Ahh, neighbors. Sometimes you love them, sometimes you hate them, and sometimes you don’t even recognize them. Good for you if you are lucky enough to have one of the positive people next door. But sometimes it could also be that one negative individual giving you hell all day long. And I’m not talking about the old grumpy curtain twitcher from the building across the street. I’m talking about the terrorizing hell-on-earth type. On the other hand, it can always get worse. So you can still call yourself lucky as long as your neighbor doesn’t turn into some flesh-eating zombie. But, just in case you could never experience this common scenario, there is an easy and portable solution at hand.
The neat little horror adventure “Neighbor” for the old but gold Nintendo Game Boy is dealing with this exact situation. At least at the beginning of the story. A young lady moves into a slightly shady house, just to figure out that something goes immensely wrong from the first day on. The whole thing escalates pretty quickly with every element a basic horror tale needs: monsters, witchcraft, strangely behaving protagonists, and such. At first sight, I was pretty skeptical. How to get some horror feeling onto an 8-bit grayscale mini screen? It came out that it is possible. Amazingly well.
In general, it looks like the common 8-bit RPG graphics, though a bit darker. Garnished with some really nice cut scenes, the story is told pretty straightforwardly. And so is the gameplay. You are kinda pushed in the right direction and there are not too many choices to be made. Although, there are a few ohh-wow moments throughout the game. And even if the storytelling seems pretty linear it is still highly enjoyable to discover the right path through the adventure. Not least because of one specific feature. There are no traditional save points to reach, but you can die. However, you don’t have to start the story all over. You will just return to the exact moment before your poor choice puts you in the delicate position of facing your maker. This, for one purpose, keeps you stuck to the game pretty well, since you won’t get too bored replaying the same scenario over and over again.
The overall extent of the story is reasonable, although a bit short, but copious enough for a nice intermezzo. The story is structured into 5 chapters plus an interlude and an epilogue. A light confusion came up when facing the last chapter and proceeding to the epilogue. Since the last chapter has 2 alternative endings, but the epilogue links only to one of those. It can be quite intriguing when coming from the not-connected ending. Anyway, you could count that as one of the surprising moments that make your brain click with this ‘aha’ effect. And certainly, it breaks a bit with the linearity of the game.
Now, considering it being a horror adventure, the biggest concern was how much horror can a Game Boy game be. But, and that really surprised me, there were a few discomforting moments. Especially when a wrong decision was made and you get struck down by a graphically delightful cut scene. For that, the sound design has to be mentioned, too. Very simplistic. But that is exactly what it needs and makes it creepy at certain points, indeed.
Would I recommend getting it? As you might have expected: definitely. Although there might be still some bugs contained, they don’t break the game. And are fixed very quickly by the author, whenever one is reported. You can definitely see that this is a project with enthusiasm and passion. And as far as you can take from all the comments about it, this little 8-bit portable horror adventure is highly appreciated.
If you are seeking a slight thrill, no matter if you are on the way to work or chilling on the couch, go for it. And don’t get too suspicious when you meet your new neighbor for the first time.

Want to try it yourself? You can find it on itch.io: https://horatiunyc.itch.io/neighbor