tinyBuild and developer Fantastic Signals have officially pushed back The Lift, their upcoming supernatural handyman simulator. The game was previously targeting a 2026 launch on Windows PC via Steam, but the team has now decided to delay it and expand the release plans at the same time.
Alongside the delay, The Lift is now confirmed to be coming to current-generation consoles, including Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. While a new release window hasn’t been locked in, the announcement makes it clear the developers are using the extra time to broaden the game’s reach rather than rush it out the door.
The Lift puts you in the boots of a handyman sent to renovate a massive research facility known as the Institute, long abandoned after a mysterious incident. It’s designed as an eerie first-person experience that blends satisfying house-flipping and repair work with a strange, mind-bending story. The setting leans heavily into Soviet sci-fi vibes and the kind of unsettling, anomaly-filled atmosphere fans of SCP-style fiction tend to love.
Gameplay is built around three core pillars: renovation, exploration, and repair.
Renovation is more than just cosmetic cleanup. Each floor is its own large-scale project with specific challenges, letting you work at your own pace as jobs escalate from basic furniture fixes to more advanced tasks like electrical engineering. You’ll rely on a range of gadgets, craft what you need, and steadily restore the Institute toward something resembling its former glory.
Exploration revolves around the Lift itself, which acts as your mobile base as you travel through the facility. You’ll move across multiple biomes, unlock hidden areas, and meet characters with their own quests. As you explore deeper, you’ll piece together what really happened during the incident that left the Institute in ruins.
Repair is where the simulator side aims to shine. You’ll bring complex machines back online, including everything from vending machines and generators to satellite dishes and reactors. Repairs involve hands-on systems work like building circuits with multiple components, detecting fault currents, routing cables, managing power supply, and even generating torque to get machinery running again.
With its mix of first-person renovation gameplay, interactive engineering-style repairs, and supernatural mystery, The Lift is shaping up to be one of the more unusual simulator games coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The delay may be disappointing for anyone counting down to 2026, but the added console support suggests a bigger launch is now the goal.
