Falling somewhere in the Chilla’s Art style of horror games, Dread Neighbor’s excellent sound design does some heavy lifting once you realise that the gameplay is pretty railroaded.
It’s fairly well known that I’m a fan of horror games, often the odder the better. So it’s perhaps no surprise that I tried out Dread Neighbor as soon as the offer came in. From the team that created Dread Flats and its wonderfully upsetting creature designs, Dread Neighbor offers something a little more sedate, but doesn’t let up on the titular dread when given the chance.
In Dread Neighbor — it’s taking all of my concentration to spell it without a u because I’m English — you play as a variety of everyday people living and working in and around a rundown block of flats in China. Over the course of the game, your perspective will switch from one character to another as you witness killings committed by someone else living in those flats. The dingy hallways start to feel more and more claustrophobic as your current character becomes another potential victim for this creepy killer, and it’s only through the spirits of those already lost to them that anyone will be able to stop the murders.
I’ll refrain from much in the way of spoilers, as Dread Neighbor is short, with me seeing all four endings in just over ninety minutes. Much of the gameplay involves you moving from A to B, waiting for the scary moment to happen. I realise that this downplays the scary elements of the game, but at about the one hour mark that’s very much how I felt about playing. This feels a lot like the sort of horror game that a streamer would play to entertain their audience, so if you’re expecting a full on survival horror, then this probably isn’t for you.
What Dread Neighbor really is, is a walking simulator with horror, and the feeling of dread really does work quite well. Whilst moments in which you are chased or attacked are scripted, they’re done well enough to get the heart pumping, if only a little. The killer looks creepy enough to unsettle, and the excellent use of sound has you on edge long before you’re confronted, so you’ll likely feel uncomfortable from the point things start to get scary.
Every now and then you’ll get a puzzle of sorts. These are mostly pretty simple, with you needing to find a screwdriver or bolt cutters — can’t have a horror game without bolt cutters! — to access the next part of the story. You do have a pretty fun one about half an hour in involving a staircase that I won’t spoil, but it was certainly a high point of the game.
The visuals, though grainy and sometimes too dark, do a good job of selling the grimey, claustrophobic apartment block, although animations can be pretty stilted a lot of the time. I liked the level of detail in the building though, with it coming across as a rundown complex that someone desperate might choose to live in. It’s the sound that’s really effective though, and I’d strongly recommend headphones for playing this. Incidental sounds, footsteps, and splashes from the nearby river all come across really well. I found myself not wanting to look towards some of the sounds simply because I didn’t want to see what was making them.
There are quite a few downsides though. The biggest is the fact that I couldn’t shake the feeling of being shepherded along a ghost walk for most of the game. It’s fine that this is what Dread Neighbor is, but there’s no scope to go and look at anything else that there might be. You follow the path or you face an invisible wall. This sort of thing really does detract from the horror simply because you know that at the end of the part where you walk, you’ll get a scare of some sort. Yes, the scares are pretty good, but you can often see them coming or predict when you’ll be chased. If you can get past that, then you’ll have a good time. The only other irritation is the menu, where the buttons don’t all work when you click on them. I think this is because the size of the buttons is based on the Chinese text rather than English, and switching the language helped quite a bit, but it was annoying until I worked that out.
Dread Neighbor is a solid enough horror game, with a neat puzzle part way through. If you can get past the fact that you won’t really have any agency until a very limited amount right at the end of the game, then you’ll probably have a fun enough time for the short length it offers.
Dread Neighbor is available now on PC.
