Enlarge / There isn’t much obvious rhyme or reason to the game’s puzzles, which turn a 10-minute level into an hour-long affair.

That’s a shame, because the premise is promising enough. It’s like a suburban take on Rear Window set in the world of Psychonauts’ Milkman Conspiracy. Empty, twisted cookie-cutter houses embody a cartoonish paranoia. The player character, a young boy presumably native to the breezy street where the game takes place, sees something he shouldn’t. His titular neighbor has shoved a shrieking somebody (or something) into his basement. It’s your job to learn who or what.

All of this is implied through imagery. It has to be, since there isn’t really any dialogue in Hello Neighbor. There’s also no tutorial or anything like a basic breakdown of the controls, either. That quickly becomes a problem as you realize nothing works as it should, from avoiding your pursuer to stacking crates to sneak in through windows.