If your interests lie in the fairly specific cross-section of Soviet-inspired utopia/dystopia, tinkering with stuff, and techno-goop, then you’ll need to set eyes on The Lift (that’s an elevator, for my American English-speaking friends). This supernatural puzzle game has a compelling pitch, and I was excited to get hands-on with a bunch of quirky tools in a PC demo build.
I played two polished chapters – one being the tutorial scene, and the other a slice taken from mid-game. All three hours I spent in-game made for an entertaining voyage into the unreal, with only some minor niggles. The Lift may still be on the workbench, but I’m happy to say that it’s looking ready and wired up for a great time.
You play a silent man known as a Keeper, filled with pride by a life dedicated to repairing broken things. The amusing tutorial immediately throws you into a “test lift.” A woman’s voice crackles over a speaker and she coaches you, in an over-the-top propagandic way, through your first tests of rewiring circuits and replacing light bulbs.
The Lift’s tactile handyman interactions are a distinguishing mechanic from the get-go. For instance, opening a panel may involve grabbing a handle, then mimicking the real-life movement of physically “pulling” it open towards you with your mouse. Rectify the test lift’s malfunctions, and the doors will open to what hints at humorous but increasingly bizarre goings-on.
Like many sci-fi stories before it, The Lift takes place in an abandoned research facility, known ominously as The Institute. It gave me Kowloon Walled City vibes: chaotic, windowless rooms built around the titular elevator. You’ll advance through floors filled with malfunctioning machinery, but find quickly that your job extends beyond simple handyman work.
The demo showcased a very brief amount of time outside The Institute (and an introduction to a character called Trader, who confusingly doesn't seem to have anything to trade), where the most dreamlike of The Lift’s visuals are found. Think Expedition 33-style surreality: traffic lights hang from the sky, furniture drifts about in mid-air, and giant, ludicrously tall chairs tower in the distance.
I absolutely love the premise of this irreverent-slash-eerie sci-fi world, though I found it a little difficult to follow the narrative clues dropped by the occasional characters I encountered (more on them in a bit). The indoor environments say a lot, however: What’s that weird black sludge? What spooky force is breaking all The Institute’s chairs?
Nothing you’ll see in The Lift is physically harmful to you, but you just know that those questions are going to have strange answers…
The Lift is heavily objective-driven, with various tasks assigned by chattering, “wacky” characters over intercom known collectively as Rubus. They’ll tune in occasionally to talk at you, alluding to various problems and tasking you with repairing them. I generally found these sequences to be unengaging, and I’d catch my eyes glazing over as I thought, “Please just give me the objective already.”
The voice acting is well-suited to their varied personalities and expertly delivered, but I found all of The Lift’s characters unnecessarily longwinded. It’s not a huge drawback, but having to listen to their prattle without a fast-forward button was a bit distracting in a game built around hands-on, can-do gameplay.
As for those tasks, you’ll often have multiple objectives – and sub-objectives – on the go at any given time. They are tracked helpfully in your handheld Bureau Utility Gadget, or “B.U.G.,” and range from simple tasks like accessing a blocked-off room to the obscure, like “Get wave production to level 3” (the latter of which I soon learned was simply a euphemism for "just fix as many things as possible”).
The very first task is to find the actual Lift and make it move to a different floor. Each floor is essentially a giant puzzle you’ll need to revert its original, non-shabby state, thus unlocking your ascension to higher floors and taking you closer and closer to… well, whatever is leaving black splodges of slime everywhere.
You’ll be collecting lots of screws, power cables, and other tidbits. There are two ways to navigate your inventory: one is via a circular menu, and the other is by cycling through items in your hand – both remarkably straightforward. A nice touch are auto-suggested tools for certain broken things you’ll hover over, like a “bee” for a bee socket. Yes, really. With The Lift’s more esoteric machinery, those suggestions help!
So what needs fixing, anyway? Sometimes it’s simply replacing a screw on a wonky chair. You’ll also discover messed-up circuit boards with missing parts, which you may need to hunt around for. Sometimes that involves finding a spare part on a shelf, and other times you may need to buy a “spinny electromotor” from a vending machine. Not all things mirror the handyman tools of real life and can actually cross into more whimsical fantasy concepts (like the aforementioned bee).
Your government job also covers some supernatural cleanup. During the demo I graduated from a screwdriver to more complex tools, such as the Cleaning Beam that sucks up those glowing, pulsating black masses into oblivion. I also wielded a glue gun – which inexplicably uses duct tape and not glue – to patch up holes in the wall, also oozing with that peculiar black substance.
Be warned: there’s a bit of backtracking. The Lift has minor metroidvania aspects, with certain items or objectives not reachable until “unlocked,” whether through removing gunk off a door or finding a new type of tool.
One of the earlier puzzles even had me backtracking a bit farther than I would’ve expected. I didn’t mind this at all, and honestly liked how it reflected the unplanned messiness of real-life DIY, but players who prefer a more streamlined experience may want to keep this in mind.
Don’t expect solutions to go full IKEA: only one screw may be needed to realign a whole bench, for instance. But if you’re thinking that there can’t be much challenge in playing with screws and light bulbs, think again. The puzzles are environmental as well, and one of the later hurdles I came across was actually quite devious and required serious exploration before I figured out the solution. My biggest tip? Don’t forget to look up. Often.
You’ll find random, glitchy objects strewn about the world, from staplers to comically large calculators. These can be fed into a trash chute in exchange for tokens, which can be used to purchase limited numbers of spare parts at vending machines. (You may need to repair the vending machine first.)
Late in the demo I also gained access to crafting, and I wish I’d had more time to tinker around with it! Feeding specific numbers of those same glitchy objects into a crafting machine transforms them into snazzy new fix-’em-up modules. If one tricky circuit board is giving you a headache, your craft room may be just the place to find its broken part.
As a fan of crafting games, my short experience with The Lift’s craft system was a notable highlight. This build’s craftables only feature the basics like cables and power units, but I can’t wait to see what else we may be able to make later on. More bees to get circuit boards buzzing again? Even zanier tools?
The Lift’s developers say that they’re aiming for a much more hopeful, positive take on the Soviet concept of productivity, but I can't say I felt much of that idealism myself. The narrative instead hints more at instability (in a science-gone-awry way – no dystopian government to be seen here). This definitely isn’t a downside – but positive Soviet satire is an uncommon theme that I’m hoping the finished game will lean more into, and maybe even be defined by.
I think that fans of the puzzle genre will be refreshed by The Lift’s new take on problem-solving. Overall, the execution of the fiddling-and-fixing gameplay is spot-on, and there’s great satisfaction to be had in watching lights flicker on and systems come back online. And despite my rather insignificant annoyance of the wordy characters, I actually can’t wait to tinker more, mend bigger and weirder machines, and see where this strange story (and its goop) leads when The Lift comes out next year.
