When it comes to the styles of gameplay I’ve quickly come to dislike in the last generation, I think the newcomer that has drawn the most internal ire from me has been anomaly games. While they’ve obviously done well enough to incentivize developers to continue making them, I find it hard not to walk away from them thinking they’re about as low-effort as they come, regardless of whether or not they can be temporarily entertaining. 

Slap a load of different assets into a space people will need to try their best to commit to memory, and then have them continue to return there over and over again trying to be sure to spot anything out of place or different so they can keep proving how great they are at spotting differences. Oh yeah, and most of them will then also throw in a periodic “Holy crap” jumpscare moment just to give you a jolt, and some people find that fun.

In the case of The Stairwell I’d say it follows the above script to the letter. You’ll walk into a big open space with a fair variety of oddities and details to soak in, and then you’ll keep coming back to that same space over and over in the hopes that you’re able to recognize anything out of whack. Oh, and keep an eye out for the nightmare fuel clown that will pop in every once in a while or a number of other weird events that I suppose are what people are ultimately coming for. What I found irksome in this case was that a few times I genuinely didn’t know what I’d even missed, making it hard to correct course when that could make it equally likely you’d miss the same thing again in the future. On the whole I’d also say that in general other titles in the space have a higher base creep factor, whereas this feels more sterile, so I walked away a bit unimpressed overall.