Video games are such funny things, because I think if you were to tell someone unfamiliar with them that there is genuine enjoyment to be had in pushing some blocks around in a virtual space they’d look at you as if you’d told them there’s genuine enjoyment to be hand in pushing some blocks around in a virtual space. And yet it’s true! It’s one of the classic puzzle game genres, going way back to 1982 with Sokoban. And here we are now, many years later, with a new entry to the genre in the form of Hazard Pay, a dystopian take that sees you cleaning up mysterious messes in secret labs.
These messes that you have to clean up come in various forms. For example, there might be a patch of hazardous material that you have to guide towards a vat of acid. Moving around that material will spread more waste (blood) on the floor, however, and so you need to use your tools (a mop and bucket) to clean up after yourself, preferably using them to move the bits and bobs towards the vat to clean as you go. Tools like your mop and bucket and the hazardous material can be touched no problem, and can move one another, but you can’t touch the vat directly, unless you put a lid on it, which there may not be in every level.
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This gets ramped up in difficulty in various ways, like an annoyingly placed chair, or purposefully awkwardly laid out levels that mean you really have to think about how you’re navigating the space. It also mixes things up by presenting you with just loose shirts and underwear that you can sort of fuse together to mop up the aforementioned blood. Amongst all of this, you also have to make sure you load up any waste onto your truck, as well as your tools if you have them, so it’s not enough to just clean up after yourself.
It’s a neat little puzzle game that is a lot more show than it is tell, with little tutorialisation shoved down your throat unnecessarily. Though, perhaps a little bit of an obvious nudge that you can hold down R to reset a level quickly would have saved me having to exit and re-enter the level more times than I’d like to admit.
Still, if any of this sounds up your alley, the demo is there for you to try out on Steam too, which you can check out right here.