Neighbours back From Hell – HD Remaster

tl;dr: 2-in-1 remastered game of point&click adventure levels about setting up pranks while avoiding and sneaking around your neighbour; pure Schadenfreude; about 8 hours for 100% completion;

The first three tags for the game may not initially sound too compatible, but they describe the game perfectly: Point & Click, Puzzle, and Stealth. You're in an area (a house, a cruise ship, or a tourist destination) with your neighbour doing endless rounds of several interactions, each representing an opportunity for at least one prank. You use the usual point & click adventure game approach of picking up items and using them on specific opportunities in order to set up a prank or a chain of two or three pranks. You have three lives, and you lose one if you're caught in the same room with the neighbour or his mother (with some exception like them napping or being in the shower). You complete the level by setting up and triggering all the pranks available in that level (typically between 5 and 9). There are more aspects to it (like hiding spots, pets alerting the neighbour, or "wrestling" a moving item for a few seconds to perform some tasks), but mechanically the game is simple, most of the challenge lies in finding all the setups for pranks before your luck runs out. Especially early on, they tend to be simple - like putting glue inside a hat or sawing through chair legs, but later they may take some steps in preparation. Here's an example of a particularly elaborate sequence: find a Swiss army knife, use it to collect some flowers, feed the flowers to a cow, collect the cow pie the animal will produce as a result, plant the bovine produce in an icecream machine for the neighbour to receive the next time his rounds take him to the machine.

100% completion should only take about 8 hours (my playtime of 8.5 includes my leaving the game idle sometimes), and there's plenty here to give you a hit of Schadenfreude. And just in case you start feeling bad about ruining your neighbour's day/life (even going so far as to follow him on vacation to torment him along the way), the second game's levels make sure to lay it on thick what a terrible person he is, with constant cases of him bullying a child, abusing animals, committing petty theft, etc.

Remember terrorizing your virtual neighbor as a kid? It's back, but with way more explosions (and way less chance of getting grounded)! Perfect for nostalgic gamers and pranksters at heart, but others might find it repetitive. While the gameplay's a blast from the past, some fans might miss the charm of the original's main menu.