Silent Killer: Hoistway Havoc
An elevator arcade survival game
Ride the car top. Throw tools. Dodge the counterweight. Survive the night shift. A blue collar arcade shooter set inside a living elevator hoistway, built by an elevator constructor.
Available now
Inside the hoistway
Silent Killer: Hoistway Havoc is an indie arcade survival game set entirely inside a working elevator hoistway. You play an elevator mechanic riding the top of a moving car. You throw tools at electrical hazards, dodge falling debris, dodge busted contactors, and avoid the one thing every elevator constructor has nightmares about: the counterweight.
The counterweight will kill you
The counterweight is the silent killer the game is named after. It is a real piece of elevator equipment, an enormous steel frame full of cast iron weights that rides the rails opposite the cab. In the trade it is famously dangerous because it moves silently, in the dark, in the opposite direction of the car you are riding. Touch it and the game ends. The trade joke is that it never lies, it just falls. The game takes that joke seriously.
Game modes
Eight modes shipping at launch. Endless Shift is the baseline arcade run with scaling difficulty. Eight Hour Shift is a countdown timer where you clock out at zero. Boss Rush is a high pressure cadence with no warmup. Callback Mode hunts specific enemy types to fill a quota. Apprentice Training is the easier first run mode for new players. Night Shift turns the lights off and gives you a flashlight cone. Overtime ramps the wage multiplier every thirty seconds. Turbo accelerates difficulty for the people who already mastered the others.
Built by an elevator constructor
This game was made by Joshua Worth, an elevator constructor. Every enemy, every game mode, every dumb death quote comes from the actual experience of riding car tops and getting written up for things that were not in the contract. The bosses are named after the kinds of people who show up on a job site to slow it down: The Consultant, The Inspector, Safety Sally, The Estimator, The Architect, OSHA Inspector, Building Owner. The death quotes draw from the dark humor of a trade that loses people every year to mistakes nobody would understand from outside.
Free on iOS and Android
Silent Killer: Hoistway Havoc is free to play on the Apple App Store and Google Play. No ads in gameplay. No paywalls. The game is supported by IntentMesh LLC and made for the trade by the trade. If you are a mechanic or apprentice or anybody who has ever had to wait for the elevator to come back up to your floor in a dark hoistway, this one is for you.