On the surface, the idea of a game about cleaning up trash or renovating a house sounds almost like a job. Nonetheless, work sims like Powerwash Simulator or House Flipper are having a moment, giving players the satisfaction of a job well done without the hassle of actually grabbing a gig. For most job sims, part of the appeal is their mundanity, but in The Lift the relatable joy of cleaning shares space with a tale of sci-fi horror.
Developer Fantastic Signals describes The Lift as a “supernatural handyman simulator.” Slated for release on PC in 2026, The Lift is the first game from Fantastic Signals, a new studio that includes developers of Pathologic 2 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Ahead of its release, an open playtest for The Lift is available on Steam starting September 16.
In The Lift, you play as the Keeper, whose job it is to keep your space station home in working order. Unfortunately for everyone aboard, when you’re woken up from cryosleep, your home is in dire need of a cleaning. A strange oily substance is building up all over the station, most of its residents are missing or turned into bizarre clay statues, and just about every machine you come across is out of commission. After a short tutorial section in the playtest, you finally make contact with the station’s remaining skeleton crew, a motley assortment of holdouts who seem remarkably chill given the circumstances, and set off on your mission to restore the entire station to its former glory, one floor at a time.
In the world of The Lift, every machine, from light fixtures to the motor that runs the station’s central lift (which is also your base), emits “waves.” Things go bad when there aren’t enough waves floating around, apparently, but an area rich in waves keeps machines running well and prevents strange anomalies from occurring. To complete each floor of the station, you need to get a certain amount of waves flowing by making repairs and cleaning alien goo off surfaces. Even repairing benches and screwing in lightbulbs counts toward your progress, which gives a bit of an “arranging deck chairs on the Titanic” vibe to your work amidst the ruins of a space station, but completing those small, simple tasks still feels satisfying.
If you’ve played similar job sims, a lot about The Lift will feel familiar. From its first-person perspective, you’ll vacuum up gunk with a cleaning ray and put machines back together using an assortment of tools. What feels different is just how tactile everything in The Lift is. Just about every action is done by clicking and dragging, whether you’re maneuvering a screwdriver or lifting the door to a maintenance hatch. The slightly drawn-out interactions help sell the idea that you’re making your way through a real, physical space, and a lot of care has clearly gone into the inner workings of various machines.
More complex machines require more intricate repairs, often by fiddling around with the wiring. Managing the flow of electricity through the station is one of your major tasks, and you’ll need to repair a variety of circuits to do so. The process of these repairs is similar to minigames you’ve probably seen a lot of before, like the hacking minigame in BioShock, but like everything else in The Lift, it’s the tactility and complexity that makes it work here. Completing circuits doesn’t just mean rotating pipes in the right way; it means gathering components, reading wiring diagrams, and figuring out which bits of scrap you can use to get everything working again.
One of The Lift’s biggest strengths is how much it trusts you to get the job done. You’ll get tasks assigned by other crew members, but it’s usually up to you to figure out exactly how to complete them. Rather than step-by-step recitations in your journal, you often need to rely on posters and handbooks scattered around the environment to complete your jobs and notes littered around the station offer codes for storage lockers. That all adds up to a space that feels real and lived in, where scrounging around and paying attention to the environment are the keys to getting by, rather than just following quest markers.
From the few hours I’ve spent with The Lift’s playtest, I’m already impressed with its mixture of down-to-Earth simulation and sci-fi horror. Bringing the station back to life one turn of a screw at a time is satisfying on a gut level and while its story hasn’t really gripped me, its cast of oddball characters is at least good company on the job. I wonder how its intricate system of repairs will stay interesting in the long run, but so far, The Lift has me eager to get back to work.
