Hello Stranger Review (PC)

I somehow missed the release of Hello Stranger earlier this year, and thanks to an email about upcoming game The Run from director Paul Raschid, was alerted to his previous work and offered a chance to check it out. Considering how much we enjoyed his other titles – The Complex still standing tall as the gold standard but also including The Gallery, and Five and Ten Dates – I jumped at the opportunity. It’s easily up there with prior works, and one FMV game fans should check out.

We play as Cam in a near future setting, finding him in his smart home complete with AI assistant Sasha, VR headsets, and elaborate computer set up. Cam appears to be a bit of a homebody, doing all his work, exercise and socialising at home. The latter of these is the focus for Hello Stranger, with the in-game namesake of this a sort of Omegle of the future. Randomised video chats with a new stranger at a button press, we’re first introduced to the platform as Cam hops on to find a stranger by the name of Rose. After a brief opener, she reveals she’s actually doing research on people just like Cam; recluse homebodies who use the internet for all of their needs at the expense of in-person interactions. 

While we will have had several choices to make thus far, here is where the narrative can begin to split off depending on how we respond (or don’t) to her. As with all good games of this ilk, the choices are often obtuse enough to give us pause for thought, and intriguing enough to have us itching to come back for more playthroughs to see what alternate realities we can come across. 

Either way, it won’t be long until we run into a masked person who hacks Cam’s home and forces him to play a series of games at risk of death upon losing. These vary depending on our path chosen, and the order of which we choose to play the three events. 

These games offer more traditional interactive gameplay and are equally short and simple to grasp. One sees us in a scrolling shooter, another a beat-em-up, others still card or luck based affairs. Lose, and Cam meets an often grisly end. But win, and we progress the story and get to tackle the remaining games. 

Obviously we’ll avoid spoilers but our man Special Guest Pete also picked up the game to play, and when discussing our playthroughs we both had vastly different outcomes the first time through, with different games played and deaths at different points. 

I’ve played though three times now, and each run has seen completely different endings. There is a choice tree viewable once we’ve cleared the game, and I can see I still have plenty of paths to explore and endings to find. That even after three times I still want to go back and play more is a testament not just to the choice on offer, but also the fun, b-movie vibe of the game as a whole. 

Leading man George Blagden – see previously in The Gallery among other credits – does a great job of portraying Cam in all his variations, and playing off of the rest of the cast we really do get the feeling of someone scared of the outside and using technology to cover for his apprehensions.

A single playthrough runs roughly an hour, so it’s not a huge time investment to replay, and the amount left to find means I’ll be coming back at least a few more times to see what else I can find and see if there might be some more…positive endings for Cam than the ones I’ve subjected him to so far.

Conclusion

Paul Raschid has been in the FMV game for a while now, and though The Complex still remains a firm favourite at Tavern Towers, Hello Stranger is a strong contender for some of his best work yet thanks to a snappy playtime, great performances and plenty of replayability.

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.

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