While the game is short ( -ish, depending on how much you decide to explore), it's beautiful, atmospheric, and perfectly creepy at moments. For those worried about cheap jump-scares, there are none. It truly lives up to it's claim of the most relaxing horror game you'll ever play. Unlike a lot of the backrooms adaptations, this one really hit the mark for me and scratched an itch I've been trying to reach for awhile now. It wasn't silly, with overdone, cheap jump scares. It, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulated what falling into the backrooms may be like. The only reason I give this game a 4 star rating as opposed 5, is because of how short it is. Definitely worth the buy, and more than looking forward to chapter 2.

The idea of Anemoiapolis, the eternally expanding beige-carpet nightmare of 80s hotels, is a good one, and the game executes a decent rendition of what such an environment would look like in an explorable 3D space. However, the game misses just about every other mark it aims for. It is too open, too empty, and too insistent on how the player is supposed to feel about the space. Anemoiapolis leaves behind an experience that less than engaging, let alone scary.

There is no meaningful tension build or sense of unease in Anemoiapolis. This isn't really a problem itself, but this lack of tension clashes with character dialogue that suggests an unease and desperation that just isn't there. The emotions engendered by the environment aren't allowed to speak for themselves.

The areas of Anemoipolis are not emotionally interesting either. The best are confusing and unnerving investigations of intentionally difficult spaces, and the rest are just carpet mazes. The game needs to fall about on Backrooms-tier paranormal nonsense to get a genuine rise out of players, which is another strike in the "won't let the environment speak for itself" book.

Anemoiapolis is also really slow to navigate, due to how big the environment is and how slow the player moves. Seeing how Anemoiapolis is an empty set of rooms with little to look at or interact with, walking around gets really boring really fast.