With the rising success of Five Nights at Freddys we’ve seen a whole new wave of comic horror.

Games like Poppy Playtime, Choo Choo Charles, and even to an extent Among Us, have really made horror more mainstream in the game space, focusing less on gore and more on jump scares, interaction, and storytelling.

That’s also a category that My Friendly Neighbourhood falls into, a game that sees you run in terror from…puppets. And no we’re not talking the abominations in Lies of P. More Muppets and Sesame Street. Or perhaps more aptly, Avenue Q.

The puppets sound innocent enough, wanting to give you hugs and welcome you to the neighbourhood, but their intentions are…a little less pure.

So you’ll need to shoot them down with…letters, then duct tape them to the ground so they can’t get back up again. It’s not exactly DOOM The Dark Ages style violence we’re talking here, but that’s sort of the point with no blood or real violence to speak of. And no actual real guns being shot, as the experience very much leans into puzzle solving.

The aforementioned Poppy Playtime is a really good comparison but I’d argue MFN is a lot better, more coherant and plays with some interesting themes, while offering suitably taxing puzzles solving and exploration.

You play as Gordon, a repairman who has clearly wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Poor chap. A previously thought abandoned puppet show – My Friendly Neighbourhood – has randomly started broadcasting again from its old, shut down TV studio. So, of course, the handyman goes in to check out the satellite and antenna to see what’s causing it. And is confronted by a lot of…not-so friendlies.

You don’t really know what to expect as you start moving between areas, trying to work out how to find the right key or the relevant blocks, cards and tokens. There’s a lot of back and forth until you find the item you need to make progress and the entire area starts to open up more and more.

But for me, the draw really was the storytelling as I just loved this idea of a show being cancelled and you’re entering their neighbourhood and having to figure out more about the history of the show, the context of the closure, and why there’s this sudden resurgence after all this time, picking it up from newspaper clippings, diary entries, overhearing conversations and looking out for environmental cues as you explore the studio.

It’s a really well designed game, actually. There’s a good feel to the level design, the enemy placement is just the right amount to give challenge while also not being too vexing. And it being on the player to decide when is the right time to tape an enemy to the ground, permanently disabling them or just shooting them to temporarily stun them so you’ll have to fight them again when re-entering a room is a great hook.

Unlike others in the genre as well, MFN goes in deeper with its inventory management system, offering something more akin to the classic Resident Evil games with a grid like interface that you can pick up items, rotate them and slot them into more convenient places so you don’t run out of space. You can also individually examine items, use them and it certain cases equip them.

There’s a bit of clunkiness to the movement and shooting, some enemies taking more shots than it feels desirable at points and there does come this feeling of ‘auto-piloting’ your way around, disconnecting a bit from the game as it follows very similar patterns at the midway point and there’s a lot of interconnected areas that drag on a bit too long. As mentioned, there’s also a fair bit of backtracking but the game freshens itself up with new enemies and jumpscares to surprise.

Fortunately, the narrative and game’s unique sense of humor helps carry this through to find a very interesting mix of a Resident Evil that works really well in this style of game as you do need to think about resources, what you’re picking up and leaving behind and how you’re spending your tapes and letters. But equally you are encountering puzzles that at least require some thought and will need to plan your approach through areas.

It’s a fun, at times surprisingly ambitious little horror game that somehow still brings a silly smile to your face and sticks in the subconscious.

Verdict

My Friendly Neighbourhood is a surprisingly enjoyable romp with a beautiful style, good comic humor, sensible puzzles and design and engaging narrative. Its combat can be a bit hit and miss and there is a sense of back-tracking and auto-piloting that happens as you play, causing you to disconnect from the experience at times. But if you’re looking for something a little different in the vein of Poppy Playtime and the Bendy series, you’re going to have a great time with these puppets.