There’s something about simulator games that’s so… intriguing. I don’t know what it is, but I really get in to them. They’re satisfying and often peaceful; but also keep you engaged with upgrades and sometimes even a decent story to follow.

Recently, I decided to give Crime Scene Cleaner a shot. Nothing about it really jumped out to me except the fact that I was looking forward to a pleasurable cleaning experience. I’ve played PowerWash Simulator (and subscribe to r/powerwashingporn on Reddit), and was excited by the prospect of similarly satisfying gameplay. Otherwise, though, I had no idea what I was getting in to.

---

A couple of disclaimers before we dive in. For one, I don’t hold much back when talking about gameplay and storylines. So if you’re sensitive to spoilers, you may want to be careful. Though I will say that I was a bit more conscious about it in this post.

Additionally, The game involves cleaning up crime scenes with dead characters and blood; which means some of the screenshots and video clips in this post do as well. Just FYI. With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy!

---

Story

You play as a humble high-school janitor, who has a daughter in the hospital with a terminal illness. Naturally, the bills are piling up. One day, you get a call from a friend who needs help cleaning up his “accident” — namely the dead guy he killed in his apartment.

Cleaning is your jam, though, so you do a great job. But unfortunately that attracts the attention of a local crime boss, who wants to employ you to clean up his messes. You’re in no position to say no to him, knowing he’ll probably kill you if you do. Plus, he pays pretty well — and as we’ve established, you need the money. So reluctantly, you continue to bag bodies and mop up blood.

It’s not the deepest story in the world, but it doesn’t have to be — the cleanup is what’s important. And surprisingly there’s voice acting, so you don’t have to worry about missing a pop-up that gives lore; I honestly missed a lot of the texts in PowerWash Simulator because I was so focused on the PowerWashing. In Crime Scene Cleaner, though, You don’t have to worry about that.

There are some funny quips here and there, too, and you can hear the MC rationalize his actions (poorly). It’s also pretty fun to watch little things change around his house as you progress (which you end up at between rounds — sleeping and initiating missions from your basement computer).

There’s also a very creepy/eerie vibe when you’re playing, separate from the main subject matter of the game. It has a good way of always making you feel on edge, even though it seems like all of the other “simulator” games where it’s first person and the other characters are only referenced. I don’t want to give too much away, you’ll have to play (and look out for secrets) to find out.

Speaking of, there are a lot of secrets to be found in Crime Scene Cleaner, and hidden areas to be discovered. I might even go so far as to say that you have to solve a puzzle, or two. Be sure not to just clean what you see and move on as quickly as you can. You’ll miss some pretty interesting moments and easter eggs.

Gameplay

Given the fact that cleaning up a whole crime-scene entails a lot more than just pressure washing dirt off of something; there’s a few different things you need to do. You have to mop up all the blood, clean up all the trash, dispose of dead bodies, find and get rid of any incriminating evidence, and put everything back in it’s place.

You’ve got several tools to facilitate your cleaning:

• A mop and sponge, to physically clean with
• A bucket to rinse out your mops and sponges
• Even a power washer to really blast away blood (and occasionally paint)

One of the most important things at each crime scene, you’ll learn, is the faucet. There’s a few around each level and you use them to fill up the power washer and bucket. And when the power washer runs out of water, or the water in the bucket gets too dirty, you have to return.

I was constantly trying to find the most efficient way to clean up the area I’m cleaning while having quick access to water. There are upgrades that make this easier — like making it so the buckets or mops get dirty more slowly (thus requiring fewer trips back to the bathroom).

Also, the bucket can be a bit annoying because it gets knocked over at the slightest provocation. You get anywhere near it, and you’ll probably spill it’s contents. And if there’s any blood in the water at all, you’ll have to clean up the spot where you spilled, on top of going back to the faucet to re-fill. It won’t take long before you become very conscious of where your bucket is at all times.

On top of the tools, you also have access to various soaps and shampoos to aid your cleaning. I played through the entire game and never used them once, though. I’m not a big fan of single-use items in games. I fully embody these memes:

Garbage is picked up by hand, but you are able to grab a few items at a time by holding down the “grab” button (instead of picking up every shard of glass one-by-one). The trash can container can only be filled up a certain amount before it becomes “full”, at which point, you have to take the bag out. Seemingly, though, you have an unlimited amount of bags.

To empty the can, you press the “empty” button, and Kovalsky will toss the bag out of it. It’s a little strange, because with the other toss buttons, the longer you hold the button, the further he’ll throw the item. With trash bags, though, holding the button makes no difference. He just tosses the bag in front of him.

More than once, I found myself looking slightly up, holding the “empty” button, expecting to launch the trash bag far out of my way; and it simply dropped a few feet in front of me… Also, make sure to keep track of the bags, you’ll have to remove them, too, to fully clean the scene (kind of˙).

Physically collecting the garbage was fine, though it had it’s own quirks. There are things around each scene that are pretty clearly garbage (like liquor bottles and drinking glasses strewn around the area), but they can’t be thrown away unless they’re broken. And somehow they’re both a little too difficult, and a little to easy to break.

On the bright side, nothing that matters for completing the level can break. So you don’t have to worry about accidentally destroying something that you’ll need later. It’s just that the back-and-forth was kind of annoying. And sometimes I simply wanted to put an item in a certain place — just because I thought it would look nice or something — and I’d accidentally break it.

That said, since breaking items was largely inconsequential, I found it much more efficient to just break everything and clean it all up later. It wasn’t great, and I didn’t do it every time, but it worked when I did.

Bodies are also picked up by hand, and you body-bag them and “dispose” of them by putting them in your truck or the bin near the entrance. It’s here where all of your trash bags need to go, too. All you have to do is drop the bodies in the bed of the truck or near the bin (on the tarp) and they automatically get bagged and placed where they need to be. And the garbage bags organize themselves as well.

For some reason, when you pick up a body, the only way to put them down is to throw them. There’s no “Drop” button, it’s just “throw”. It was pretty disrespectful (but also kind of hilarious) yeeting bodies off balconies and through windows to get them to my truck. But I’d prefer to have the ability to do both as an option.

Actually, you can “drop” bodies without throwing them, but it’s a bit of a work-around. While holding a body, if you equip something with the tool wheel, he’ll drop the body in order to hold the item. So there’s that. I didn’t figure that out until like the 5th stage, though.

Also, this is kind of random but — It’s never said where the bodies go after we collect them. I feel like getting them out of the location would be the easy part in that scenario… I guess that’s not what the game is actually about, though. It’s not “Body Disposal Simulator”.

Anyway. Furniture, and some items need to be replaced to fully clean a space, too. Sometimes you can pick up the item, and when you walk near where it’s supposed to go, the area will become red, turning green when you’ve oriented the item enough to place it correctly. You don’t have to get it perfect — the game will lock in the item when the indicator is green, and that’s very welcome here. I’d be pissed if I had to slightly adjust a couch cushion in order to get 100%.

If you’re not sure where an item goes, or if you’re having a hard time finding what you need to clean, there is a “cleaner sense” that you can use that highlights where blood stains still remain, and shows you where furniture is supposed to go. There’s enough information that you’re rarely completely lost about what to do; but not so much that you feel hand-held.

Though I will say there was a time where I wondered around an area for I don’t know how long looking for the last thing needed to hit 100%, and it turned out to be a fire extinguisher that was in it’s spot it was just slightly off. Even after you “lock something in”, it can be bumped. I’m not sure if that’s what happened there, but that did piss me off. I feel like that was the only instance, though.

There are also the instances where you’re shown that an area isn’t 100% clean, but you don’t see any blood or anything. And it turns out that there’s one spot on the back of a pillar or something that you just really couldn’t see. I feel like that’s offset, though, by the times when you’re cleaning a large area, and everything in front of you disappears — finishing an entire section — because a certain threshold or percentage of “cleanliness” had been crossed.

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times now, the game shows you how clean the overall space is in percentages. And you can “perfect” levels by cleaning up every bit of blood, throwing away every bit of trash, and (of course) getting rid of all of the bodies. And after each round you’re given a score based on the amount of money you earned from the job.

The amount you earn isn’t simply what you’re getting paid, though. There’s also jewelry and drugs littered around each area that you can pick up, that you “sell” after each round. It counts as income at the end of the round, and counts toward your overall score. A lot of the higher-value items are found when you come across a hidden area, so there’s even more motivation to look out for those.

Unfortunately, though, that’s all the information it gives you. And a lot of that I had to surmise (and could be wrong about). Nowhere have I seen how many secrets each level has; just how many I’ve found and whether or not I’ve found all of them.

If you want to discover them all, you might end up doing some “guess-and-check” where you replay a level, try to find a new secret or two, then check to see if the level is marked “completed” by the flag. Re-doing it if not. I didn’t feel like doing that on my initial play through, but I may go back one day and try to find them all.

There are also secret cassette tapes that can be found in each level, but there are more secret areas than tapes, so that’s not an indicator of how many secrets have been found. I’m also not really sure what’s on the tapes — as I mentioned, I was largely into it for the cleaning (and stayed with it for the secrets), and I never really concerned myself with what the cassettes were. Let me know in the comments what that was about, I am a little curious.

Overall, with the satisfying gameplay, the upgrades that you can acquire, and the secrets that can be found, I really enjoyed Crime Scene Cleaner. It honestly was a little too short, I’d say. Just when I felt like I was really getting into the swing of things — and coming into my own as a cleaner — it ended. Maybe they’ll release an updated version or DLC or something. In the meantime, I guess I’ll go back and try to find the remaining secrets and tapes if I want to scratch that itch again.

Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments if you’ve played Crime Scene Cleaner and what you thought about it. And if you recommend any other “simulator” type games, let me know. And be sure to check back soon for more content!