Serial Cleaners

released on Sep 22, 2022

Serial Cleaners is a single-player stealth action crime story in which you alternate between playing four eccentric mob cleaners taking on the bloodiest jobs the carefree 1990s had to offer. If you remember the nineties differently, their dirty work is the reason why.


Reviews View More

I sure hope the police deparment is getting some bonuses for hiring all the people from the short-term memory club

Sequel idea: trash the stylized artstyle that made the original stick out, add some useless gameplay mechanics, and sprinkle in a bunch of F-tier voice acting. Yeah uh, it didn't really make a great end product.

Serial Cleaners has an excellent concept behind it that the original game executes fairly well, although it does feel a bit like a proof of concept. This game fails to flesh it out well, though. Introducing new characters with different skillsets was another interesting idea, but these abilities all hardly matter when you can employ the same strategy in basically every situation. Calling this a stealth game would be a disservice to the genre, as getting seen has essentially 0 penalty as you can just hide for like 15 seconds and go back to business. Feels like it kind of defeats the point of being a "master cleaner" too.

I won't say I didn't have some fun with it, but I really can't give much praise as anything I did enjoy got stale very quick.

I liked the art style, storyline was smooth, controls were a bit messed up but still, real nice.

Offensively bad due to an AI that renders a pretty cool concept fever-dreamish and painful, Serial Cleaners sucks harder than your blood-coated vacuum.

The story and characters are half baked at absolute best. The plot is "Let's reminisce!"; that's boring, but fine. Nobody is remotely likable here. Half are caricatures that are designed to annoy you (mission accomplished: Vip3r is so leet! TEE-TEE-WHY-ELL!) or stolen from the movie "Fargo". The other half are forgettable voids with stiff voice acting.

Each character requiring a slightly varied play style is a good concept, but none of them are fun to actually play as except for Leti, as she's the only one who doesn't feel like an obese smoker being asked to jog. Leti can hop small obstacles or even tall fences, and considering everyone's job requirements, it's absurd she's the only one who can actually move like a human being.

You're in the world of Serial Cleaners, nothing close to reality: if a cop sees you dragging a corpse, all you need to do is run your sluggish ass over to a doorway and mash 'E' so the slowly opening door knocks the wind out of them. This'll give you some breathing room and hopefully get you away, and in 10 seconds, they'll completely forget that even happened. No where near a door? Then you're fucked. Your only alternative is throwing “large evidence” at them (if, by some miracle, you're near some) and the throwing system sucks. Enjoy getting smacked (or, more annoyingly, shot) and restarting to whenever you last saved at your car. It doesn't matter how long ago that was, you'll be frustrated, guaranteed.

I quit this shit on the mission where you need to drag bodies out of an arcade and yet they slapped a cop patrolling right outside the only doors you can drag bodies through. Awful design decision. I obviously used the “door slam” trick as much as possible, but that was served stale. When that stupid trick failed me enough times because the doors wouldn't respond to my input or the cops shot me from a safe distance, I gave up. Good riddance.
Why does turning off the lights have zero affect on enemy vision? Nobody knows. It's only a stealth game!

This sucks. Avoid at all cost.

muy repetitivo, la historia hace lo que puede

se le dio un intento

Serial Cleaners is an intriguing branch within the stealth tree. Instead of taking out targets and hiding the bodies. You instead are sent in after the dirty work has happened. Tasked with cleaning up the crime scene.

I loved the level design, and the art establishes the setting effectively. Mechanics like vacuuming up blood and getting rid of bodies/evidence is fun. And while the voice acting can be dodgy, the story worked for me as well.

This game feels like it is made for me in so many ways. However, it is a greatly janky game. A fair share of bugs and glitches. Intentionally dumb AI that was overtuned on the stupidity. And some levels are way too grindy with how much backtracking you have to do with slow moving characters.

Some of the levels here though, Rykers, the yacht, the office, the police station and more are so well designed. The game is its strongest when you can swap between characters or when you can get really creative to speed up the cleaning process.

Overall I'm impressed with the scope of the game, but that feels like it was at the cost of a tight and finely tuned experience. I really enjoyed my time, and will keep my eye on what this studio makes next, whether that's a sequel or something fresh.

I can't recommend this game to everyone, its setting and gameplay are targeted to a specific audience. I'm glad that I happened to fall within it.