The Salesman
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About The Salesman
The Salesman is a dark indie simulator from Backstab Industries, published by Bad Ideas Productions. Released in 2025 for PC and Linux, it blends survival mechanics with psychological horror. You play as someone recently fired, struggling to pay bills while trading personal items for cheaper, ad-filled alternatives. The game focuses on the slow erosion of identity as you replace possessions, and eventually memories, with corporate-owned versions. It’s a bleak, surreal take on modern precarity, framed as a single-player narrative-driven experience. The core loop mixes resource management with horror elements, like intrusive ads that warp your perception.
Gameplay
Each session revolves around balancing job applications, debt payments, and maintaining your remaining belongings. You interact with a cluttered UI to sell items, which grants cash but replaces them with glitchy, advertisement-laden versions. These ads trigger hallucinations and mood shifts, altering dialogue and environmental details. Controls are point-and-click with occasional quick-time events during stressful moments. A typical hour might involve negotiating a job interview while battling intrusive thoughts, then choosing between paying rent or preserving a sentimental object. Progression feels like a downward spiral; selling more items increases income but deepens your psychological figuring out. The horror emerges from mundane tasks becoming increasingly nightmarish.
What Players Think
The game holds a 7.2/10 on PlayPile, with 34% of players completing it. Average playtime is 8.5 hours, though 22% quit before 5 hours. Community moods are split: 68% report feeling anxious, 22% describe it as “depressing,” and 7% find it darkly amusing. Reviews highlight the “creepy ad mechanics” and “relentless atmosphere,” though some call it “too bleak.” Completion rates drop sharply after the third act, with 41% of players stuck at the “Final Replacement” quest. Achievement completion is 72%, driven by grim milestones like “Sacrifice All Sentiment.” Critics praise its originality but note repetitive late-game loops.
PlayPile's Take
The Salesman is $29.99, with 25 achievements (35 gamerscore). It works best for fans of abstract simulators and psychological horror who don’t mind a frustratingly slow pace. The repetitive resource management and steep difficulty may alienate casual players. While the themes resonate, the gameplay often feels punishing rather than engaging. For $30, it’s a niche experiment that leans into discomfort more than polish. Stick with it if you want a game that mirrors the stress of modern life, but be ready to trade your sanity for a few achievements.
Game Modes
Single player
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