Hello Neighbor 3 Playtest Is Live Now

TinyBuild is returning to the town of Raven Brooks with Hello Neighbor 3, and now players can too with an open playtest. The "cozy yet eerie" game tasks players with exploring--and eventually escaping--the now-half-abandoned town of Raven Brooks.

The game's second playable prototype was announced in a video by lead developer and franchise creator Nikita Kolesnikov, who also gives a general rundown on what players will be able to discover in the playtest. The newest version of Hello Neighbor 3 features an all-new map that's "much closer to what it's meant to be," Kolesnikov.

The player is tasked with exploring the houses that make up the town of Raven Brooks to find useful items, with the prototype's ultimate goal being to escape before a storm hits the town. Some of the houses are occupied, however--and the occupants may be less than happy with the player's intrusion.

In Hello Neighbor 3's "system-based world," players can approach every situation in a different way, using stealth, agility, brute force, or even diplomacy. The game's major selling point is that the town of Raven Brooks is a living, reactive sandbox--its inhabitants go about their lives if undisturbed, but can also react in new and different ways to player actions, opening up new pathways in the game.

Players can request access to the new prototype's playtest on Hello Neighbor 3's Steam page.

While the first Hello Neighbor game was reviewed poorly by critics on release, publisher TinyBuild has still managed to spin a whole franchise out of the game, including multiple spin-off games, books, and an animated show.