There are many games out there which are jokingly referred to as 'Walking Simulators' but which offer rich, immersive, and relaxing explorations of wonderful new worlds or places, often telling a compelling story throughout. This is not one of them.
'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture' is an exercise in how easily a game can be hostile to the player. You nearly always move at a walking pace, which would normally be fine, until an hour in which you realize you are tethered to it and that every step in any direction means spending twice that time to go in any other--a toll which quickly ramps up to feel like an extreme cost. Imagine the feeling of carrying a full sack of cement with you everywhere that you go. That is precisely what you are in for here.
Maybe there's a building back across the street you're not sure that you explored. In that case, prepare to lock in for a good five minutes of retracing your steps. This is not hyperbole. Or what if you discover that a particular object is interactable and remember that there was one in another house you recall from a few hours back? You may be in for a full hour of tediously dragging yourself all the way back to that location, holding the movement key down as each second of each minute crawls by. Gods help you if you decide to complete the achievements in this game.
There are signpost maps that you can find occasionally to orient yourself, if needed, though I personally found it easier to navigate by good old-fashioned attention to landmarks--which I strongly recommend learning yourself, because not even the position of the sun will help you orient between east and west, as it radically shifts position at story moments to light each region of the map in a very specific way. The game also provides 'backtracking shortcuts', but these are usually only a gate that opens from one side, as your exploration leads you in a series of linked loops around the world. You must still walk, at a glacial pace, every single step from one place to another with no ability to jog, run, sprint, or fast-travel, or even begin at different chapters. When you are indoors, your movement is further slowed as much as to one-quarter. You are trapped here.
I have spent hours upon hours in VR worlds which are smaller, simpler, and more empty of environment than what this game offers, and found immense comfort and peace in them, perfect for meditation and soul-searching in their soothing ambience. But 'Everybody's Gone to the Rapture' has one function alone: to test the patience of the player and starve any kind of reward mechanism in the brain. It is marginally preferable to watching paint dry. In fact, if that is your interest, I would unironically recommend going into your kitchen, placing a pot of water on the burner and watching it until it boils. It would be an equivalent experience, except that you would now have the means to cook a nice pasta.
