A studio of Polish developers is making an unusual bet: that players will spend hours scrubbing virtual grime off furniture, sorting trash, and negotiating with an irritable boss. But beneath the mundane work of cleaning a hoarder's house lies something far stranger. Hoarder, announced this week, is a cleaning simulator that deliberately hides a second game underneath, waiting for curious players to discover it.
The game's creators are Byzel, a development team within boardgame publisher Awaken Realms. Leading the project is Gustaw Stachaszewski, who co-founded Acid Wizard, the studio behind the cult horror title Darkwood. The team also includes contributors to the time-management shooter Superhot and a Polish YouTube horror series. Their debut feels like a careful study in genre subversion and player agency.
On the surface, Hoarder resembles games like PowerWash Simulator and Viscera Cleanup Detail. Players enter the cluttered home of an elderly couple, sorting valuable items from refuse, clearing grime from surfaces, and selling unwanted goods through a magical dumpster. The art direction is striking: dusty bottles, scattered vinyl records, stained lampshades, and worn bedclothes rendered in rich, nostalgic colours against weathered textures. The work is methodical and oddly satisfying. If players accumulate enough money, they can simply purchase a dream holiday ticket and finish the game right there, never knowing what else awaits.
But exploration reveals anomalies. An altar hangs on the wall, decorated with tapestries depicting unsettling figures. A door appears. Then a staircase. Those who descend find themselves in an entirely different space, one that contradicts everything the cleaning simulator established. Game rules break down. Quest descriptions become corrupted. The familiar mechanics dissolve. What emerges is something the developers describe as an "adventure game with horror elements," a genre-bending experience tied to the mystery of the house's previous inhabitants and their disappearance.
The structure mirrors recent indie successes like Inscryption, where a seemingly simple premise conceals elaborate layers beneath. Yet Hoarder's approach feels distinct. The cleaning sim doesn't vanish once players cross the threshold; instead, it becomes a fuel source for the deeper mystery, a way of progressing through the strange world below. Players retain agency throughout: they can ignore the staircase entirely and remain in the upper game, or they can dive into the abyss.
Stachaszewski's previous work suggests his team understands atmosphere and unease. Darkwood earned respect for its top-down perspective and putrid aesthetic, creating dread through art direction and environmental storytelling rather than jump scares. Hoarder appears to apply similar principles but inverted; it starts in banal domesticity and ventures into the bizarre.
The game has no release date yet. More information is available on Steam, and players can track the project via Byzel's official channels.