THE LIFT: Supernatural Handyman Simulator Preview for Steam

Developed by Fantastic Signals and Published by tinyBuild

TL: DR Environmental storytelling at its finest, there is nothing but you, your toolkit, and the silence.

I have a confession to make. I don’t often research games before I play them. I get a review assignment and just open the game. So when I booted up THE LIFT: Supernatural Handyman Simulator for the first time, I literally had no idea what I was getting into.

Lots of emotions all at once. 1. This looks like Fallout meets BioShock. 2. I don’t like scary! 3. Oh, that’s cool, I like replacing light bulbs. 4. Wait, is that Cyrillic?

So what is THE LIFT? On paper, the devs describe it as “an eerie first-person simulator with satisfying house-flipping gameplay, a mind-bending story, and a highly interactive world inspired by Soviet sci-fi and SCP Foundation.”

In practice, it’s an eerie first-person simulator with satisfying house-flipping gameplay, a mind-bending story, and a highly interactive world inspired by Soviet sci-fi and SCP Foundation (creepypasta).

I really need to start reading the materials the devs send with the game. Then again, maybe not, because there were several points in the demo that I lost my mind! The part with the red button!!!??? I was like WTH? What game is this?!!

Anyway, players are not storming through corridors with guns, defeating aliens. No, you’re repairing chairs, picking up trash, and clearing the glowy blue ooze, slowly renovating a space station that is not as abandoned as it appears to be.

The Story Thus Far

The game begins with the player taking a test to become the assistant backup to the Keeper. Because the current Keeper is hale and hearty, the backup to the Keeper is going to get put into cryogenic sleep until they are needed. Okie-dokey, into the pod we go! Only to wake up an unknown amount of time later, where it is clear that something has gone seriously wrong.

Lights are flickering, furniture is broken, a strange glowing vine-cable is growing all over, and on the wall is a message, “Fix what I couldn’t.”

At this point, I started screaming, “I don’t like scary games!!” And did what I always do when I am uncomfortable: I started tidying things up. Which, incidentally, is how to move the story forward. The more you clean and put things right, the more story unlocks. From the pieces that the devs have let us see, something started invading the space station. And the only way the inhabitants could defeat it was to break all the things.

Which begs the question, if I have to fix things in order to figure out what’s happening, does that mean I am going to wake up whatever it was that caused this in the first place?

Renovate, Repair, Reclaim

Despite the horror sci-fi story, THE LIFT is a renovator game through and through. Every level is its own renovation project. But the devs didn’t come up with such a cool premise to stop at pushing “x” to fix. No, the repair system is deliciously tactile. Players will need to move and manipulate their mice to switch light bulbs, replace screws, and repair complex electronics.

A standout feature of the repair system is that sometimes you will need to cannibalize something you just fixed in order to fix something else. On each level, the devs have carefully counted the number of parts you will need, and then did not give you quite enough. This means that each step forward might actually require a few steps back.

Tools are just as interesting as the rest of the environment. That ladder?! A delightful mechanic! The little electricity bees?! Who’s writing this?

Overall Early Demo Impressions

The game preview I got access to really nailed the hook and left me wanting more. That being said, the game is definitely in Early Development, so I’d like to pass on some feedback!

The biggest quality of life change that can be requested is inventory management. Currently, players have two options to access their inventory: one is to actually open the inventory wheel, and the other is to spin the mouse wheel. Between the two, I almost always used the mouse wheel, simply because it was so easily accessible. However, this also meant that I was scrolling through everything in my inventory to find just one screw. But sometimes, even opening the actual inventory could feel as clunky as just scrolling with my mouse.

At the time of playing, the audio cassettes could only be played once, which meant I had to keep reloading old saves to relisten if I missed important information, such as the code to the door that I had just spent an hour staring at.

Some of the escape room-style puzzles lack any sort of feedback, meaning there are times when the puzzles feel less logical and more trial-and-error. There is clear logic built into the game, and it is accessible enough that I could figure things out, given enough time. However, sometimes it felt like, “Am I dumb?”

That being said, I fully understand that the demo I previewed is not the finished product, and I can’t wait to see where the developers take this addictive and engaging premise.

Head on over to Steam to wishlist The Lift as well as experience the game’s Open Playtest, available now for a limited time!

Related: Reviews by Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones

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I'm a completionist gamer who just needs to find that one last object and clear that final dungeon. I love all video games, from open world sandboxes on a console to a mindless match three on my phone. In addition to gaming and writing, I am a graduate student working on a thesis about the ancient Icelandic Sagas. Feel free to ask me anything about Vikings.