No Elevator has given me something to prove, and that's a terrible idea

I hate jumping puzzles in games, but I’m also incredibly stubborn and hard-headed, which is an absolute abomination of a combination, and I’m willing to submit my hours of Kugane Tower (FFXIV) attempts as evidence. Jumping puzzles infuriate me far more than even the worst rage games, mainly because my hands seem to conspire against me, so when I was introduced to No Elevator, I knew playing was a terrible idea. 

So of course I played the demo. If nothing else, I am apparently a gaming masochist.

No Elevator, developed by Silent Cats, is a jumping puzzle game that feels like it shouldn’t exist, mainly because there are elevators RIGHT THERE, but I’m so glad it exists. It’s a game that is absolutely not good for my mental health but also gives me something to prove, which is another terrible combination. I hate it, but I can’t help loving it too. 

But… There is an elevator?

No Elevator is a game that provides you with an elevator, despite its name, and then tells you that rather than using it, you need to scale an impossibly tall building using the increasingly shady and OSHA-defiant outer features. 

On top of that, the residents of said building are apparently hell-bent on making life harder by throwing air conditioning units down from above. The advertisements along the walls have a life of their own, and even the wind is working against you.  

It’s ironic, really, that one of the first things you see when loading the game is a piece of graffiti that says “mental health matters.” Frankly, this game is terrible for my mental health. Every attempt to play ends with me screaming so loudly the neighbors probably think I’m possessed, rage-quitting, and needing to take a walk to clear my head.  

Worse still, after clearing my head, all I want to do is play more, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I’m not incapable of making a jump despite the evidence to the contrary. I refuse to give up, even if that means running around the same floor in circles a dozen or more times because I apparently can’t learn from my own previous mistakes. 

Floor 10 will not defeat me. I refuse to let that happen. 

Do not shoot the cat

At least while you’re feeling the rage in No Elevator, you have a lovely and very useful little nail gun to help you vent your rage. I mean, sure, it’s meant to be used to produce little platforms to help you ascend the building, but I found a new use for it: shooting it into the air like Danny Butterman in Hot Fuzz. It’s remarkably therapeutic, to be honest. 

However, I did make a mistake early on in my playthrough that I feel, in hindsight, should have been a sign of how my first attempt was going to go: I shot the cat. 

In my defense, I’m so used to left-click being the interact button that I just autopiloted. But rather than stroking the cat, which was all I was trying to do, I shot paint into the poor thing’s eyes. I should have taken that as an omen. I should have stopped there and gone about my day. 

Instead, I entered into a fight to the death with a video game that is determined to defeat me, while my own unstoppable stubbornness refuses to let me quit. As Carl likes to say in the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, “You will not break me.” 

Why do I love this?

Do you want to know what makes me angriest about No Elevator? It’s not the fact that sometimes the planks you shoot with the gun make absolutely NO SENSE and are distinctly unhelpful. It’s not even the wind that insists on pushing me off the little ledge I previously felt safe on. No, the thing that makes me most angry is how much fun I have while playing and how much I want to play more.

To add something deep in a place where deep thinking probably has no place: sometimes shouting feels remarkably therapeutic. It’s not something I generally do for fear of ending up with the neighbors calling the police or my daughter thinking mummy has gone mad. 

At least with a game like No Elevator, I can point to the reason for my immediate frustration while letting any hidden frustrations get mixed in and vocalized. 

And there’s nothing quite like making a jump when you’ve missed it the previous fifteen (thousand) times you attempted it. Knowing exactly where you need to go and actually getting there are two entirely different things, and rather than focusing on the end goal the game provides, No Elevator becomes a series of frustrating and repeated attempts punctuated by incredibly satisfying little wins. 

No Elevator is set to release in December 2026, but the demo is available to enrage and engage you right now. There’s a leaderboard with prizes to win. I don’t expect to ever make it anywhere near the top, with the fastest time being around four hours, but I’m going to keep going back until I reach the top of the building.