Initially, the project was developed by a different team and was called Hello Yra 3. Xrisofor was the developer, and Micromax assisted him and posted dev blogs on his channel. For several years, they transferred assets, worked on mechanics, created their own AI, and developed the storyline. Eventually, the work culminated in a couple of builds that were sent to Hello Neighbor YouTubers, after which Xrisofor left the developer role and moved on to new projects.

Some time later, Flutt1K approached Xrisofor with a request to create a VR mode for the game based on Hello Yra 3. He worked on it for two months until he took a break in August and provided Flutt1K with the source code. After a few days of experimentation, it all evolved into a remake of the prototype. Flutt1K understood almost nothing about Unreal Engine, but his eyes lit up – he wanted to learn the engine. Throughout August, Xrisofor fixed the game, while Flutt1K worked on the remake and learned the engine. During development, he decided to apply his new skills to creating another map – thus, Angry Neighbor Remake was born. Throughout August, there were discussions about the game being released under a new name, combining three games and a VR mode, and being positioned as a toolkit that would allow others to create their own fan games based on HNGR. And so, on August 31st, the game was compiled, tested, and released.

After the release, Zorgo 33, who covers various Hello Neighbor fan games, helped us gather our initial audience. A huge thank you to him! After that, we began refining the game: fixing bugs, releasing patches, and ultimately – a major update 1.1. The key innovations were a remake of Alpha 1, DevGAMM Remake, a redesigned menu, and new, still-in-development content for Angry Neighbor Remake.

Let's talk about the bugs in the game. A big thank you to all the players who reported errors in the comments on GameJolt and on our Discord server. We tried to fix them as best we could, even though there were very many of them. The most common bug was the red filter in the game. It is related to DirectX version incompatibility: HNGR uses DirectX 12, and if the game is launched on hardware that doesn't support this version, rendering errors occur. Fixing this is quite simple: create a shortcut for the game and add -dx11 to the launch line to run it in DirectX 11 mode. Many also wrote about lighting and collision. Let's start with lighting: in the early days of HNGR, priority was given to the VR mode, and the development of the games themselves was meant to allow them to be experienced in VR. Unreal Engine 5 turned out to be too demanding, which meant constantly lowering graphics settings to somehow improve the situation, but this also led to a degradation in the overall quality of the game.

After the release of update 1.1, the second major boost in popularity was given to us by Topsy – a huge thank you to him! For several months, bugfixes were released until the development of version 1.2 began. The main changes in this version: many bugs fixed, a basement added to Angry Neighbor Remake, Alpha 1.5 Remake released, the menu changed again, the neighbor's AI improved, more items added, and of course, multiplayer. The update release was delayed and contained many errors at launch; we managed to fix most of them on the day of release. Bugfixes were released until February, after which the project was frozen for some time to allow the team to rest. This is where the story of HNGR ends for now, but not for long…

We have already unfrozen the project and are actively working on fixing old bugs and creating new content. We can't show everything yet, but the plans include adding new modes to multiplayer, new game remakes, conducting a major overhaul of various game elements, improving the neighbor's AI, and VR mode – now it will be a separate version with reduced graphics and will be less of a priority. From now on, the VR mode will only exist as a separate version of the game with simplified settings.

Finally, we want to say a huge thank you to everyone! For everything! Without you, none of this would have happened. The entire Crucial Experiment team expresses its gratitude to you, the players, for helping us stay afloat. Once again – thank you so much! We would be happy if you left any questions you want to ask us in the comments under this post, so we can answer them in the next one.