The Lift Is A New Game From Ex-Pathologic 2 Devs About Exploring And Revitalizing A Retrofuturistic Research Base

By Elijah Gonzalez | September 16, 2025 | 10:00am

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The Lift Is A New Game From Ex-Pathologic 2 Devs About Exploring And Revitalizing A Retrofuturistic Research Base

If a sizable chunk of science fiction focuses on characters in on the action, whether that’s explorers, detectives, or soldiers, then video games are even more hyperfixated on futuristic professions that involve dispensing hot lead. By contrast, The Lift, the freshman game from Fantastic Signals, is more preoccupied with the mundane elements of its speculative setting. Well, as mundane as you can get with a story set in an underground research facility defined by furniture-based metaphysics, odd anomalies, and a black goo that’s slowly creeping into every corner of this long-abandoned place.

You play as the Keeper, a handyman working at an enigmatic research base called the Institute. After being placed in a cryochamber until their next shift, the Keeper wakes up some undetermined amount of time later, abandoned by their fleeing employer. Before long, you find yourself roaming the halls of this massive complex, fixing everything from chairs to complex machinery as you slowly restore this station to what it once was.

As this description implies, The Lift is very much inspired by handyman-style games like House Flipper, where you’re tasked with sprucing up your surroundings. The main difference is that instead of one-off odd jobs, the game is designed around exploring a large interconnected complex, where you unlock new tools that let you access previous areas. Fantastic Signals is comprised of many developers who worked on Pathologic 2, and you can see this influence in the open-ended format at least partially comparable to what’s found in immersive sims (i.e., crawling through a duct).

From the two hours I played of the game, it makes the most of its unique setup, blending its many inspirations into a unique experience defined by tactile repair jobs and an appealingly weird world. I’m not one to typically go in for these types of “job sim” type experiences, but this setting and its narrative hooks pulled me in.

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The Lift preview

Events begin with the Keeper watching a propagandistic company video during their orientation, which more or less argues that the sole purpose of human existence is to work. After a shadowy figure behind the glass tells you to enter a crypod, the Keeper is stored away like company property until their next job. When they wake up some time later, it’s clear that something has gone very wrong: after forcing their way out using an emergency hatch, they find themselves entirely alone in the dilapidated remains of this once cutting-edge research station.

Even as you’re initially getting your bearings, there’s an immediate sense of place, with retrofuturistic decor and over-eager company posters setting a tone that’s simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and ominous.

More specifically, the game’s director, Ivan Slovtsov (who was the lead designer on Pathologic 2), cited Soviet sci-fi as a strong influence on their Serbia/Latvia-based studio, and that the Strugatsky Brothers’ book Monday Begins With Saturday was a central inspiration for The Lift. When I asked him how their work would differ from other Soviet sci-fi games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, which draws on a different Srugatsky Brothers work, Roadside Picnic, Slovtsov explained that if Roadside Picnic is a book about how “humanity is an ant on the road of the universe,” then Monday Begins With Saturday is about the “infinite potential of humanity,” a contrast they hope their game taps into. Considering that The Lift trades out S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s AK-47 for a screwdriver, you can see how that more optimistic outlook is reflected in the game.

As for the act of fixing stuff, the Keeper’s work is appropriately tactile. In my time in the Institute, I molded electrical cabling to restore power, performed a series of level pulls to restart a generator, and fixed chairs. A whole bunch of chairs. Each of these actions, whether it’s slotting in power adapters or tightening a screw, are given in-game actions that make it feel like you’re really doing the work. Yes, it obviously is more complicated to fix real-world wiring than sticking some cables together, but these tasks are presented in a way that makes it come across like you’re directly interacting with the environment instead of playing abstracted mini-games.

Case in point, the only way to figure out many of these contraptions is by reading instruction manuals or finding environmental hints left by the unfortunate Keepers who came before you. And when you do piece things together, your reward is watching the mechanical innards of a long-dead machine suddenly coming back to life via the movement of interlocking gears, before slapping the control panel back on with a satisfying thwack. Simple tasks are just as gratifying; it turns out, it’s quite nice to straighten out a crooked drawer or to finally line up that messed-up chair. There’s a lot of messed-up chairs to fix. This is all helped by little cartoonish visual cues that emphasize motion, quirks that tie into a generally stylized look—it’s worth mentioning the game’s art director previously worked on the beautiful Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

And beyond the inherent fun of putting things back together, every item you repair will contribute towards the “wavemeter,” which is basically a measure of the harmonious vibes emitted by objects that are now in working order—remember the furniture-based metaphysics I mentioned earlier, this is what I meant. Wavemeter can be harnessed by the Institute’s technology, giving you access to more energy that lets you power up devices so you can explore more of this sprawling station.

You’ll also find side-quests both from an outside interest group eager to explore the Institute, and from scavengers who have discovered this place in the years since it went defunct. While there’s only so much you can see in a short demo like this, I already encountered how increasing your wavemeter can grant access to new areas where you find additional tools, like a souped-up vacuum cleaner that let me blast through some of the mysterious black goo that seems to have destroyed this place.

Overall, my limited time with The Lift did something fairly impressive; it made me understand the appeal of this type of handyman game. By taking this type of grounded gameplay loop and placing it in a compelling sci-fi backdrop filled with critiques of dehumanizing labor practices and also mysterious goo monsters, it helped me see the appeal of becoming a digital jack-of-all-trades.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.