Love the concept and I am hopeful for the full game. Sort of gives me Teardown vibes.

I will note that in the demo reopening the storm drains feels rather tedious. I would recommend making them stay open for longer, or be faster to reopen. Hopefully the full game will have more interesesting levels and tools. the level in the demo mostly revolves around the drains, which are the least interesting aspect of the demo.

Also I would hope for a bigger and easier to use inventory. Easier to use as in 1. let us drop items without picking up more and 2. if we pick something up when our hands aren't free, check for a free slot first and use that before replacing what we are holding.

The barriers also need some fixing. Specifically it is really hard to get them to close a gap. The sort of environmental manipulation you can do with them is fun, it just needs to be less janky.

It isn't a bad game, it just falls short of the original.

Do not take my words on the horror aspect as gospel; I am almost fearless, not in a way where I would be brave and face my fears, but in a way where I just don't really feel fear to begin with. As such my experience will not be the same as most peoples.

I have seen many people claim that Below Zeros creatures aren't scary because they pose no real danger. There is very much so truth to this; You can just ram most of them with the seatruck. However, I don't think people realise how relatively harmless the creatures of the first game were. These are by no means hard games.

As such, I think the diminished fear factor of people has to come from somewhere else. Perhaps, the designs aren't as scary, or maybe people got desensitized by playing the original? Fear is of course extremely subjective, so it might be that the designs are less scary to some people, who make more noise about not being scary. I don't know.

The exploration isn't bad, but I really prefer the old game in this aspect. The first game felt much more believable, which helped me get immersed. I think that outside of the Fauna, this is largely a compound effect of the smaller map size. The biome transitions in Below Zero are very abrupt and make me feel like I am exploring a game level, not an alien world. This is likely because there was no room for smoother transitions. They also nerfed movement options, making the player slower, likely to make the small world not feel as small. In practice this makes movement feel sluggish and breaks immersion for me by making me actively think about game design.

This is a very unique VR experience and I enjoyed it very much.

There are a few issues I should mention though.

First of all, turning. Most levels are roughly grid based, meaning that snap turn, which is on by default, works great. However, the level change console in the corner turns you to face it, which means you are now off grid. In practice this can be mitigated by turning on smooth turning, but it is something you should be aware of.