon, much like a shotgun is found fairly early on. There are puppets, minding their own business, but upon seeing Gordon, will agro and charge you. Taking them out quickly or running for a nearby door are your main options. You can take them down easily, but they will get back up. The Tape mechanic comes into play, where rolls of tape can be used to tie them up and keep them down. Whether the tape breaks, I’m not sure, but it seems permanent for now … but I have a feeling they may come back still. Only as any puppets tied up will remain alive and in the same spot where you apprehended. Plus they sing and chant lines from the old TV they were on, which is incredibly creepy. 

Exploring deeper into the basement you’ll begin to find coins, these are really important and can be used on ticket stations mounted on the walls of save rooms. These ticket vending machines will allow you to refill your health (indicated by Healthy, Caution, and Danger on the screen) or save your progress. I like this, it’s a neat idea to decide whether you like to save or refill your health. So exploration and finding these coins is a massive “must-do”. 

Ammo and resources were quite plentiful at first, then when I ran out of tape, and health drinks, it became a tense problem (but a fun one). So it’s a balancing act of either knowing who to tie up, who to shoot and where to run. Corridors are tight but thankfully most puppets are in a world of their own, singing and chanting rhymes from their glory days. So you can sneak past, pretty much unnoticed for the most part. If spotted, you can shoot, or run, but be mindful as these guys are quick on their feet, so a frantic run to the nearby door can be absolutely enthralling and heart-stopping at the same time. Being caught will usually bring your health down one point, and you really only have 3 or 4 at most. So, this is quite tense for a horror game.

I was playing on normal, so if you do fancy a more forgiving time here, you can play easy.

But the idea of balancing your resources, sneaking, and taking out those puppets which really are a problem is a nice bit of decision making and strategic planning, which any good survival horror should have.




Sesame Street just got dark




Continuing the venture through the basement shows off how massive it is, and how big the studio can potentially be. There is a bit of backtracking, as you will find key items for unlocking a new area back the other way, but the developers have made sure that backtracking is just as intense the first time around. Of course, you have puppets that may or may not be active depending on if you tied them up.

But within 15 minutes of playing, a new, larger puppet comes into play and begins to stalk you. This giant red puppet is named Rex and his entrance is extremely intimidating, as he’s on stage, hammer away, and bathed in shadows. The only way to progress is to turn on the lights, something which is incredibly frightening to do, without knowing how this monster will react. Thankfully he runs off into a large pipe, but this begins the next stage of the level.  Rex will now stalk you, hiding in pipes scattered around, waiting for you to walk by and thus becoming a tasty treat. This was pretty intense, seeing as there are lots of open, large pipes in the basement, and for this type of stalking gameplay to happen early on, made me think “will more surprises as this happen?” or “Will this run its course and be tedious?” I have faith in the former and feel the developers have taken notes from the likes of RE7, to break up the studio and have interesting encounters throughout each area.

I hope so, but do have a good feeling.

Once Rex is about, you can progress into the next areas, where there is some minor jump scares, more key items to find and some pretty cool puzzles to solve. One of these puzzles involved printing out time slips with various codes on them and feeding them into a number of clocking-in machines (machines used to time when workers start and leave). A nice, but confident puzzle that really outshines many of the puzzles in recent Resident Evil games.




Master of puppets!





As the basement expanded, so did the surroundings, and there was quite a variety of terrains to the basement alone. From the bricked wall sewers, the metallic walkways hoover over a mass of dirty water, a cave-like system, and boiler room-style underpasses connecting to various other areas. The craftsmanship in the variety of styles for environments in one location was impressive and gives me hope that the brothers will give us a great variety of other areas inside the main studio and beyond.

The puppets were genuinely unsettling, despite singing cheerful songs and looking rather cute. The tension built when entering a new area is unholy, as each main room is separated by a door/loading screen, much like the old Resident Evil games. This can be a tension killer if you look at it as though puppets can’t follow you and with so many rooms and so many loading screens/doors to pass through, you may find it somewhat tedious when going back and forth.

I can see this design choice as more for building tension and balancing, as I had nowhere near enough tape for all the puppets I encountered, and having them follow would end up being as annoying as Dark souls 2. Still, the multitude of doors/loading screens could be somewhat repetitive for those who do go back and forth searching for key items.

There were some other small things, such as a somewhat broken or missing reload function (where I would reload the pistol-type weapon and didn’t see the clip refresh), but looking at social media, the brothers who designed MHN have fixed this for the next update.

And very impressive is the inclusion of unlockable cheat codes and extras, which was a really nice touch! Survival horror games thrive on bonus content and unlockable goodies and the developers have seemed to be enjoying making the most entertaining replays possible.




Overall?

As mentioned in my previous article, MHN was my favourite demo and biggest surprise from the Steam Next Fest. I love survival horror, I loved RE7 and I love the idea of turning something cute, normalised, and grounded into some monstrous and evil. MHN has a solid foundation for its survival horror gameplay, including a captivating environment, interesting enemies, neat weapons, and good survival mechanics to keep you on your toes. I can’t wait to see Gordon’s venture and what is to come.

I highly recommend you Wish list MHN now if you love horror, survival horror, or want to punish some crazy cute and murderous puppets for a laugh while being terrified at the same time! 

You can check out the demo on itchio and support the developers on their quest to finish and release MFN right now.

++ Compelling setup and scenario
+ Solid Survival horror gameplay, with plenty of exploration, resource management and scares
+ Creepy and creative enemies