Site Building in Shady Job

Steam’s building pitch is short on purpose: create unstable bridges over deadly drops with building blocks, and understand that one mistake can destroy the entire structure. Manipulate cranes and platforms to get higher above the city. Beware traps and hazardous environments. Break walls and windows when the painted corridor is a lie. That is the whole site manual in store language. This page turns it into crew procedure for Shady Job’s September 10, 2026 Steam launch.

You are not constructing a pretty tower. You are buying the next floor for Punchy Bag. If the bag is not ready to move, extra structure is vanity. If the bag is ready and the span is not, you will watch cargo teach gravity. Read body bag in parallel. Party roles sit on co-op. Day-one loop sits on Getting Started.

Unstable bridges and collapse

Blocks make bridges. Bridges are unstable by design. Treat every span as temporary:

• Place, test, then commit the bag. A carrier stepping onto a live placement is how one mistake becomes the entire structure. The builder calls Path when it is legal to walk.
• Do not stack hero cantilevers. Long, thin, and clever is how physics party games write highlight reels and wipes. Short spans with somewhere to fall besides “the city” are faster over a full roof run.
• Assume the bag is a load. It struggles. It breaks structures. A bridge that held three workers may not hold three workers plus angry cargo. If Punchy Bag is thrashing, the carrier plants; the builder does not add a decorative rail.
• Collapse is contagious. Steam says one mistake can destroy the entire structure. When a piece goes, get people and bag onto the last floor that still has a number painted on the wall. Official shots show floor 13. Call the number, not “back there.”

If a collapse already happened, rebuild from the last solid slab. Do not try to catch a falling span with more blocks. That is how you spend the next five minutes inside a debris cloud while the bag leaves.

Cranes and moving platforms

Cranes and moving platforms are how you gain height without a death bridge. They are also how you launch a crew into the skyline if nobody is watching the controls.

• One person owns the crane. Voice that name. A second player grabbing the same control mid-lift is a wipe.
• Bag last onto a moving platform, bag first off it. Props can ride along; people can ride along; Punchy Bag should not be the thing that tests whether the platform still exists at the far end.
• If a platform passes an ice patch or a floor press called electric, wait. Hazard detail for routing is in the walkthrough. Building through a hazard because “the crane is going anyway” is how you freeze a teammate solid. One official shot did exactly that to a worker tagged Valentine.
• Plunger cover during lifts. A Plunger Gun cup on a static wall is a leash if the platform stutters. Shoot, Pull / Release, Drop — those are the prompts. Do not invent a crane-link button.

City skyline, extra cranes in the distance, and the giant golden statue are landmarks, not objectives. Use them to say “statue side” when the radio gets loud. Do not build toward the statue because it looks important.

Break walls and windows

Destructible walls and windows are legal. They are not a personality test for the bag.

• Break the environment with people and tools, not by slamming Punchy Bag through a pane. Rough handling makes the cargo more aggressive. That rule is on the store page and on body bag.
• Look through a window before you commit a span. A painted corridor can hide a drop, a trap, or a better crane. Official shots also show crews carrying a toilet and a barrel. Those physics props make ramps, chocks, and extra mass on a platform. They do not make a wall less of a wall until you actually break it.
• After a break, pause for the structure. Removing a wall can remove the thing your last bridge was counting on. The person who breaks is responsible for saying whether Path is still Path.

Sandwich and industrial fan appear in hotbar slots 1 and 2 in official HUD shots. They are loadout, not architecture. Effects are still being catalogued pre-launch. Do not write a fan-as-bridge guide. See controls for what the HUD actually shows.

Floor numbers and reading the site

Unfinished skyscrapers are easy to get lost in because every floor wants to look like wet concrete. Use what the art already gives you:

• Painted floor numbers. Call them. 13 is confirmed in shots; other numbers will exist in the live levels. The walkthrough uses floors as route language for Level 1 and playtest Level 2, not as a puzzle dump.
• Traps and hazardous environments. Steam warns you. Press flagged ice and electric. If the floor looks wrong, it is wrong. Builder stops placing. Carrier stops walking.
• Height vs. progress. Higher is only better if the bag can stand there. A beautiful crane ride to an empty slab with no bury and no way down is a postcard.

Playtest 1.3 / Wave 4 on August 14, 2026 added LEVEL 2. That did not change the physics lesson: more site means more chances to drop a bad span. Playtests ended August 31, 2026. Launch-week structure tweaks will show up in patch notes.

Physics props as ramps

Toilets and barrels are the confirmed prop examples. You will find more clutter. Rules that do not require a stat table:

• A prop ramp is still a physics object. If the bag hits it, the ramp can leave.
• Chock wheels and moving bits with a heavy prop before the carrier boards.
• Do not trap Punchy Bag under a pile of toilets. That is rough handling wearing a disguise.
• The floater role on co-op exists partly to haul props so the builder’s hands stay on blocks and cranes.

Solo builders have to sequence this alone: path, then bag, then next path. Duos should never both place blocks while the cargo sits unattended on a ledge. Four-stacks can afford a dedicated builder; they cannot afford three architects and zero carrier. Lock the job on the squad planner and the roles page.

Build like the span has to survive a shove, because it does. The rest of the how-tos sit on the Guides Hub. Your job is to keep a floor under the bag until the roof bury.