Back in June, publisher Tinybuild acquired the development team behind the hit franchise Hello Neighbor. Presumably to keep everything under one roof, they've also invested in Hologryph, the team behind Hello Neighbor's multiplayer spinoff Secret Neighbor. With this investment, TinyBuild becomes a majority stakeholder, and the money itself will be used for a new IP for next-gen consoles.
Tinybuild also announced that the Hello Neighbor franchise has exceeded 60 million downloads across all platforms (PC, Xbox One, PS4, Google Stadia, Android, iOS, and Nintendo Switch), an astounding increase from the 30 million reported back in March 2020. It's even more of a surprise given that Hello Neighbor was rubbish. Our reviewer, Chris Thursten, wrote it was "destined for the bargain basement". I guess back in 2017 we still believed in cosmic justice.
Hello Neighbor developer Eerie Guest, as the team has been called since its Tinybuild acquisition, is currently working on Hello Neighbor 2. It's a direct sequel to the first game which you can play in Alpha 1.5 for free on Steam, and which currently has very positive reviews. The finished game is set to release sometime in 2021.
The concept behind Hello Neighbor 2 is really that of a cute-looking Alien: Isolation—an AI whose house you're trying to break into is looking to ambush you in turn. To that end, they can use items the same way you can. Secret Neighbor on the other hand plays a bit like Among Us—a group of players are trying to break into a house, but one of them is actually the creepy neighbor in disguise.
(Thanks, VentureBeat.)
