Led by Darkwood co-creator Gustaw Stachaszewski, developer byzel has announced HOARDER, an “atmospheric, genre-blending adventure” that sees players begin what seems like a mundane cleaning simulator, but quickly spirals into a submerged nightmare. No release date was revealed alongside the announcement, but HOARDER will be coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
The goal of the game is simple: declutter a house abandoned by a hoarder. You’ll start with the typical hand-holding of a job simulator: checklists, quest markers and clearly-defined goals. However, beneath the trash is a basement that leads to a facility that defies geometry. As you descend into said basement, the game puts away the support system you had at the beginning, leaving you to fend for yourself.
Once you descend, a day-and-night cycle begins in the game, and the facility you find becomes your new home. Each day, you’ll explore more of it, as it changes over time and through your actions. You’ll operate an underwater submarine to explore the deep-sea floor, viewed through a LiDAR scanner. Meanwhile, back in the outside world, you’ll come across a variety of strange finds, which can be brought back to your base and used as salvage to unlock new parts of the facility, upgrade existing ones, or push the story forward.
HOARDER is described as having horror elements, though not tied to a single genre. As the cleaning progresses, you’ll uncover details about the previous inhabitants and what happened to them. As the mystery takes shape, you can decide whether to follow it, or focus on earning enough cash through cleaning to go on a dream vacation.