itch.io

Even if "Children's Media but Scary" is happening a lot lately, as a massive muppet fan, I can't say no to the premise behind My Friendly Neighborhood - definitely not when it was developed by the same folks behind Charlotte's Exile, one of my favorite segments of Dread X Collection 2.

So, I will say a few things about this demo that put me off a bit

- A so far total lack of context for the fact that you are shooting letters at these puppets and how it works. Absolutely leave some mystery for the main game, but still - just some acknowledgement of it woulda been nice.

- I was able to sequence break at the start, and go somewhere where the tutorial messages of how to tape up puppets didn't appear at all - meaning I had no idea why enemies weren't staying down when I shot them. Funny, sure, but frustrating.

- The puppet chatter. It's funny, it's charming, it makes total sense for the game so I certainly don't wanna be without it, but it needs to be turned down at least a little .it's hard to get into the spooky atmosphere when three puppets in the same room are endlessly jabbering about mail, and very loudly to boot. 

That aside - I REALLY enjoyed this. The puppet designs are lovely, the game flows nicely and makes a certain amount of sense once you get into the Sesame Street-ness of it and it spuzzles ,and I am definitely curious as to how things work around here. And a few scares are fairly clever, like a puppet storage, inert puppets suddenly being alive when you return to a room way later, things like that. I'll definitely be playing the full game and likely enjoying the hell out of it. Great job so far!