My Friendly Neighborhood's Steam Next Fest demo is a refreshingly grown-up take on old horror tropes

rockpapershotgun.com:

It's no secret that I love horror games, but lately I've been going through a bit of a dry spell when it comes to finding upcoming titles to get excited about. I picked up the My Friendly Neighborhood Steam Next Fest demo to kill half an hour without many expectations, but what do you know, it's shot right to the top of my indie horror wishlist.

My Friendly Neighborhood is the tale of a derelict children's TV studio menaced by chipper puppets, who've decided to take matters into their own felt-covered hands to get their show back on the air - and, unlike a lot of recent indie horror offerings, it allows your character to fight back with gusto. It doesn't necessarily break any new ground as such, but it's the combination of influences I find so intriguing. The overall vibe of its setting and theme will no doubt appeal to fans of Five Nights At Freddy's and the recent Poppy Playtime, but as someone who never really got into either of those games, I was put in mind more of Bendy and the Ink Machine. I actually think that might be a more apt comparison in terms of both the threats your protagonist faces and his response to them.

The weapons themselves have a surprisingly BioShock-y feel to them, if BioShock was just a little bit more whimsical with its steampunk influences. In this demo, you get to wield the Rolodexer, a pistol that shoots letters of the alphabet off of index cards. Not only do the metal letters hit with a satisfying chime, they serve to indicate how much ammo you have remaining, adding a weird humorous tension to clip conservation as you edge ever closer to Z. Later on, you get a shotgun that fires cloth-bound children's books that's called, aptly, The Novelist.

Pull up your map, though, and you'll