I Know a Guy: Shady Life Simulator
by Bunch'o'Nerds · 1 Apr, 2026
326 downloads
About the Game
You owe a dangerous, mysterious mafia a serious amount of money. They don’t call. They don’t warn you. They kidnap you and make it clear: work it off, or else. Run your pizza shop, take on shady favors, and get to know the people of Hobarey Town while doing the mafia’s dirty work. Learn who to trust, who to use, and who to avoid.
Maybe you’ll pay off your debt. Maybe you’ll build the right connections to take the mafia down.
EXPERIENCE DUAL-LIFE
Manage a pizza shop up front while running illegal jobs out back. Keep both sides operating without drawing police attention or blowing your cover.
TAKE SHADY JOBS
Complete illegal favors for NPCs, including cleaning bloody clothes, ordering restricted items from the dark web, disposing of evidence, and even burning bodies in your own oven. Every job increases payout, risk, and police attention.
BUILD YOUR REPUTATION
Build a strong cover by becoming the best pizza shop in town while separately earning trust in the shady underworld. Each side progresses on its own, unlocking different jobs, tools, and risks.
UPGRADE YOUR OPERATION
Upgrade your kitchen, hidden workstations, and equipment. Larger setups allow faster production, riskier jobs, and higher payouts.
DEAL WITH WEIRD NPCs
Interact with dozens of hand-crafted NPCs, each with their own stories, personalities, and ongoing problems that unfold over time.
PLAY TOGETHER
Play alone or team up with up to four players online. Split tasks, run both sides of the business together, and deal with the chaos as a group.
Screenshots
7 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Patch Notes v1.0.9
Hey chefs! We are dropping Patch v1.0.9 with a couple of focused fixes for map tracking readability and basement kitchen precision. Here is what is included in today's update:
Map & Quest Visuals
Standardized Map Markers for Dig Sites & Roach Hunts: Zack's roach hunts, buried dig sites, and shady delivery spots now display on the map using the standard site diamond icon, site tag, quest name, and location line (matching scrub and bugging jobs). Zack's search circle is offset from the actual roach location so the diamond does not pinpoint the exact spot, and his quest list row now explicitly names the location once the hunt is accepted.
Pizzeria & Kitchen Calibration
Basement Oven Temperature Dial Fix: Fixed a visual misalignment on the basement oven's gauge where the printed green zone extended roughly 24 mm past the actual burn threshold. The gauge needle now lands on the red zone boundary exactly when a pizza burns, ensuring pulling a pizza at the end of the green zone no longer results in an unexpectedly burnt pizza. (Cooking times and pizza quality remain unchanged).
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Hotfix / Patch Notes
Hey chefs! This is a small one, with two fixes for clearer error messages and multiplayer saves. Here’s what’s changed:
Multiplayer & Saves
Wall Photo Persistence: Photos hung on the wall by a friend no longer disappear after the host saves and reloads the game.
UI & Quality of Life
Steam Connection Message: When Steam is down, the menu now correctly says Steam is not connected instead of blaming your internet connection.
Peace,
Bunch’o’Nerds Team
Patch Notes v1.0.7
Hey chefs! We are back with Patch v1.0.6 to clean up quest item persistence, polish achievement conditions, fix kitchen pause logic, and resolve non-Latin input display issues. Here is everything included in this update:
Quests & Inventory
Carried Quest Item Persistence: Wash or burn job items carried in your hands or bag now properly save and restore to their correct inventory slots upon reloading. The quest section now maintains a direct link to the respawned item rather than dropping standalone duplicates on the floor.
Forgery Station Unlock Guidance: Declining a forgery job previously displayed an incorrect popup telling players to unlock the station via the Dark Web SkillForge tree. The popup now correctly explains that Tony delivers the covered desk to the back room once the first debt installment is paid (and where to buy it if that installment was missed). This correction has been updated across all nine supported languages.
Pizzeria & Kitchen Logic
Pause Menu Oven Freeze: Pausing the game now correctly freezes baking progress inside the automatic pizza oven, preventing pizzas from continuing to cook or burn while paused.
Starter Machine Respawn Fix: Fixed an issue where selling a starter machine caused it to magically reappear whenever its former counter was moved.
Photography Line-of-Sight Fix: Photographing a trash can now strictly checks the camera viewfinder frame and physical line of sight. Cans outside the camera frame or hidden behind walls will no longer trigger quest credit.
Achievements & UI Polish
"Like a Ferris Wheel" Achievement Fix: Declining CaseOh at the window no longer permanently locks you out of the "Like a Ferris Wheel" achievement. The achievement now tracks CaseOh's open-world quests in place of skipped night quests and syncs across all players in the session (works retroactively on existing save files upon load).
Non-Latin Keyboard Prompt Fix: Fixed key prompt visual glitches where non-Latin keyboard layouts would accidentally display Hebrew, Cyrillic, or Arabic characters instead of standardized input prompts.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Hotfix / Patch Notes
Hey chefs! This update brings bigger lobbies for the brave, more control over your orders, and a batch of fixes to make quests clearer and the game smoother. Here's what's changed:
New Features
Up to 8 Players: Hosts can now set the max player count up to 8 players instead of 4. Fair warning: the game isn't optimized for more than 4 players, so anything above that is strictly for chaos enthusiasts. You'll see a friendly reminder when you pick it. Don't say we didn't warn you!
Drink & Sauce Toggles: You can now turn off drink and sauce orders from the Recipe screens. Want to focus on pizza only? Now you can.
Quest Fixes & Clarity
Elon Tusk's Pepperoni Quest: Updated the quest text to make it crystal clear: you need to throw one piece of pepperoni, not the pepperoni pizza.
Bulk Order Van – Leo Caruso Items: When a bulk order requires items from Leo Caruso, the quest now shows a note under that task telling you these items must be bought from Leo Caruso's vendor.
Zack the Roach King – Nothing but Net: Fixed the side quest tracker text flickering, where "but" kept jumping between lines. It now stays put.
Gameplay & Bug Fixes
Red Phone Door Teleport: Fixed a bug where running back and forth through the door unlocked by the Red Phone upgrade could glitch players into the basement.
Audio
Music Volume Slider: The audio slider now also controls the music for Adrian's Secret live scene and the lobby radio.
UI & Quality of Life
Forgery Name Box: The typing caret is now orange instead of black, so you can easily see where you're typing on the dark field.
Typing Mini-Game: Made several UI improvements to the typing mini-game.
Photo Mode Keybind: Removed the unused Photo Mode option from the keybind settings.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Patch Notes v1.0.4
Hey chefs! We are dropping Patch v1.0.4 to fix procedural quest tracking, resolve lingering lobby voice chat audio, and ensure achievement sync across all multiplayer sessions. Here is everything included in this update:
Forgery & Quest Tracking
Dynamic Procedural Quest Cards: Randomly generated forgery jobs now immediately update their HUD quest card once the document is forged. Quest text no longer stays stuck on "Forge a badge" until courier pickup. Additionally, task lines now mirror handwritten jobs, explicitly stating the document type, the required name, and the exact delivery location.
Multiplayer & Audio Fixes
Lobby Voice Chat Cleanup: Getting kicked from a lobby or losing connection to the host no longer leaves the lobby's voice chat playing while you are on the main menu. Voice chat functionality will now properly reset and work when joining your next lobby.
Achievements
"Guess I'm A Gold Digger Now" Session Sync: This achievement now unlocks for all players in the session the moment a buried chest or cash bag is looted. Players who already emptied a dig site before this patch will receive the achievement automatically the next time they load that save file.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Hotfix / Patch Notes
Hey chefs! This round of fixes targets quests that weren't tracking properly, a few annoying delivery issues, and a frustrating moment in the signature mini-game. Here's what's changed:
Quest Fixes
Elon Tusk's Skateboard Quest: Items bought from the vendor weren't being counted toward the skateboard-throwing quest. They now count as intended.
Washing Machine Level Requirements: Fixed an issue where Level 3 Washing Machine jobs could be completed with a Level 2 machine. These jobs now correctly require Level 3.
Rookie's First Case File: Fixed a save migration bug from the beta that affected the "Rookie's First Case File" mission.
Gameplay & Mechanics
Prefilled Drinks: Fixed an issue where cashiers were unable to take prefilled drinks.
Bulk Order Delivery: Fixed a bug where delivering shady pizzas from bulk orders to the car placed the box in the car, but dropped the pizza itself on the ground, where it couldn't be interacted with.
UI & Quality of Life
Signature Mini-Game Timeout: When the signature timer ran out, players were kicked from the table without any warning and could get stuck on that screen. We've improved this flow so it's clear what happened, and you're no longer left stuck.
We read all your comments and continue making improvements in real time.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Hotfix / Patch Notes
Hey chefs! We’re dropping another round of updates aimed at fine-tuning game pacing, preventing sabotage spam, and making open-world quest management much cleaner. Here is what’s changed:
BRM & Sabotage Pacing Adjustments
Sabotage & Mini-Game Cooldowns: Added a strict 1-day in-game cooldown, between triggers in the Yellow and Orange risk zones on both the Front and Shady sides.
Once-Per-Day Limit: Cops or Mob members will now only show up for sabotage once per day at most. Arcade cabinet mini-game encounters are now also capped at once per day.
Smart Cooldown Locking: Crossing in and out of the Yellow/Orange risk threshold will no longer reset this timer. No more back-to-back attacks or rapid-fire harassment when toggling heat!
Quest Management & Resets
Item-Dependent Quest Reset: Added a new Quest Reset feature specifically for Washing Machine jobs, Incinerator jobs, and item-specific quests (like Eleanor's chest quest). If you run into friction, you can now reset them safely.
UI & Quality of Life
Open-World Quest Tracker: Whenever a new quest is ready to be picked up somewhere in Hobarey Town, a persistent tracker will now appear on the left HUD panel under "Side Quests" so you always know when fresh work is waiting for you!
Achievement Updates:
Fixed an issue where "Guess I'm A Gold Digger Now" was not tracking or unlocking properly.
Removed the "With Great Pizza Comes Great Responsibility" achievement until it reworked.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Hotfix - Patch Notes v1.0.1
Hey chefs! We’ve been closely monitoring all your reviews and community feedback following the 1.0 launch. To give players of all play styles a more flexible experience, we’re introducing a brand-new game pacing option alongside a round of early-game balance tweaks, kitchen logic fixes, and lighting upgrades.
New Gameplay Difficulty Modes:
Relax Mode: For players who want a more relaxed, unhurried playthrough without fear of missing out something. No time limit to pay debts. A better option for solo play.
Challenging Mode: If you want to experience the game in its original intended difficulty, where success or failure rests entirely in your hands and sharp planning. Better option for co-op or solo players looking for a real challenge. Note: We also fixed payment steps for a more balanced gameplay in Original mode as well.
Total Flexibility: Select your preferred mode at the start or switch later at anytime.
Bug Fixes & Mechanics
Double Oven Recipe Logic: Fixed a bug where adding missing toppings to dough sitting on the plate updated the pizza's visual name, but failed to update its underlying bake timer. Recognized recipes (like White Pizza) were still treated as "Custom Pizzas" under the hood and burned even when pulled at the green indicator.
Electrical Sabotage Fix: Resolved an issue where players could get soft locked/stuck during an electrical sabotage event while accepting cash payments.
Hobarey Depot Map Visibility: Reworked and fixed the Hobarey Depot so it now properly renders and displays on your map screen.
Forgery Station Timer: Fixed the signature mini-game at the Forgery Station, the missing timer feature is now fully functional.
Balance & Economy
Early Quest Profit Balancing: Adjusted and rebalanced total profit yields across Sean Mughead's first quest, the Washing Machine's first quest, and the Incinerator's first quest for a smoother early-game progression curve.
Washing Machine Price Cut: Reduced the Washing Machine Level 1 upgrade cost from 8 BTC to 5 BTC (matching the Incinerator upgrade price).
Visuals & Lighting
Brighter Kitchen & Shop: Increased interior light intensity inside the pizzeria. Nighttime walls and corners will no longer be drowned in overly dark shadows.
New NPC Animations: Added 5 brand-new animations to NPCs across the map to bring Hobarey Town further to life!
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Bug Fix Update
Hey everyone! This update is all about squashing the nastiest bugs you've reported — including a couple that could permanently break a save. Thanks for all the reports, keep them coming!
Fixes
- Beggar softlock: Donating to the beggar could freeze the dialog on screen and lock your controls for good. Fixed — donate away.
- Phantom pizza ovens: Two players grabbing the same pizza at the same moment could create an invisible duplicate that permanently blocked an oven slot. Duplicates are now cleaned up automatically and ovens refuse them entirely.
- "E does nothing" bug: If a machine was sold or moved right as someone was using it, every machine could stop responding to E for the rest of the session. Interaction now recovers on its own.
- Online orders not starting: Saving with your shop open meant courier orders never showed up after loading. Orders now flow correctly on every save.
- Tutorial softlock: You can no longer sell your machines during the tutorial (and lock yourself out of finishing it). Moving them is still fine.
- Placement too picky: Pizza racks, shelves and big ovens can now be placed flush against cabinets, fridges and other machines — no more invisible walls at diagonal angles.
- Fixed a counter collider issue.
Have fun, and see you in the shop!
Hey chefs! We’re back with a quick follow-up patch to address some weird physics, add highly requested control shortcuts, and introduce some fresh rewards. Here is what’s new in Hobarey Town based on our latest tracker updates.
We thrilled to share our new soundtrack, jump in the game and listen the new beats! Get ready to lose yourself in the vibe, hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
New Achievements
New Achievements: Fresh achievements have been added to the game. Time to hunt them down and fully flex about your Steam profile.
Quality of Life & Control Upgrades
Smooth Pizza Boxing: You can now right-click a full pizza box directly from your inventory or while it's resting on the ground to quickly pull the pizza out. No more awkward unpacking loops.
Hold to Place Ingredients: Your fingers can finally rest. You can now simply hold down the button to continuously place pizza ingredients instead of spam-clicking.
Dialogue Hotkeys: Speed through conversations! You can now use the \ and \ keys on your keyboard to instantly select your dialogue choices.
Bug Fixes & Polish
Calmed the Oven: The Automated Pizza Oven had a bit too much caffeine and was shaking violently for some players. We've anchored it down, and it now behaves like a normal piece of machinery.
NPC Hitbox Downsize: Hired NPCs had accidentally massive hitboxes that made them constantly block pathways or get in your way. Their physical bounds have been trimmed down to normal human standards.
Skateboard Save Fix: Fixed an issue where the Skateboard would completely break and refuse to let you ride it after reloading a save file. You can now skate across sessions uninterrupted.
Tree Icon Correction: Fixed a visual bug where the wrong icon was being displayed for the Automated Pizza Oven inside the upgrade tree.
Keep those ovens running, and don't forget to check out the new tracks! And drop comments, we read em all.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Patch Notes v0.154
We spent the last few days hunting down some of the wilder ways your save files, inventories, and physics objects have been misbehaving. Here's what we tracked down:
New Features & Improvements
- Sliding Delivery Window: Added a new sliding window for the online order counter, with proper open/closed state that survives save/load.
- Last-Saved Indicator: The Quick Save section in the escape menu now shows when your game was last saved (just now / 30s ago / 5m ago / etc.), so you stop wondering if that save actually went through.
- Honest Save Button: The save button now actually waits for the save to finish before telling you "Saved." Previously it lied to you the moment you clicked. It now shows "Saving…" → "Saved" or "Save failed" with the real result.
Co-op & Networking
- The "Vanishing Inventory" Glitch: Fixed a major bug where, when the host saved the game, every other player's inventory would get wiped because their items only existed on their own client. Saves now collect a fresh snapshot from every connected player before writing to disk.
- Quit + Reconnect Mid-Session: Fixed an issue where leaving and rejoining the same session in one sitting would fail to restore your stuff properly.
- Dark Web Lockup: Fixed a bug where using the Dark Web Computer would leave you unable to interact with anything afterward.
- Door Desync: Fixed several client-side door sync issues in multiplayer.
- Disappearing Clothing: Fixed a bug where if a player wearing world clothing left the lobby, that clothing item would permanently vanish from the world. The only fix used to be buying a replacement. The world now releases the clothing properly when its wearer disconnects.
- Empty Photos for Clients: Fixed an issue where photos taken by the host would show up as blank placeholders for clients after a save/load. Each photo also now generates its own icon instead of stealing the first photo's thumbnail.
- Phantom Inventory Icons: Fixed icons disappearing from the host's hotbar whenever any other player dropped from the lobby.
Gameplay & Physics
- The "Red Line Backwards" Bug: Fixed a major reputation issue where successfully completing a Red Line phone order pushed your reputation toward the Front (legitimate) side, and failing pushed you Shady. The exact opposite of intent. Now properly rewards Shady reputation for shady deeds.
- Cargo Box Possession: Fixed supplier delivery boxes getting launched out of the truck like they were possessed — flying through walls, hovering in midair, sliding in from the left. Boxes now arrive at their slots like normal physics objects.
- Lobby-Full Cargo Scatter: Related to the above — when many deliveries arrived and a non-host client picked up a box, the truck slot never got freed, so subsequent deliveries piled up at the overflow point and exploded everywhere. Fixed.
- Locked-Out Held Items: Fixed a save/load bug where items dropped after loading the game would collide with the player because their physics layer wasn't restored correctly.
- Cargo Box Sprite Leak: Fixed an issue where, after loading a save, closed CargoBoxes would still show their content sprites floating over the closed lid like ghost ingredients.
- Drop Key Frozen After Load: Fixed a bug where the G drop key stopped working after loading a save — the basketball's trajectory system was blocking every other item until you shot the basketball.
- Ingredient Container Swap: You can now bring a different-type CargoBox up to a full ingredient container to swap it out. Previously you had to manually drain the container first.
- Basketball Trash Husk: Fixed a bug where throwing the basketball into the trash bin left an unspawnable visual husk in the scene that nobody could pick up. The trash bin now refuses the basketball outright.
- Held Item Lag: Items you carry while sprinting no longer drift behind you like they're on a loose leash.
Performance & UI
- Build Size: Reduced game install size from 6.3 GB to 4.1 GB. We did a deep pass on texture compression without affecting any visual quality you'd actually notice.
- Topping Crash Spam: Fixed a bug where placing toppings on a pizza generated huge amounts of warning spam per session. The allocation pressure was what some players were experiencing as a crash. Pizza building is now silent like it should be.
Save System Hardening
- Zero-Byte Save Files: Fixed the catastrophic bug where save files would end up filled with null bytes if the game crashed or quit at the wrong moment. We now write saves atomically and keep a .bak backup that auto-recovers your last good state if the live file ever gets corrupted again.
- Quit-While-Saving Race: The game will no longer let itself quit while a save is still flushing to disk. It waits for the write to finish, then exits cleanly.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Patch Notes v0.144
We’ve been deep in the trenches fixing some of the more... creative ways you’ve been breaking the game. From gravity-defying pizzas to inter-dimensional item theft, here’s what’s changed:
New Features & Improvements
Quick Delivery: Added a new Delivery Window for fast access to the courier.
Movement Polish: Removed collisions from handheld items. You should no longer get stuck on the environment while carrying objects.
Lobby Security: Strengthened lobby protection to prevent unauthorized players from joining your sessions.
Co-op & Networking
The "Accidental Thief" Glitch: Fixed a major bug where pressing 'B' (Build Mode) as a host would "steal" whatever item your friend was currently holding, even if they were in a completely different room.
Miner Duplication & Phantoms: Resolved a complex issue involving Bitcoin Miners on the roof where players could end up with "phantom" miners or duplicated items in their hotbar.
Inventory Desync: Fixed instances where two players building/replacing items simultaneously would lock the non-host's inventory.
Photo Mode Sync: Taking a photo as a client will no longer cause the host's screen to get stuck in photo mode.
Achievements: Fixed a bug where non-host players weren't receiving the achievement for beating the game.
Gameplay & Physics
Camera: Patched a glitch where spamming the camera allowed players to clip through walls, enter locked buildings, or climb out of the map. No more noclip photography!
Photography: Fixed an issue where players could still enter "Photo Mode" and take pictures even after dropping their camera.
Hitboxes: Adjusted the Enforcer NPC's hitboxes. They can no longer punch you from superhuman distances.
Pizzas: Fixed several issues where pizzas and boxes would float into the air, lose gravity, or allow players to "double-sell" empty boxes.
Mechanics: Updated the robbery logic; keeping the "Shady Window" open while you sleep can now trigger a robbery regardless of whether the front shop is open.
Performance & UI
Optimization: Fixed significant FPS drops caused by high numbers of Pizza Racks. We’ve adjusted shadow rendering for pizza ingredients to keep your GPU from sweating.
Input Lag: Addressed reports of input lag during low FPS situations, especially when moving the camera rapidly.
Infinite Scrolling: Fixed a frustrating bug where menus would scroll infinitely (even with controllers unplugged).
Debt UI Correction: Fixed the text in the Debt Collector menu. It will now correctly state "Final Installment" instead of "First Installment" when you are about to clear your debt.
Debt Progression: Resolved a bug where players were getting stuck on the 6th installment with the 7th failing to trigger.
Miscellaneous
Police Chase: Fixed an animation bug where the policewoman would stand still while her "running" animation played if you entered the pizzeria.
Double Trouble: Fixed a rare bug where starting a new game could result in two "Source Machines" being spawned.
Peace,
Bunch'o'Nerds Team
Current Release
Build 25861408
Uploaded Oct 11, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
I Know a Guy.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
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0cbc31054d7c313dc96be9869ea16d8fea87d0c5ceaf8425821ab2f5e6167a3f
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Download I Know a Guy: Shady Life Simulator for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of I Know a Guy: Shady Life Simulator for free. I Know a Guy: Shady Life Simulator is a Simulation released by Bunch'o'Nerds.