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Press release:
Hertfordshire, 12th of March, 2026 – Numskull Games and indie developer Smitner Studio announced that their dystopian pixel-art block-pushing puzzle game ‘Hazard Pay‘ will launch on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam in June 2026. Step inside the nightmare today with a playable demo now available on Steam.

It’s 1982 and you’ve been beckoned to a secretive research facility in an authoritarian Cold War-era state. Hazard Pay puts you in the shoes of a government cleanup specialist dispatched after a catastrophic containment breach. The mission seems simple: destroy evidence, restore order, and collect your hazard pay. But inside the facility, the truth behind the experiments quickly begins to surface, and reality is far more sinister.

The officials want silence, not survivors

Inside the Institut für Proteintherapie (IPT), a government program intended to solve a national food crisis has spiralled into a biological horror. Resident scientists who were attempting to synthesise artificial proteins have created horrific ███████████████ that now ████ ██████ around the facility. Navigate laboratories, dormitories, and experimental chambers while encountering the terrifying results of these experiments.

You’ll cross paths with PRS-86, a blind predator that tracks blood with lethal precision, and The Collector, an evolving organism that has grown beyond the control of its creators.

As the clean-up specialist, you are only one of many expendable workers sent in to contain the situation. If you die, another will replace you.

Choose your own nightmare

Hazard Pay blends stealth, survival horror, and narrative choice in a tense facility-wide clean-up operation.

Players must:

Navigate across sectors of the research facility
Avoid deadly bio-organisms that hunt through scent and sound
Decide the fate of trapped scientists

Will you become just another disposable tool of the system, or be the one to finally expose the crimes hidden inside the facility?

Key Features

Ingenious, compact, handcrafted push/pull puzzle levels
Unique clean-up mechanics – erase blood trails, destroy evidence, and hide the truth
Branching narrative choices that affect alliances, trust, and endings
Environmental storytelling, uncovering the secrets of the facility

Play the Demo Now

Players can experience the opening of Hazard Pay today through the playable demo on Steam and get their first look at the infected research complex and the horrors within.

Play the Demo on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2692620/Hazard_Pay/

Hazard Pay launches on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam in June 2026.

About Numskull Games
In early 2019 Numskull Games established a worldwide physical and digital game publishing label. Launching and curating games from both new and veteran development studios as well as international games publisher partners, Numskull Games publishes titles across all major gaming platforms. Additionally, by utilising the infrastructure and resources of its sister companies, Rubber Road & Numskull Designs, Numskull Games creates unique and compelling Collectors’ Editions for its elite releases.

About Smitner Studio
Smitner Studio was founded in 2025 by Arran Smith, a Kiwi developer living in the Black Forest, Germany. A perpetual-prototyper who spent years making games, he created the studio to finally get them out the door to the wider world. A firm believer in open-source software, he works with the Godot Engine and contributes tools and knowledge back to the community.