The Stairwell Review

The Stairwell tells the story of a nameless protagonist starting a new job as a security officer in a mysterious building designed by an unknown architect. Your job is to inspect every floor and report any strange phenomena you come across. Make your way through the building and pay attention to your surroundings.

The Stairwell is a first person psychological horror walking simulator where you’ll roam around the building in search of any anomaly. You can walk, run and light a candle (!) for dark areas. Other than that, you cannot interact with anything.

Do the right movement in the proper order and you’ll come across weird occurences and jump scares. You’ll roam around the same area from floor to floor. Your goal is to spot anomalies and enter the one of two doors: normal or anomaly. Once you reach the rest area in between floors, you’ll hear a ding if you chose correctly path or a buzz if you chose wrong.

If you choose correctly, you’ll notice next to the door you’ll be on the next floor; whereas the wrong choice will bring you back at the first level. Anomalies can vary; meaning you’ll need a keen eye. Some anomalies can be obvious such as a door where there wasn’t one before to something as subtle as a skull hidden in one of the posters.

The game looks great, albeit limited in environment settings given the game’s premise and also focused on liminal space. The way that some anomalies are inserted is great and very subtle. You are required to pay attention to everything. The soundtrack, while very soothing, enjoyable and synthwave-like, feels a bit out of place. This type of game should either have no score or have a more tense tune playing during your walks.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with The Stairwell, although I can understand players losing interest after a few walks around the exact same area over and over. Especially when missing anomalies and having to start over. The gameplay is very limited and there’s no real reason to replay it unless you’re aiming to get all achievements.

The Stairwell is a great first person experience with a unique premise; going through the right door after determing if there was an anomaly or not in order to progress to the next level is not a common premise. That being said, although it won’t please everyone, it’s unique enough to stand on its own two feet and offer a nice diverse experience to the typical shooters, RPGs or any other genres flooding the gaming space. I definitely recommend The Stairwell if you’re looking for something different.