R.I.P. Anyland!
With over 2700 active hours in 7.5 years since the beginning month, I'm one of a very few players who are uniquely qualified with experience to detail a proper post-mortem review...
Anyland was truly the Tree House of modern VR. (That's an Otherland: The City of Golden Shadow reference, brilliant novel about VR long before Ready Player One.)

PROS
* Create reality around you, virtually! For those of us who are creative-types, it doesn't get better than that.
* Create your own avatar, so you represent yourself by your own skills & imagination (if you use a self-built avatar).
* Learning curve wasn't too steep. Could quickly create basic things, and the more you explore features or learn about them the more complexity you could decide to incorporate. Good balance of simple vs complex.
* Likewise, scripting followed ^that^ concept. Scripts were stored "in" a shape, accessed by highlighting a shape. Scripts had auto-complete suggestions to tap that only showed you its possible syntax. You could either tap auto-complete suggestions, or type on the keyboard for yourself.
* Everything in Anyland was created by-hand in Anyland. There were no imported models at all, so Anyland's low-poly aesthetic was preserved & recognizable (and thus no one could import anime avatars like VRChat for example).
* Creation was virtually tactile -- you use your virtual hands to do everything: tap on the thumb ring to open the menu, tap on buttons with your index finger, grab a base shape from the ring menu or out in the VR space to move & manipulate it.
* The low-poly aesthetic helped with good framerates, as we all know VR is taxing on computers.
* Creation potential was unlimited. Avatars and fun guns to play with were the tip of the iceberg things that most people started with, followed by creating interesting worlds and replicas. Some of us expanded further to create experiences, DJ live parties, record video podcasts, make video skits, playable games.
* Socially awesome. VR is great for social interactions because you're present with others, but unlike IRL you can't immediately invoke your prejudices since you can't see the IRL person. [[Note: Imagine a world where prejudice almost can't exist and people interact with each other based on, yes, the content of their character not the color of their skin. It's beautiful.]] Anyland makes that even better, because you create your own avatar so you choose how you want to represent yourself (not just in visual appearance, but also you can put on display your imagination & creation skills).
* Philipp, the main dev, was involved with the community and would implement new features quickly if they were valid suggestions. He is calm, well-balanced, not egotistical. He always credited people's ideas that he went on to implement, which was sweet & respectful. You can tell Anyland was a personal passion project for him, and he never sold out for money.
* Left-hander support!!!! Menus and for example the location of the "coloring pen" were placed appropriately depending on which hand opened the ring menu. (It's embarrassing & rude when big VR games like Doom VFR and No Man's Sky don't account for 10% of the human population.)
* Free with no microtransactions. (That was awesome, and obviously a major financial problem long-term.)
* Fun! (My highest praise in a game review.)

CONS
* Limited in-game tutorials. (There was always an intro vid by the creator accessible anytime, but most learning was socially shared in-game, with only a scant few of us making YouTube videos to help out.) A guided tutorial probably would've helped retain single day explorers.
* Few worlds to explore at launch. Had there been many worlds to explore and/or activities to partake in at launch, I think that would've prevented Anyland having a slow start (it was 6-12 months before enough players made worlds/experiences that I felt would've been great to have at launch to attract & retain explorers).
* Keyboard, thus typing speed, was framerate dependent. Fine if you were alone & had good default framerate, but in a large group or complex area that lowered your framerate, typing would not be smooth. (Move the keyboard, so you could look down & away with no one in your view, to compensate.)
* The menus weren't standardized/organized. Initially the main features of any menu were loosely displayed by importance or frequency of use and that was fine... as time went on and new features were added, those options were usually added that the end of the list/section. Without prior historically experience of the menus' growth, there was no apparent rhyme nor reason to placement of features in lists.
* 10 people per-world at once limitation hurt social potential. It would be 11 as whomever was the creator of that Area always had a reserved space to join, even if a full 10 player slots were used at a time. (Anyland wasn't popular, so a higher limit was infrequently needed.)
* Framerate was affected heavily by the number & complexities of creations in your current field of view. That's normal for all VR programs of course. Anyland's framerate was CPU-bound (and it barely used any GPU) and sensitive to complexities. We found ways to optimize our creations to help. Not everyone did that.
* Limits. Most limits in the game were probably due to the expense of the server package (Anyland's downfall) so understandable, if unfortunate.
* As a creation program, it was obviously meant for creative-type people so they could create. DUH. Not everyone is a creator, so some people have unrealistic expectations. Aside from Minecraft, creation games/programs attract fewer players than straight-up games.


I could detail many more pros & cons getting into minutiae, but the above gives a good, high-level representation of Anyland. It was great fun to easily create virtual worlds, experiences, and to socialize in. Potential was nearly unlimited (and no one could ever claim getting close to doing it all) and thus with as much as I personally did with friends there were still so many ideas I could never have gotten to (time=finite).
Anyland was special and more convenient than other/current VR creation programs. Launching in Oct 2016, when modern VR was brand-new (the HTC Vive with SteamVR came Spring 2016), gave dreamers the ability to create worlds... like virtual demi-gods. =)

R.I.P. Anyland[i]![/i] With over 2700 active hours in 7.5 years since the beginning month, I'm one of a very few players who are uniquely qualified with experience to detail a proper post-mortem review... Anyland was truly the [i]Tree House[/i] of modern VR. (That's an [i]Otherland: The City of Golden Shadow[/i] reference, brilliant novel about VR long before [i]Ready Player One[/i].) PROS * Create reality around you, virtually! For those of us who are creative-types, it doesn't get better than that. * Create your own avatar, so you represent yourself by your own skills & imagination (if you use a self-built avatar). * Learning curve wasn't too steep. Could quickly create basic things, and the more you explore features or learn about them the more complexity you could decide to incorporate. Good balance of simple vs complex. * Likewise, scripting followed ^that^ concept. Scripts were stored "in" a shape, accessed by highlighting a shape. Scripts had auto-complete suggestions to tap that only showed you its possible syntax. You could either tap auto-complete suggestions, or type on the keyboard for yourself. * Everything in Anyland was created by-hand in Anyland. There were no imported models at all, so Anyland's low-poly aesthetic was preserved & recognizable (and thus no one could import anime avatars like VRChat for example). * Creation was virtually tactile -- you use your virtual hands to do everything: tap on the thumb ring to open the menu, tap on buttons with your index finger, grab a base shape from the ring menu or out in the VR space to move & manipulate it. * The low-poly aesthetic helped with good framerates, as we all know VR is taxing on computers. * Creation potential was unlimited. Avatars and fun guns to play with were the tip of the iceberg things that most people started with, followed by creating interesting worlds and replicas. Some of us expanded further to create experiences, DJ live parties, record video podcasts, make video skits, playable games. * Socially awesome. VR is great for social interactions because you're present with others, but unlike IRL you can't immediately invoke your prejudices since you can't see the IRL person. [i][[Note: Imagine a world where prejudice almost can't exist and people interact with each other based on, yes, the content of their character not the color of their skin. It's beautiful.]][/i] Anyland makes that even better, because you create your own avatar so you choose how you want to represent yourself (not just in visual appearance, but also you can put on display your imagination & creation skills). * Philipp, the main dev, was involved with the community and would implement new features quickly if they were valid suggestions. He is calm, well-balanced, not egotistical. He always credited people's ideas that he went on to implement, which was sweet & respectful. You can tell Anyland was a personal passion project for him, and he never sold out for money. * Left-hander support!!!! Menus and for example the location of the "coloring pen" were placed appropriately depending on which hand opened the ring menu. (It's embarrassing & rude when big VR games like Doom VFR and No Man's Sky don't account for 10% of the human population.) * Free with no microtransactions. (That was awesome, and obviously a major financial problem long-term.) * Fun! (My highest praise in a game review.) CONS * Limited in-game tutorials. (There was always an intro vid by the creator accessible anytime, but most learning was socially shared in-game, with only a scant few of us making YouTube videos to help out.) A guided tutorial probably would've helped retain single day explorers. * Few worlds to explore at launch. Had there been many worlds to explore and/or activities to partake in at launch, I think that would've prevented Anyland having a slow start (it was 6-12 months before enough players made worlds/experiences that I felt would've been great to have at launch to attract & retain explorers). * Keyboard, thus typing speed, was framerate dependent. Fine if you were alone & had good default framerate, but in a large group or complex area that lowered your framerate, typing would not be smooth. (Move the keyboard, so you could look down & away with no one in your view, to compensate.) * The menus weren't standardized/organized. Initially the main features of any menu were loosely displayed by importance or frequency of use and that was fine... as time went on and new features were added, those options were usually added that the end of the list/section. Without prior historically experience of the menus' growth, there was no apparent rhyme nor reason to placement of features in lists. * 10 people per-world at once limitation hurt social potential. It would be 11 as whomever was the creator of that Area always had a reserved space to join, even if a full 10 player slots were used at a time. (Anyland wasn't popular, so a higher limit was infrequently needed.) * Framerate was affected heavily by the number & complexities of creations in your current field of view. That's normal for all VR programs of course. Anyland's framerate was CPU-bound (and it barely used any GPU) and sensitive to complexities. We found ways to optimize our creations to help. Not everyone did that. * Limits. Most limits in the game were probably due to the expense of the server package (Anyland's downfall) so understandable, if unfortunate. * As a creation program, it was obviously meant for creative-type people so they could create. DUH. Not everyone is a creator, so some people have unrealistic expectations. Aside from Minecraft, creation games/programs attract fewer players than straight-up games. I could detail many more pros & cons getting into minutiae, but the above gives a good, high-level representation of Anyland. It was great fun to easily create virtual worlds, experiences, and to socialize in. Potential was nearly unlimited (and no one could ever claim getting close to doing it all) and thus with as much as I personally did with friends there were still so many ideas I could never have gotten to (time=finite). Anyland was special and more convenient than other/current VR creation programs. Launching in Oct 2016, when modern VR was brand-new (the HTC Vive with SteamVR came Spring 2016), gave dreamers the ability to create worlds... like virtual demi-gods. =)