Due to its short length and spoiler-heavy nature, all spoilers from this game and BLOODMONEY! (2025) are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

HUMAN EXPENDITURE PROGRAM is a Horror Visual Novel created by SHROOMYCHRIST and released on September 12th, 2025 for PC. It's a sequel to SHROOMYCHRIST's previous game BLOODMONEY! (2025) and available for purchase on its itch.io page here.

You play as Choi Eun-Mi Harvington, programmer and aspiring entrepreneur. In a never-before seen experiment you've managed to transfer your husband, Harvey's consciousness into a simulation. What he doesn't know: every night, after you make Harvey go to sleep you put him in another simulation game: BLOODMONEY! Where players are free to torture him as much as they want in exchange for a small fee. And following that, you reset his program to delete his memories. Rinse and repeat. You earn money and no actual harm comes to anyone.

Or at least...that's how it should have gone.

Like its predecessor, the game is about half an hour long. It also answers a lot of questions about the lore and circumstances of the original game. Both factors make it pretty much impossible to talk about it without spoiling tons of stuff about both game's stories.

Tropes:

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After losing an eye on Day 5, Harvey begs to be let out of the simulation and come home again. Eun-Mi does manage to convince him that the eye-incident was just a bug that she'll fix to make him stay in the program but it's clear he's not happy about it at all.
• Ambiguous Situation: The "Save Harvey" minigame that unlocks on Day 5. It's completely free, unlike the other minigames, but it's also unwinnable by design and a fair bit more disturbing. Is it even there in the first place? Or is Eun-Mi hallucinating out of guilt?
• And I Must Scream: Harvey is stuck in the program with no way to reach out to anyone for help and completely at the mercy of Eun-Mi and the players. The best he can do is hide a secret message within his digital prison's code in hopes that some players will be curious enough to find it. Though as he himself admits in the message, he might very well be dead already when they do.
• Art Evolution: Harvey's appearance in this game is noticeably different compared to how he looks in BLOODMONEY!. Notably, his jawline is more square, and his lineart is overall sharper and more detailed.
• Body Horror: On Day 6 and Day 7, Harvey complains about feeling himself rotting alive as the injuries suffered from BLOODMONEY! keep accumulating. It seems like the only reason he's still alive is because he's in a simulation rather than the real world.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The game ends with Eun-Mi, devastated by Harvey's suicide (maybe out of remorse, maybe not), being doxxed by the players of BLOODMONEY!. It's not stated what happened to her afterwards, but knowing what usually happens when somebody is doxxed in real life, she's almost certainly going to be flooded with death threats, fired by her employer, and/or reported to the police. Then there's their son Toby, who's blissfully unaware of what trouble awaits him once he finds out.
• Brain Uploading: The whole premise of the game is Eun-Mi uploading Harvey into a simulation. It's an actual mind transfer, rather than making a copy, as their son complains about Harvey's absence in the real world (not knowing that he's in a simulation).
• Broken Pedestal: On Day 7, Harvey experiences this due to not having his memories erased, which makes him realize that, despite seemingly being in a perfect marriage with his wife, which lasted for 10 years, she was quite willing to sell him out to strangers as a near-literal punching bag, all for the sake of money.
• But Thou Must!: Before going to sleep at the end of Day 6, a yes/no prompt will show up as Harvey asks Eun-Mi if she will fix everything. Choosing "No" will have Harvey angrily tell her he does not want to hear "any of [her] fucking jokes", before pushing the question again. The game will not progress beyond this point until the player answers "Yes".
• Creator's Show Within a Show: The game reveals that the events of BLOODMONEY! all took place in an in-universe game Eun-Mi has developed as a source of income. She transfers her husband's conscience there after he goes to sleep, where she and the players can then torture him for profit and fun, before she uses a Reset Button to erase his memories. This bites her in the ass when Harvey starts to retain injuries from that game, and slowly realizes the bad dreams he gets are real.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Eun-Mi lets complete strangers do horrible things to her husband's (digital) body for a price and keeps all the ill-gotten earnings to herself, while using the program's reset console along with a good amount of gaslighting to keep Harvey from realizing it. Take away the sci-fi aspect and we basically have a woman pimping out her husband and using a mix of manipulation and mind-altering substances to keep him in line.
• Domestic Abuse: Eun-Mi sells Harvey's digital consciousness as a torture game and deletes his memories of it at the end of each day, so he'll stay in the program and she can continue to make money off his suffering. When he starts to notice something is seriously wrong, she continuously gaslights him about it and talks him into staying, completely ignoring or dismissing his obvious fear and pain.
• Downer Ending: In the true ending, Harvey kills himself due to remembering the events of BLOODMONEY! as real (rather than a mere nightmare) and realizing what his wife did to him. Eun-Mi, meanwhile, is completely devastated (although it's ambiguous whether it was out of actual regret, or losing a source of money), and also gets everything about her doxxed, as the game's players stumble upon Harvey's final message, and thus decide to fulfill his request to not let Eun-Mi get away with her actions.
• Dream Deception: The console Eun-Mi uses to reset Harvey's mental state doesn't work perfectly, and instead makes Harvey think of the events of BLOODMONEY! as a terrifying nightmare. And then the whole illusion falls apart when she accidentally breaks the console, allowing Harvey to finally realize that it's all real.
• Driven to Suicide: On Day 7, Harvey, having been driven to despair by the realization of what his wife did to him, gains access to the computer's console, then deletes the whole project, effectively killing himself.
• Everyone Has Standards: While the players playing BLOODMONEY!! have no problem being cruel and playing the game for either money or stress relief by torturing an avatar for their amusement, they become justifiably outraged upon learning they were unknowingly putting an innocent, living person who had their mind uploaded into a simulation through Cold-Blooded Torture and proceed to dox Eun-Mi.
• Evil All Along: Eun-Mi was only briefly mentioned in BLOODMONEY! when Harvey begged the player to spare him for the sake of his wife and son. This game has her not only as the protagonist, but reveals that she is the one responsible for all the pain Harvey goes though in the game in the first place.
• Extreme Doormat: Eun-Mi claims that Harvey is one, having been married to him for 10 years. It's for this reason that she's surprised by the report of Harvey fighting back when the player uses the knife in BLOODMONEY!, having realized that he still has limits. The existence of these limits is proven even further on Day 7, as he realizes what was done to him, then yells at Eun-Mi and decides to kill himself.
• Eye Scream: When Eun-Mi boots up the primary simulation on day 5, both her and Harvey discover to their horror that Harvey's right eye has been gouged out. And it stays gone due to Eun-Mi destroying the reset-machine in a fit of rage.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Eun-Mi might be a lovely woman, but she is a greedy domestic abuser.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The last mini-game unlocked on Day 5, "Save Harvey" has you protecting Harvey from eyeballs as they float towards him from the sides of the screen. It lasts indefinitely until one of the eyeballs touch him, and attempting to retry the game will have it end immediately due to it still having the eyeballs on screen, including the one on Harvey.
• Flashback: The end of Day 1 has Eun-Mi playing a round of BLOODMONEY!, and shows a montage of screenshots from that game, of Harvey receiving increasingly disfiguring injuries during the playthrough.
• Freudian Excuse: The True Ending reveals that part of the reason Eun-Mi is so desperate to earn money, even to the point of offering her husband's consciousness up for torture is that the Harvington family is in debt and she wants to at least have enough cash to support Toby.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: After Harvey's eye gets gouged out on day 5, he's unable to do the weight-lifting and batting cage mini-games since he's in too much pain to do the former and the latter requires depth perception.
• Gaslighting: Whenever Harvey starts to express doubts about the program or asks to be let out, Eun-Mi downplays his worries or pretends he's being unreasonable so he'll stay for longer. When Harvey slowly starts to lose it due to the reset faltering, she pretends his very understandable breakdowns about being mutilated are scaring her so he'll feel bad and stop resisting. This finally stops working on the final day as Harvey has all his memories back and calls Eun-Mi out for what she's been doing to him, completely undeterred by her pleas. In his secret message, he flat-out acknowledges that Eun-Mi gaslit him.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Harvey is already starting to lose it by Day 6, but Day 7 (which sees him finally regain his memories) has him go fully off the deep end from realizing that his beloved wife had been selling him online to be tortured unbeknownst to him. Out of grief, he deletes the entire simulation and kills himself.
• Happily Married: Harvey and Eun-mi start like this, with Harvey being trusting enough of Eun-mi to agree to the simulation in the first place. The keyword being start. She quickly moves to sell his consciousness for others to torture, all for cash, with Harvey being none the wiser even as the scars from said torture begin to appear on him every day. When he realizes what Eun-mi's been doing on Day 7, any trace of their happy 10-year marriage is absolutely gone – with Harvey laying into her for what she's done, promising to make her pay, questioning if she ever even loved him, and finally killing himself to escape the suffering.
• I Miss Dad: At the end of Day 2, Toby enters Eun-Mi's room and asks her when Harvey will return. The mother answers that his dad is working on an important project and will come back when it is finished, before telling him to go to sleep and get ready for school tomorrow.
• Ice Queen: Eun-mi is cold-hearted towards her family as the end of Day 2 suggests. The innocence in her son's voice when he talked to her is what a small spark is to an iceberg according to the narration.
• Internal Reveal: After spending the last 6 days in the dark about what's happening to him, Day 7 sees Harvey's memories finally come back to him after Eun-mi destroys the Reset, and he is understandably pissed at the revelation that his wife had been using him for a torture game.
  Harvey: I'M IN HERE, I'M IN HERE! I'M IN HERE AND YOU'RE TORTURING ME FOR YOUR SICK GAAAAAAME!!! YOU'RE KILLING ME!
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: As part of her exploitation of Harvey, Eun-Mi uses a special console to reset Harvey's mental state back to how it was before being put in BLOODMONEY!. However, despite her intent, it does not give him absolute amnesia, as Harvey remembers the game's events as extremely terrifying nightmares, and he starts retaining the injuries he suffered. Then Eun-Mi accidentally breaks the console in a fit of rage and worry, which allows Harvey to figure out the truth.
• Laser-Guided Karma: As Harvey kills himself on Day 7 due to what Eun-Mi did to him, he leaves a message in the files of BLOODMONEY!, explaining what happened to him. This leads to the players leaving angry comments and eventually doxxing Eun-Mi.
• Madness Mantra:
  Harvey: LET ME OUUTT!! LET ME OUT! LETMEOUTLETMEOUTLETMEOUTLETMELETMELETMEOUTTT!!!
• Mind-Reformat Death: On Day 7, Harvey does it to himself, using the computer's console in order to erase his own files, which makes him briefly scream in agony before disappearing. To make it worse, his mind was actually transferred out of his real-world body, rather than being copied, meaning that Harvey is well and truly dead.
• Mini-Game: Aside from clicking him for a small boost, Harvey's mood bar can be filled by partaking in games for a fee, which include Whack-A-Harvey, Memory Match, baseball, weightlifting and saving Harvey from floating eyeballs.
• Money for Nothing: You earn a set amount of money at the end of each day, and can spend it on either food or games to keep Harvey happy and well-fed. By Day 6, the money caps out at $99999, but there is nothing you can spend it on as Harvey, being pissed off at Eun-Mi, wants neither of them.
• Multiple Endings:
  • True Ending: After days of gruesome torture which he can now remember due to Eun-Mi having damaged the reset beyond repair, Harvey breaks down, calls Eun-Mi out for what she's done to him and finally crashes his own program to escape the pain. Eun-Mi's life falls apart as the BLOODMONEY! players finally discover the Dark Secret behind the game thanks to a secret message left by Harvey and begin to doxx and publically disparage her.
  • Dead Ending: After 4 days of not taking care of Harvey enough, Eun-Mi boots up the program to find him dead from neglect.
• Oh, Crap!: Eun-Mi is shocked when a player reports a "bug" that has Harvey actually fight back against being tortured with a knife, since that could not only imperil her business but also shows that Harvey isn't as much of a complacent doormat as she believed.
• Only in It for the Money: So what's Eun-Mi's reason for trapping her husband in a simulation, letting strangers torture him to their heart's content and lying to both him and their son about it? Crypto cash. Nothing more.
• Prequel: Downplayed, as the first day of the simulation along with the intro take place right before the events of the previous game, BLOODMONEY!. The rest of the game from Day 2 onwards deal with the aftermath— the effects it has on Harvey's psyche, and Eun-Mi's gradually ineffective attempts to keep him from remembering about his torture while making money from it.
• Psycho Pink: Eun-mi has light pink hair just like her husband. She's also been selling her husband's consciousness online, making sweet crypto money from his digital torture, and gaslighting him into thinking his memories of the torture are just bad dreams, all without a single shred of remorse.
• Reality Subtext: It's implied that the plot of BLOODMONEY! (getting money for a surgery by torturing Harvey) is an In-Universe example of this, as Eun-Mi decided to raise money to pay off a debt by letting others torture Harvey.
• Screen Tap: Played for Horror— On Day 7, Harvey angrily bangs his fist against the computer screen so hard that it leaves cracks, while yelling at Eun-Mi to free him from the simulation.
• Shout-Out: Some of the treats that you can feed Harvey (bread, donuts, pie, cake, and big salad) are a reference to My Singing Monsters, where you can make said treats and feed them to monsters to level them up.
• Tears of Remorse: After Harvey kills himself by crashing the simulation, the only thing Eun-Mi can do is sit despondently in her room and cry. It's not stated whether the tears are due to her finally realizing the gravity of what she did to her husband, or because the source of her money is fully gone.
• Villain Protagonist: Eun-Mi abuses her husband's trust to put him in a simulation where people can torture him for sick kicks, all for money. Not once does she feel even slightly bad for what she makes him go through or that she's robbing her son of his father. When she finally does start to realize just how horrible what she's doing to Harvey is, it's already far too late.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Continuing to feed Harvey when his hunger bar is already full will result in Harvey throwing up, and reduce both his hunger and mood.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After first appearing on a cutscene at the end of Day 2, Toby is not seen for the rest of the game, aside from being mentioned a few times near the end. It is left unknown if he ever finds out about his parents and what would happen to him afterwards.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: There is a hunger bar which depletes at the end of each day, and must be maintained so that Harvey does not die from starvation. On Day 6 though, Harvey will refuse to eat anything if the player tries to feed him.