Serial Cleaners comes from Draw Distance, the studio that brought us the original Serial Cleaner, as well as Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York and Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York.
Published by 505 Games, Serial Cleaners is a single-player stealth-action crime game in which you play as four mobsters as they reminisce about the past during a millennium party on New Year's Eve 1999.
The game plays out through a series of missions, presented to you as flashbacks from the previous decade, told from the perspective of one of the four characters in turn.
In essence, this means you get to take turns playing as Bob and his "colleagues", with each of them having their own playstyle and unique skillset.
The core gameplay loop is easy to pick up but hard to master. Each crime scene has evidence and bodies which must be removed, as well as (depending on the level) some additional challenges to overcome. Your mission is simple - clear up the evidence, dispose of the bodies, clean up any additional incriminating items and bloodstains, and get out unscathed.
All of these must be done while guards and law enforcement crawl the scenes looking for intruders. You can avoid them by hiding in designated "hiding spots", turning off lightswitches, and locking doors behind you.
If the guards spot you they'll chase you, but that doesn't have to be the end - you can knock them down by charging into them, slamming doors in their faces, or even throwing evidence bags at them.
Smaller evidence can be hidden as soon as you pick it up, but larger bags must be disposed of with the bodies. You will need to carry them without being spotted to the "disposal" points, which might be anything from a stairwell to the boot of a car.
The characters are interesting if a little two-dimensional, however, the game itself is reasonably tongue in cheek and so any cliche to the characters is definitely intentional. The game itself pays homage to cult-classic films from the 90s, which is something that is evident in both the level design and the dialogue.
The four characters are Bob - the professional and somewhat compulsive cleaner from the original game, Lati - the music and art fan who is fast and strong, Vip3r - the edgy withdrawn hacker, and Psycho - the psycho.
Each has their own way of playing, and their own challenges. Bob finds himself hoovering blood (which is a feat in itself) whereas Vip3r is able to hack doors and lightswitches from afar to throw the guards into darkness and confusion. Lati can use the terrain to her advantage, leaping over walls and ledges, and Psycho harbours a more aggressive and direct approach to dealing with guards and police.
The game has a great sense of humour and doesn't take itself too seriously. The interaction between the characters has you cringing and rolling your eyes in just the right way, and blood has to be "hoovered" - one of a few examples where realism has been cast aside for the sake of fun gameplay.
The visuals are nothing special, but they are very stylistic and interesting to look at. On top of that, they're a significant upgrade from the original, breaking away from something that's clearly indie to something that carries a much higher production quality.
The audio is a similar story, it's not anything groundbreaking but it is an elegant and unmistakable nod to the 90s that fits the game perfectly.
On PC, the game can be played with a controller or with a mouse and keyboard, however the controls on mouse and keyboard and clunky, difficult, and not something I can recommend.
That's not to say the controls are perfect when using a controller - when hoovering blood, you're forced into a strange tank control system, and when trying to unscrew vents or grab evidence the buttons can come across as a little unresponsive.
The gameplay itself is very challenging, and although that isn't a bad thing in and of itself, it does feel a little cheap at times. The security guards and law enforcement act erratically and unpredictably, making it hard to plan a run in any meaningful way.
Additionally, getting caught causes the run to reset, losing any progress you didn't manage to manually save - something that's done at the disposal sites and often not practical to do very often.
On top of this, while the mechanics of the game are well explained during the tutorial, certain aspects are left out. During Vip3r's first level, for example, the disposal site is the boot of a car a little way away from the level. This isn't clearly indicated, meaning I spent the first fifteen minutes or so looking for it.
The game has a "cleaners sight" mechanic, which is a fairly standard mechanic for games like this, and it does a good job of highlighting objects of interest and threats within the area of the screen. It can however be quite cluttered and doesn't give any way of filtering for specific things.
In that vein, some of the character-specific mechanics are poorly explained - Vip3r's hacking ability lets her hack lightswitches from a distance, but it's not immediately clear that's what you're doing. This leads to randomly hacking switches and buttons from a distance without any concept of the effects it's having.
In addition, a lot of the mechanics can be ignored entirely - I beat Vip3r's level without ever really hacking any of the optional objects since when I was able to hack lightswitches from a distance it wasn't really helpful. Why would I want it to be dark in a corridor that I'm not in?
Verdict: 3/5
Serial Cleaners is a fun and casual game that has a really great core concept and is a lot of fun when it does what it's meant to in the way that it's meant to.
Unfortunately, it misses out in a few places - the difficulty comes in a frustrating package of randomness and forced trial and error, and certain mechanics are hazy and superfluous.
That being said, the concept is great to pick up and play - if you've got a relatively small window of time and are looking for a casual game to play for half an hour or so Serial Cleaners fits the bill perfectly.
And that's not to say it's not a game you can sink a lot of time into - although it only takes 6 - 10 hours to complete the game itself, I can see it has a lot of replay value too. Some people will argue however that 6 - 10 hours doesn't warrant the price tag.
I enjoyed my time with Serial Cleaners a lot, but I feel depriving it of some quality of life upgrades could be almost criminal.
Serial Cleaners releases on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on September 22 2022.
