Hello Hosts!
What would come to your mind when you think of sock puppets? Would it be super fun childhood memories with DIY tricks or creative shows with cute characters? Well, it is a different story in ‘Hello Puppets!’ as the moments the Sock Puppet AI jumped out have been recognized as the most terrifying scenes in the game by a lot of players.
The Sock Puppets show up in a few places and march around on predetermined paths. Originally, though, they were a systemic AI system that roamed around the map and were constantly hunting you. We had a version of the game running like this, and the problem honestly was that it was too scary.
You couldn’t focus on the story, or enjoy interacting with Scout, or anything, because every two seconds this Sock Puppet was bearing down on you. And even once we tuned him to be less aggressive, you knew he was close by, and it made people jumpy and uncomfortable. There’s always a balance in ‘Hello Puppets!’ between ‘ha ha!’ moments and ‘aaaaah!’ moments. The Sock Puppets pushed it too far to the latter. That’s why we tweaked it into the current version and made it “less relevant” in some plots to let you be able to focus on solving the puzzles with Scout.
Was it surprising to know that the Sock Puppets were even SCARIER during the development phase? Let us know what you think about the AI for this specific enemy on Discord and Twitter!
Sincerely,
Otherworld Crew