Keep the hotel moving: route a growing elevator fleet, automate the pressure and solve each chaotic shift.
Lift Operator is an elevator management game about dispatching a growing hotel fleet, learning automation and solving increasingly chaotic shifts.
Status: RC1.0 desktop playtest · 25-round campaign · supported on current Chrome or Edge on a desktop/laptop. Firefox is not currently a supported browser.
| First dispatch | Supply Closet |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Read the building, dispatch the first car, and keep guests calm. | Choose a loadout that matches the next round’s challenge. |
| Automation Workshop | Zoned fleet |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Turn operational ideas into lift policies with Blockly. | Assign a growing fleet to overlapping service zones. |
| Counterweight puzzle | Capsule dispatch at scale |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Paired cars move in opposition; Open Plan becomes a lifeline. | Twenty single-passenger capsules reward smart automation over frantic clicking. |
- Fast, readable lift dispatch that grows into fleet-management puzzles.
- Built-in and Workshop-authored automations, including Service Zoning.
- Power-ups, VIP journeys, Checkout demand, Rooftop Parties, counterweights, and capsule tubes.
- Persistent Credits, deterministic seeds, and local pre-round campaign resume for repeatable problem-solving.
- Welcome, How to Play, Credits & Licences, menu/Rooftop music and SFX controls, and an in-game feedback action that pre-fills the form with game details and copies them locally.
- Use Give Feedback in Settings or Round Review. It opens the feedback form with a compact diagnostic pre-filled and also copies that string to your clipboard. Opening the feedback form sends these technical details to Google to pre-fill the form: round, seed, browser and viewport. No feedback response is submitted unless you press Submit.
- Feedback is collected through the configured Google Form for player, technical, balance, and accessibility reports. The form is shared by link and does not collect email addresses. The form is opened only by your action and the game never submits a response automatically.
- Settings → Clear local data… removes this browser's campaign, local leaderboard, custom automations, and audio settings after a confirmation. It does not send or affect anyone else's data.
- See the concise RC1 Playtest Pack for current priorities and a report template.
Lift Operator is a hobby project designed to help children move from Scratch into purposeful programming. The current release work is correctness, performance, balance, usability, and device acceptance—not feature expansion. Start with DOCUMENTATION.md for document roles, then see LICENSE and NOTICE.md, and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md before redistributing a build.
| Need | Document |
|---|---|
| Product direction and sequence | ROADMAP.md |
| Current implementation/release scope | DELIVERY_PLAN.md |
| Current evidence and release gates | TEST_PLAN.md |
| Durable product rules | GDD, Game Play Map, Game Economy |
| Workshop and Automation Dock contract | Automation Workshop specification |
| Current playtest intake | Feedback log |
| Material chat decisions | Chat decision log |
| Audio source and credit record | Audio attribution |
| Canonical release screenshots | Release media manifest |
Requirements: Node.js 24 or a current supported LTS release, npm, and Playwright Chromium (install once with
npx.cmd playwright install chromium).
npm.cmd install
npm.cmd run serveOpen http://127.0.0.1:5500/ for local play. Use npm.cmd run test:smoke for a fast gate and
npm.cmd run test:full for the supported comprehensive suite.
After changing design/game-balance.v1.json, run:
npm.cmd run balance:generate
npm.cmd run balance:checkCreate diagnostic screenshots and a social-preview image with npm.cmd run capture:media; curated README screenshots
are governed by the release media manifest. Create a local itch.io-compatible ZIP from the
current commit with npm.cmd run package:itch.
The source is intentionally inspectable. Lift Operator protects the experience from accidents, not from curious players: malformed payloads and broken scripts fail safely, while Workshop scripts run through bounded containment. Strong authentication, anti-cheat, and adversarial source protection are not product goals.