If you’ve ever wanted to play an NPC in a Hitman level then do I have the Steam Next Fest demo for you

There’s a scene in Andor—the show that asks what if Star Wars read Gramsci—where the main character observes of the imperial ruling class that all you need is “a uniform, some dirty hands, and an imperial toolkit” to slip beneath the notice of the world’s most powerful people. “They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care.” The character is describing how to get away with stealing from the state, but the observation applies generally. Every king, general, and emperor is carried along by a few million nameless workers: a vast ocean of invisible labour that could, if it felt so inclined, rise up and swallow the bastards.

Even a humdrum gig like elevator operator offers the anonymous masses opportunities to subtly interfere with power. Or at least, that’s my takeaway from the Steam Next Fest demo for Elevator Music, a game that puts you in the pressed bellboy uniform of, well, an elevator attendant. Your job is to make the room go up and down, picking people up, dropping them off, trying to move in the most efficient manner possible so as not to irritate your well-to-do clientele at the fancy fake-Swiss hotel you work at.

Which might not sound thrilling, but there’s a war brewing, and all the world’s great and good have converged on your workplace for what feels like last-ditch diplomatic talks before everyone hits the big red button. Your lift is a hub of nervous energy as soldiers, generals, ambassadors, and ministers pile in and out, have quick, conspiratorial exchanges, wheel and deal and try to keep ahead of the train that everyone knows is bearing down on them.

It also lends you, in your position as Chief Lift Guy, a great deal of subtle power. People can meet or just miss one another depending on which floors you decide to skip, others can get an early or a late start to important meetings depending on your whims; it’s not long before the assembled warmongers start trying to cut you in on little deals—make sure so-and-so doesn’t make it to this floor before me, tell me if you see this person, and so on. All the while your bosses are flitting between floors in a blind panic, trying to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.

Which it doesn’t, because even in the brief timespan of Elevator Music’s demo—which covers the first day of the events—someone gets murdered in the basement and things wrap up with your character being pressed at gunpoint into serving the ends of international espionage. It’s great, like you’ve taken on the role of a crucial background character in Hitman’s Himmapan Hotel while all the plots and counter-plots unfurl around you.

I’m very curious to see where it all goes and what kind of agency you get to exercise over the course of the whole thing; by the end of the demo, I wasn’t just making choices about which floors to go to, I was signing up as a member of minor conspiracies and collecting the ID cards of people who were almost certainly spies, all while trying to maximise the tips I got from lift-riders and making sense of the game’s plot through the limited view I got on it from the elevator.