I really enjoy liminal space games, but this one misses the mark for me. The atmos isn't right, it feels a bit plastic and deliberate. I like the feeling of the eerie, random open spaces within the backrooms. This particular version didn't give me the same vibes as some of the greats like Pools or liminalcore.

Try at your own risk, but keep your expectations below what you got from Pools or other liminal space games.

I particularly did not like the tickets to enter new areas idea, that removed the immersion and the "creepy" factor, for me. It turned it into a carnival ride, and lost the liminal space for me.
Some may enjoy it, I personally did not.

I saw this game as a beta some 2 years ago now and was pretty hooked by it's approach to liminal space, but unfortunately the full version doesn't live up to the early versions.

The most egregious one of these shortcomings was the new levels. apart from the one featured in the beta, they were all boring and tedious to traverse. there was a country club level that consisted of infinitely repeating mini golf courses where all you had to do to win was just to walk away from the course towards the exit. there were not one, but two levels which were just completely empty corridors and rooms with no interesting objects or points of interest but the entrance and exit elevators, so they both consisted of walking in random directions until you find the end. there was a reasonable (but still kinda samey) movie theatre where I just stumbled around the corridors entering non-euclidean doors to the exact same room until it eventually gave me an exit. the only saving grace was the pool sections, but even they did away with most of the encounters with the shadow creature which made anemoiapolis unique by having a monster that wasn't immediately hostile and just floats in the corners of your vision and vanishes when observed.

The second major problem was the "Gamification" of what should have been an interesting exploration sequence. this comes in the form of tickets, which you can find in strips around the levels, allowing you access (by paying a certain amount) to all of the various elevators in the hub area, which is also a bad game design mechanic. in the beta, you would just linearly make your way through, whereas now there's an annoyingly clear indication that you can access the exit elevator after completing all the levels, it even quite literally says "Please wait for X number of elevators to arrive." while the hub area is understandable from a development standpoint, it always being difficult to link areas, but the ticket system is useless and unnecessary, and no amount of patches can fix it.

The third major problem is the plot, which is lacking in some respects, and insolent in others. for one thing, they removed the dialogue at the beginning explaining why you're inspecting a random electrical box in the middle of a place that looks a lot like the windows 98 wallpaper, that being that it was an unused development plot which is sucking up more power than it ought to. they did keep the best story mechanic however, the protagonist only being voice acted when they are actually speaking (which isn't often) and other times just having an internal monologue that is simple text. The ending wasn't good. not to spoil it for anyone who may still play despite my warnings, all I will say is that it snatches escape from your grasp without explaining much in the way of plot, ending on a cliffhanger that creates more questions than answers. with the developer not planning a sequel since they have switched game engines from unity to Godot, and so the cliffhanger will remain un-bridged indefinitely.

a more minor problem that may not affect everyone is the graphics. while they are quite lovely, they are poorly optimised. as a slightly more budget gamer that plays more indie or older titles, I simply can't justify getting a big fancy PC, so this game was super laggy even on the lowest settings. even when there was a consistent FPS, it would just lag spike at random. apparently even people on high-end computers have difficulty running the high settings consistently. I don't even think that all these reflections and lens flare is even needed, because it doesn't add much to the game compared with putting more effort into the aforementioned major issues.

In general, this game showed a lot of promise early on, but the developer ruined it by poor levels, mechanics, and plot. the only thing I can say that makes it better is that not all of it sucks and it least it's cheap. I would say it's a do not buy unless you like empty levels and tone shattered by bloated ideas.

Edit: I think that I enjoyed writing this review more than the conference hall and the country club levels

I would have kept going at the end! Really good game with a nice soundtrack