The Stairwell

Great game! If you liked The Exit 8, you’ll love this. It follows the same loop-based horror genre perfectly. The graphics are beautiful and the optimization is surprisingly smooth. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.

This anomaly game is based on the classic Exit 8 principle. The anomalies are rather subtle, which quickly makes you paranoid. However, there are also some larger and more creative ones. There are also 3 difficulty levels and the usability is very good overall. The leaderboards are a nice addition and provide more motivation to do well! [spoiler]If you enjoyed this game, why not come to my Office After Hours :P[/spoiler]

(For disclosure, I helped playtest during early development. Most of my play hours are not represented here since they were on betas.) You're in a museum with an arrangement of strange pieces. It seems to go on up forever into the foggy distance. The base floor is always the same and each successive floor is the same as the previous... or is it? Reportedly this one is inspired by the "Exit 8" game that inspired the "anomaly detection" genre, though I never played it. In this one you need to identify anomalies, which are subtle or obvious changes in the items on the floor. You go upstairs if you think nothing has changed and downstairs if something is "off". If you're right, you get a positive "ding" and the floor number goes up (... even if you went downstairs), else you get an error buzzer and the next floor number can be reset to a lower one in punishment. (And the anomalies change again!) You can take the opportunity to review the floor if you made an error, to double-check to see what you may have missed, though this will not help your score. You win when you get to the top. There are a lot of interesting anomalies to find (the store page screenshots give most of them away, so ignore those if you can). Pros: Overall the anomalies are quite varied, ranging from very obvious to very obscure (in hard mode), and many gave me good chills the first time I recognized them. Some go above and beyond in terms of strangeness. In the various stages and in harder modes, the entire museum is cast into darkness, making it more difficult to make out anomalies. Unreal's Lumen technology is used to great effect here to make things spookier. There is no music but atmospheric fan sounds and your footsteps to accompany you. The game has competitive elements which includes a weekly competition-only map, which rearranges the layout in subtle or dramatic ways, where your task is again to identify what has changed in the upper floor variations, but minimize the time spent in completing the game. These add spice to the gameplay. Cons (minor): Given the gameplay requires recognizing anomalies, it's a shame that one of these involves only audio cues (keep your headphones on, even if it freaks you out), and another few involve things moving around, but without sound effects to accompany them. (It can be a bit frustrating to miss an anomaly that only occurs when you pass it by!) So over time while playing you may learn to obsessively check every nook and cranny, looking in all directions, and traverse the floor back and forth before making a decision. But as you grow to recognize them, some floors can be easily marked as anomalous at a glance, and you can use the convenient chute to go downstairs to mark your choice. My main complaints with this one, at least early on, are with the basic gameplay. Maybe this is what "Exit 8" did, and maybe other players will be fine with it, but I'm not sure I'm on board with a game where your only action is movement. I'd prefer for the gameplay loop to involve clicking on the "wrong thing" directly, to prove you really saw it and didn't just guess, and have the movement be always going upstairs, even if an incorrect choice means the next the floor number is reset. Otherwise, as it is, there is a bit of unnecessary in-game signposting to reduce the confusion about which direction to go, and when and how floor numbers change, which could have been avoided altogether with a more direct interaction. But it doesn't really hurt the gameplay since movement speed is fast enough to get around.

The Stairwell ist ein solide gemachtes Anomalie-Horrorspiel mit guter Grafik und dichter Atmosphäre. Das Konzept basiert stark auf genauer Beobachtung – man muss sehr aufmerksam sein, um Veränderungen zu erkennen. Die plötzlich auftretenden Ereignisse sorgen zwar für Spannung, wiederholen sich vom Spielgefühl her aber recht schnell. Technisch und visuell ist das Spiel stark umgesetzt und für Fans von Anomalie-Horror sicher interessant. Für mich persönlich war das Gameplay jedoch zu eintönig und auf Dauer nicht motivierend genug. Für Genre-Fans passend, für alle anderen eher Geschmackssache.

[b]😂 Recomendado[/b] [b]The Stairwell[/b] é um jogo sobre subir escadas. Só isso. E mesmo assim, dá medo. Você entra achando que é tranquilo, dá dois lances e já começa a olhar pra trás sem motivo nenhum. Não tem jumpscare barato, não tem monstro aparente… só a sensação constante de que algo está errado (e provavelmente está). O jogo prova que o verdadeiro terror não é o desconhecido — é subir escadas infinitas em silêncio absoluto, esperando que nada aconteça enquanto tudo acontece na sua cabeça. Curto, simples e traumatizante. [b]Nunca mais subi escada em paz depois desse jogo[/b]. 🏃‍♂️🪜😰

One of the better anomaly-hunting loop games that have become popular the last several years! Love the concept of just a giant, never-ending stairwell with potential anomalies present. Trying to get to the roof is the objective, which seems like it is so out of reach. The replayability is there too with multiple difficulties, weekly challenges, and leaderboards for those fans of speedrunning! Side note: [spoiler]The dog does not get hurt.[/spoiler] Go get this one, already!

Приятная игрушка, по поиску аномалий. Осторожно тут есть клоун! Скорее спасите собачку!