Crime Scene Cleaner (2024)

Crime Scene Cleaner is a cleaning simulator game - much in the same vein as Powerwash Simulator - centered around cleaning bodies and crime scene. The premise is quite unique as there aren't many others that like to delve in the darker parts of a cleaning job and it does deliver on its storyline.

You play the role of a widower named Kowalsky: your wife has died sometime before the events of the game take place and your are caring for your small daughter whom is in the hospital for a malady that constricts her ability to breathe. In a tale as old as time, you are swamped with hospital bills and your job as a school janitor doesn't pay nearly enough to be able to afford the care that your daughter requires... your life, however, takes a turn for the darker when the son of an old acquaintance calls you to clean up after a mess he's made.

From there on, you will be cleaning all manners of unsavory messes for your new boss, going through different and spacious maps that will test your abilities as time wears on.

The game has rather simple mechanics and you're armed with the essentials of a cleaner and, as you clean up the various maps, you will be rewarded with cash: using cash you can open up more of the skill tree to better strengthen your tools - dual wielding sponges, multiple detergents, double mops and double buckets, lamps and ladders and tools to smash trash.

The maps are many (17 for the base game + 10 nightmare variants) and different between one another, making every cleaning experience something fresh and fun that doesn't drag on too much - to match their runtime, the story reveals itself bit by bit over the 15 base maps (two of them are community maps with a story that isn't pertinent to the game as a whole) and the 10 nightmare mod maps have their own mix tousled in between.

Much like Powerwash Simulator this is an absolute bang for your buck, with the game costing about eur29.99 and going on sale for about eur20 multiple times throughout the year. Having been there since it's early development, this one is a blast if you enjoy cleaner sims.

The satisfaction of being the agent of order and cleanliness in the Viscera Cleanup Detail games comes back in here. Although abundance in junk and dirt can be in the way of seeing progress closing in during the former. Crime Scene Cleaner scales down to a more focused, tighter field that you carry out your tasks in. Much like Serial Cleaner, you (Kovalsky) carry out commission orders by cleaning up crime scenes and putting them back in former order to cover up for your clients.

The story is minimal. with a red thread running throughout in the conversation with Kovalsky's special client, his daughter's sickness and the crime evidence discovered. This way, I get an incentive to walk in the protagonist's shoes with a meaning or a path that unfolds. The game rewards exploration like small goods to steal and secret areas to uncover, where extra funds allow you to upgrade your equipment and stats for more efficient work ahead. And if you enjoyed sinking into the cleaning process with a sprinkle of intrigue to spruce up the cleaning routine, the devs threw in Nightmare mode to revisit and spook up the scenes.

I can't say I have any complaints about this game, leaving only desire for more content with focus on adding further story-driven missions and fun secrets.

3.5/5

Crime Scene Cleaner is a First Person puzzle (?) game that puts you in the shoes of a Janitor who is looking for additional income to help pay for his daughter's mounting medical bills. He gets referred to an individual who you find out to be the leader of a local mob to help clean up a crime scene. Before long you find yourself deeply involved, being the go to guy for cleaning up deals gone wrong, mistakes made, and other situations with the local mob.

Gameplay consists of taking on missions from emails you are sent from the mob. You then arrive at the scene and must dispose of the bodies, clean up blood, throw away trash, find evidence, among others. There's a light puzzle element here in the sense of ensuring you find all of the incriminating evidence before leaving the scene. You start with basic materials like a mop and a hand sponge, eventually being able to upgrade these for better mops that can clean up more before getting dirty, lights to help you see in the dark or seeing blood stains, and many other upgrades. You obtain upgrade points based on the money you get from each job. Each job/mission comes with a base pay and you can find money scattered around or other artifacts to steal that will increase your pay. Sometimes missions may be straight forward with just a house and a few bodies to clean up, but become increasingly more complex either in size of the area to clean up or in steps needed to take to be able to reach or find evidence to clean up. There's no timer here though so this is a pretty laid back/almost zen like game just mindlessly turning your brain off while cleaning up heinous crimes.

I completed the game getting 42/50 achievements in just over 17 hours, so it's not a long game but I did enjoy my time with it!

20 hours later, I've beaten Crime Scene Cleaner. Having cleaned up a number of bloody crime scenes I can say that this game seeks the themes of Viscera Cleanup Detail with the mechanics of just the cleaning portion of House Flippers. Which, on the surface, is an interesting combination, considering the obvious thematic and mechanical overlaps the two games already have.

Unforatunely CSC fails to make its stages as interesting as Viscera, and falls short on its meta narrative, leaving its themes floundering by the end of the runtime. And House Flippers only really gets away with tedious cleaning mechanics because that's not all you do in the game, the fun part comes after when you've cleaned up the house and can start decorating them. CSC isolates the tedious part and expands it into a full game.

But, I'd still give this a 3.5 because it does manage to stay engaging because of narrative promises it hints at, and a genuinely interesting progression system that makes the House Flipper stowaways more intriguing to use. While I think the "radar" system that allows you to see blood and trash in neon glows underminds a lot of the work done by these skill trees, they still manage to shine pretty bright in the blood and gore of the gameplay. If you like either of the games mentioned above, I would say give this a shot. It won't touch the peaks of either, but it it'll give you a nice weekend, even if it doesn't deliver on the promises of its meta narrative by the end.