Europe Heatwave Simulator

Europe Heatwave Simulator is a first-person survival comedy about getting through a 14-day heatwave in a Paris studio while working remotely. Temperatures rise from 33°C to 43°C, and you must manage the heat without status bars: your body reports its needs in deadpan text that pulses red. Ignore those warnings and heatstroke ends the run, which resumes from that morning.

Keep cool at home

Opening the windows lets the room match the street temperature within seconds; closing them turns the studio into an insulated oven. You can use fans, ice blocks, a mosquito net and a fly swatter, then try to get a real AC unit. Vented, it cools the room to 21°C while dumping 2600W outside; if its hose pops off, it heats the studio instead. Appliances start breaking on day 2, and the approved repair method is to hit them until they work.

Work and money

At 11:00 each day, you join a Dezoom call with your coworkers. Around 26 branching scenarios cover the calls, and your webcam tile shows a live camera feed of you at your desk. Between calls, you have 94 work tasks across 33 micro-games, with 10 tasks a day to complete or you lose pay. Three HR strikes get you fired, but unemployment is not a fail state: you then live on 40€ a day in heatwave welfare.

You start with minus 20€. Rent of 280€ is charged every Sunday, and the bank offers a larger overdraft at 19.9%. Your inbox contains more than 25 emails, including heatwave ads, a fake tax office and a company selling AC sounds as a monthly subscription.

Shop for supplies

GreedCo delivers the next morning, but its prices rise by 4% each day. Leave a package on the landing too long and a stranger steals it; your upstairs neighbour leaves a note about the thief that does not help. On Fleabay, scalpers resell 30€ fans for much more, while one bidder outbids you at the last second.

On day 5, a flyer advertises discounted AC units at a supermarket opening at 7:30, with limited stock. You can set an alarm for 7:00 and race against around 180 rivals through pallets, trolleys and grannies, then fight mannequins over the last unit. They keep getting back up. If you win, you carry the box home; if you lose, your coworkers discuss it on the next call. The supermarket is closed on Sundays.

A two-week heatwave

The 14-day run follows a scripted sequence of events: the fan breaks on day 2, a package is stolen from day 3, the supermarket riot takes place on day 5, your landlady visits on day 8, and a general strike comes on day 11. Rent is due every Sunday.

Everyday minigames

Using the toilet is a minigame with a drifting physical stream, combo multipliers, rank popups and a persistent high score. You can play during a work call, but the microphone remains on. The game also has PSX-era visuals and autosave.