The Money Man has a demo out now

A few weeks ago, I spoke about something that I was quite excited about, and I speculated on something mentioned in the press release. On Tuesday, we got the confirmation. As the two-person developer behind the Papers, Please-like The Money Man now has a demo available to play and check out the dangerous business of being a mob boss’ accountant. Here is what the press release says about the demo release:

“Sava Beric and Ahamed Inhaam, the duo development team behind Fenyx Digital, are thrilled to announce that a special demo for The Money Man, their latest pixel-art narrative game, is now available to download on Steam. In this choice-driven dystopian strategy sim, players are challenged to survive in the high-stakes criminal underworld of a crumbling New York City. There, spotting counterfeit bills becomes a matter of life or death.”

Speaking more about the individual parts of the upcoming release of The Money Man and the demo, the press release continues on to say: “Under New Management – Set in a sealed-off New York City 100 years after the world’s wealthy abandoned the Earth for Mars, The Money Man puts you in the shoes of a debtor forced to work off a loan in the back of a speakeasy. Your primary duty over the next 31 tense days is to inspect the money other debtors bring, ensuring that no counterfeits reach the vault.

On top of it all, the gates to Mars reopen just eleven days into your new job, bringing in a flood of strange, new currency into the city – if you’re not smart about it, it’ll be your life, or the life of the one you love, on the line.

Unforgiving Business – To manage the flow of dubious cash, you must use tools at your desk like scanners, UV plates, lights, and your reference ledger to cross-check serial numbers and verify portraits. Depending on what passes over your desk and who you speak to at the speakeasy between shifts, you’ll need to make tough choices about who walks free and who gets ruined. These choices culminate in one of nine distinct endings, where you can stay loyal to the mob, become an informant, or even escape to Mars. Even one choice can alter your ending.

Chapter One – In The Money Man’s playable demo, players will have a chance to sit down to master their tools and experience a tense prequel to the main story with its own branching story and moral dilemmas with New York’s desperate debtors.

Over the course of several days, you’ll hear the stories of an orphan boy, a waitress, and a stranger. All three will need you to let their counterfeit money pass for good reasons, but you know that any bad bills you let into the vault come out of your pay at the end of the week, putting you behind on what you also owe to the Family. You can’t help all three and also help yourself. After five days at the desk, what choices will you make for The Money Man?”

After watching Spider-Noir and the central role money plays in that, I’m excited to be hands-on with something that’s playing in that same realm of speakeasy/mob boss, crime as a business gameplay. Still no narrowing down of the release date for The Money Man just yet, but we do expect to see it sometime in 2027.