Tidy Up

Developer: Debug Games

Release Date: Coming soon

A peaceful cleaning and organizing game where you explore different locations, collect trash, clean stains, and arrange items to turn mess into perfection.

In Tidy Up we are a cleaner hired to clean, tidy and square up some absolutely filthy spaces. The demo consists of two levels, a coffee shop and a garage. It is short and sweet and gave me the quick hit of dopamine that I long for when I play these types of games. In fact, the speed at which I could complete the tasks got rid of that feeling of ‘why am I doing this when I could be cleaning my real house’ that I sometimes get from playing cleaning games. It feels less of a simulator and more of a ‘jump in and out when you need a break’ type of experience, as opposed to Powerwash Simulator where some of the levels took so long that I was questioning my sanity about why I could not stop.

If it wasn’t obvious, I am partial to a compulsive cleaning game or two, and I found that this one hit the spot. It reminds me of my favourite part of House Flipper 2 – the beginning phase where you first walk into a disaster zone, wondering where the heck you are going to begin. You pick a task and soon enough, you have a fresh clean space and a job well done. Perhaps listening to a podcast or decluttering your own brain as you go.

I mentioned Powerwash Simulator, and that is because Tidy Up occupies a similar brain space, without actually feeling similar to play. I find the variety of tasks here in the Tidy Up demo almost more satisfying, likely because of the faster pace that I mentioned.

The game offers variable ‘difficulty options’, as in, you can customise how terrible of a state you want the environment to be in when you walk through the door. While this is nice to have, I do fear it could take away the potential for environmental storytelling that a game like this has (I’m looking at you Crime Scene Cleaner). That doesn’t have to be a negative, but it is something to be aware of, possibly expecting more of an arcade experience than a narrative. Having said that, a fun feature of the Tidy Up experience is straightening up the furniture, restocking areas and putting objects back where they belong. These little touches could be used in clever ways should the developers choose to!

I really feel like Tidy Up has a lot of potential. The length of the full game will depend entirely on the amount of maps available, and while I was praising the snappiness of the levels so far, I think the loop is fun enough to expand. I want office buildings, mansions, schools, hospitals, prisons, supermarkets, warehouses. One of every type of big building that exists, and plenty of smaller ones too.

Demo Length – 20 mins
At a glance
+ Snappy levels provide less worrying about whether I am wasting time doing virtual chores and more satisfaction from completing the jobs and seeing immediate results.
+ Dopamine babyyyyy.
+ A nice variety of tasks including bog standard cleaning, but also tidying up objects and restocking shelves.
+ UI/UX meant I always knew what I needed to do.
+ Lofi mess to chill to.
+/- The ability to customise the mess is a nice feature. There is just something about it that makes me unsure, like I would rather have the intended experience first.
+/- I wouldn’t be expecting a huge game. It does have the potential for expanding scope but that doesn’t guarantee anything.