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A PC code was provided to GamingPizza for this review. Hello Stranger is available now on PC via Steam.
When it comes to full-motion video (FMV) games, writer-director Paul Raschid stands atop in a league of his own. He’s smashed it out of the park with his previous titles, including The Complex, The Gallery, Five Dates, and Ten Dates. I had the pleasure of reviewing the latter two, which received a perfect score and a near-perfect score, respectively.
Now, Raschid is back with Hello Stranger, which is arguably the darkest of his titles (that I have played, at least), set within the psychological horror-thriller genre. Hello Stranger was released back in May, meaning this review is LONG overdue.
Am I late to the party? Extremely. Am I glad that I finally made it? 100%.
Hello Stranger provides an engaging, intense, and sometimes downright scary story experience that hits especially hard in 2025 — especially if you (like me) have an above average affinity for technology, smart devices, and everything AI.
Cam: The Player
You play as Cam, a seemingly introverted recluse who works from home running an e-commerce business. Besides a business phone call or two, he mostly spends his day playing video games, jumping into the world of VR, and interacting with his smart home assistant. The assistant could easily be compared to Siri or Alexa, but is perhaps better compared to J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Iron Man franchise, largely in part to its much more autonomous, Agentic nature.
Beyond that, Cam is a frequent guest on a social platform called “Hello Stranger.” A Chatroulette-type of platform, Cam interacts with random strangers in video call form.
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He knows the system in and out, but his world gets turned upside down when he’s connected with a creepy, masked stranger who ends up hacking his entire smart home setup — meaning everything from his home assistant and security setup to the smartwatch he wears on his wrist.
Cam’s life is in your hands, as you take on three different challenges from the masked stranger, with one wrong move spelling Cam’s demise.
Into the Pressure Cooker
From timed-choices (which are optional) and branching storylines with 460 different scenes to be discovered, Hello Stranger has all of the familiar mechanics from Raschid’s previous games. This one, however, has a far more unnerving and urgent feeling than the Rom-Com titles I’m used to. Much more dread, for sure, with each decision you make having a notably heavier weight. After all, my goal is to make sure Cam doesn’t die.
The horror and physiological thriller elements do wonders for the overall experience. Like I said, the dread is there, along with some subtle, yet highly effective jump scares that had me on edge (and laughing at myself) as I watched the next scene unfold.
What wasn’t surprising is how poorly I did on my first playthrough. While I nailed the first two challenges — a game of “Guess the Killer” and a literal beat-em-up arcade-style video game — I ended up going 0-for-4 in two separate games of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Lucky for me, the “Game Over” screen informed me that everybody dies at least once. So should your first playthrough result in the same outcome, know that you can only do better… right?
That is the point of these FMV “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of games, after all. And, seriously, with 460 scenes and 10 different endings, Hello Stranger is BEGGING you to replay it. Multiple times.
Might as Well Call Him “Sam”
The thing that stuck with me most in Hello Stranger was just how similar Cam and I are. As the header alludes to, you could very easily swap me in for Cam, especially in terms of his homebody nature and use of smart home technology.
I’ve always joked that if it were just me living alone (instead of happily married with a pair of kiddos), it’d be me and video games. I nerd out on smart home tech, automation, and playing around with everything AI, so everything felt very familiar (and just a little more personal) while playing through the game.
But I also think that feeling is one of Raschid’s trademarks. He does a superb job drawing you into his world and making you feel like you belong there, even if you are, technically, playing as someone else. As mentioned, I saw much of myself in Cam, which largely played into my initial choices. The same can be said for Vinny — the character you played as in Five Dates. I found myself feeling like I was the star of my own Rom-Com, driving a hyper-personalized story forward by making the same exact choices I’d probably make in real life. (Which is probably why I ended up with what I think is the best ending for Five Dates.)
Raschid’s ability to pull you into whatever world he’s created is an absolute triumph. And I would put money on his ability to do the same in whatever medium he went with, whether that’s FMV or even a traditional movie format.
Say, “Hello”
Hello Stranger is so much fun and fully achieves what it sets out to do.
Where Five Dates succeeded as a RomCom, Hello Stranger hits the mark as an intense thriller with plenty of psychological horror to be enjoyed throughout its literal hundreds of branching narratives.
If you’ve been following along with Raschid’s Instagram, you’ll know that he’s been scouting filming locations in Northern Italy and shooting for his next horror-thriller FMV project, The Run. No release date has been announced yet, but The Run is tentatively slated for a 2025 release. I, for one, can’t wait.
(And you can bet that there will be absolutely no delay in my playing it next time.)
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