There are few things more unsettling than a puppet gaining sentience and its first thoughts being to engage in a bloodthirsty hunt for anybody who doesn’t look like a Sesame Street knockoff. Before being ported to Xbox, I bought My Friendly Neighborhood for PC back in 2023, and it quickly became one of my favourite survival-horror games at the time, so I didn’t hesitate to grab the chance to play it again on a new system. Taking the role of Gordon O’Brian, the player is sent to a TV station to disable an antenna that is broadcasting episodes of My Friendly Neighborhood over the news, to the displeasure of TV-watchers trying to get their daily news fix. What follows is a fight for survival as the puppets try everything in their power to stop Gordon from taking their show off the air forever.
No Zombies, Just Puppets
My Friendly Neighborhood takes lots of inspiration from various survival horror games but most obviously the Resident Evil games. Throughout the game, Gordon must find variously shaped keys to open locked doors, solve puzzles to gain access to new rooms or items, and when players need a breather, Gordon can save the game using tokens that act like ink ribbons. There’s even an item box for storage, a discarding mechanic for items no longer needed, and a Resident Evil 4-styled inventory system that OCD sufferers will likely spend hours sorting. Basically, if you find your kids being too young to play the most popular franchise that Capcom has to offer, you can let them play My Friendly Neighborhood instead.
“Friendly, Friendly, Friendly!”
A simple job turns into a fight for survival when Gordon encounters the first hostile puppet in one of the five different locations of the game: Stage 4. These human-sized characters are the main obstacles in the game and can actually be quite unsettling to listen to. For instance, each character seems to constantly reel off lines from a script that would probably not air on children’s television, making the player aware of their presence in each location. Other than that, they may just make random noises, groans or even laugh to themselves up until they spot the player, giving way to a chase that is absolutely relentless, which only ends when exiting the room or eliminating the puppets themselves. These puppets don’t actually stay down forever and will respawn once a room is re-entered. To combat this, players can find duct tape scattered around levels that will allow you to keep defeated puppets grounded by wrapping them up. If only we could duct tape their mouths as well…
The Power of Words
But how do we fight these puppets off? With some good old fashioned American artillery, of course! However, My Friendly Neighborhood is not for those who love guts and gore, so bullets and guns are a no-go. Instead, the player will find that guns like pistols and shotguns have been replaced with toy-like weapons. For instance, players can use the grenade-like weapon aptly named “The Punctuation”, which explodes into solid letters that put puppets to a proper full stop. There’s also a secret chaingun called “The Conclusion” that will seem obvious as to why it was given that name once obtained and used. Letters are used in place of bullets and can really teach the puppets a lesson, portraying how the developers have really tried to make this game their own, albeit with the obvious inspirations from other titles.
Bear Hug!
Perhaps the puppets are just too heavy-handed and want a friend? Allowing these abominations to get too close leads to an attack that represents a very, very strong…cuddle, making Gordon hit the floor and take damage. Once Gordon gets back up, the puppets play a very strange, playful animation making it seem like I was tagged, and now they are ‘it’. Damage is calculated in three thresholds; Healthy, Caution and Danger. Each puppet deals a certain amount of damage for each difficulty the game is played on. Basically, the higher the difficulty, the tighter the hugs are, and the more prone to death that Gordon is with every attack.
How Unfriendly of You…
Anybody who loves a good scare shouldn’t shy away from this title due to the very niche but well-designed set pieces that show why this game is called survival horror to begin with. One element of horror near the end of the game represents why the puppets went crazy in the first place, and throughout the game, players will enter spooky locations, like the sewers, that include flickering lights and unsettling enemy placements. Jump scares aren’t really a big threat here, but when the developers want the players to get spooked, they do a brilliant job at it. For instance, one sequence involving a puppet multiplying instantly in front of the player gave me a big shock the first time I saw it and led me to actively pause the game to catch a breath.
Final Thoughts
My Friendly Neighborhood is clearly a very different style of survival horror, and if the thought of puppets coming to life and attacking the living scares you, then you’ll find a very good game here. Having finished the game three or four times and trying out all the different unlockable cheats and game modes, My Friendly Neighborhood still wowed me from the first time I played it two years ago.
Developer: John Szymanski, Evan Szymanski
Publisher: DreadXP
Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Windows PC
Release Date: 17th July 2025
