Tag: Cleaning Games

Grunn – Demo Impressions

Who gardens at night anyway? ⁿᵒᵗ ᵐᵉ ᵃⁿʸᵐᵒʳᵉ

Grunn

Developer:
Sokpop Collective,
Tom van den Boogaart

Release Date:
4 October 2024

A gardener gets hired for maintenance work over the weekend. A simple task, but strangely some tools are missing…The owner of the garden isn’t around, and their house is off-limits. Perhaps new tools can be found in the mysterious town, or maybe some of the reserved townsfolk have seen them?

Grunn mixes together a type of game that I love with a type of game that I hate. Together, they become a genius concoction that I absolutely don’t want to play despite REALLY wanting to play. Let me explain.

I love a task simulator. Give me games like Powerwash Sim, House Flipper or similar and I can play them all day, getting myself into that hyper fixated state of ‘just one more task’. The entire idea of this genre – in my opinion – is to allow for a flow state, zoning out of your everyday life, keeping your hands busy and your dopamine bar full. No thinking, only doing. As soon as I begun cutting the grass in this slightly overgrown garden I instantly fell into this zone, my safe zone, forgetting any uncanny feelings I may have had prior. What a perfect zone to get someone in before intruding, pulling the rug and making their hair stand on edge.

In Grunn, we are hired to do some gardening. We are left some instructions, a deadline, and that is all you get as you are let loose into this sandbox of oddities. I am not going to spoil in which way this is a horror game, you will have to play yourself for that, but I will say that at one point I did squeal. Once you notice something strange, you may notice something else, until the things you are noticing are probably nothing at all. Or.. If you are like me you will just get on with the job you were hired to do, happily snip-snip-snipping away without a care in the world. Once you realise, however, that things don’t quite seem ordinary, the dread creeps in and the real game begins.

You have been placed into a playground and the world is yours to explore, experiment and tidy up.. or not. Every action you take, object you find or information you obtain will lead you to the next, adding to your knowledge banks ready to take action somewhere down the line. The game takes place with a running clock, which means you only have limited time to do what you need to do, and there is far more to do than you could achieve before the deadline. The time pressure looms as you make your choice on what you pursue. I recommend a notebook as you find yourself zipping around, following clues without context and discover leads that you may want to follow up on.

I found the games unique aesthetic to be a little jarring at first. The generally soft colour palette draws you into the initial ‘cozy’ atmosphere, but it never feels perfect as what can only be described as a surreal wobble obfuscates your environment. This can be turned off in the settings but I quickly got used to it, preferring to keep it on as a scapegoat for any potential peripheral movement that should not be, that I would rather deny happened.

The demo contains 5 endings, with the full game presumably adding many more. In my playtime I found 2, neither of which being the true ending of the demo. While I had ideas of more things to try, I decided to wait for the full game to puzzle it out. Maybe then, I will finally dare to stay out after dark.

If you enjoy weird and wonderful, subversions and curiosity, I recommend giving this one a go. Something is going on here, and it is NOT wholesome.

Demo Length – 1+ Hours
At a glance
+ All in on the surreal aesthetic that can so easily turn creepy.
+ Tasks feel good to do and complete.
+ Freedom/No handholding.
+ So weird.
+ Multiple endings feel achievable in a game this length and densely packed.
+ Non-traditional puzzle game.
+ Contrasts cozy ideas with less cozy moments.

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Spilled! – Demo Impressions

The waters are clear as we clear the waterways.

Spilled!

Developer: Lente

Release Date: Coming soon

Clean up ocean waste in this relaxing & satisfying cozy game! Recycle, earn coins, upgrade your boat, repeat! Explore and clean up new areas with more waste and new challenges!

Spilled! is a breezy 10-15 minute demo that I recommend checking out if you enjoy flow-state, meditative games.

Upon booting up the game I was greeted with a very wholesome screen with a small amount of information about the developer. They are creating this game after leaving school to follow their dream, living from their savings while living on a boat! I honestly would love if more indie games would do this as I immediatly felt more of a connection knowing the story behind the game. This isn’t the entire reason for the recommendation of course. The game is zen, therapeutic and ran smooth as can be.

In Spilled! we take control of a boat, driving around clearing spillages and plastics polluting the water around us. The more that we collect, we can cash it in to buy upgrades for our boat, allowing more efficiency in our cleansing operation. The more that we clear the waters of the litter, the clearer they get in colour, giving us the real time effect of the efforts we are making and we can collect wildlife along the way.

Lente the developer, is very transparent about the goals of her project. This isn’t going to be a long game, but it is clearly made with love and I hope that the game sells well when it gets a release, allowing her to move onto further projects!

Demo Length – 10-15 minutes
At a glance
+ A meditative experience.
+ Very pleasing on the eye.
+ Cleaning rather than fishing fits the wholesome feel.
+ A solo developer with an interesting story.
+/- It is going to be a short game.

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Crime Scene Cleaner – Demo Impressions

Continuously kicking the bucket.

Crime Scene Cleaner

Developer: President Studio

Release Date: 2024

Once you get tangled with the mob, you will forever be a part of the mob. At least they pay a decent salary and all you have to do is clean up after their dirty work, but you know what you’re doing. So clean crime scenes, outsmart the police, and get ready for the next mission.

I am unsure whether I should be ashamed to admit that out of the 35 demos I currently have to try, Crime Scene Cleaner is the one that I absolutely had to try first. But crimes, fixing crime scenes, virtual cleaning, secret handouts… there is no shame there, that is a winning recipe if I ever saw one. The real shame lies when I skip my own chores to conscientiously scrub the splattered viscera of the former owners from every surface of their enviable mansion, and would do it again in a heartbeat.

This demo exceeded my expectations in just about every way. As a PowerWash Simulator appreciator and someone that is eagerly awaiting House Flipper 2, my curiosity was piqued but I could not have imagined that this would – in my opinion – live up to both of those titles. Sure, you don’t have the design options that you have in House Flipper and you don’t have the unlimited water that you have in PowerWash Sim, but this game brings other mechanics to the table.

In Crime Scene Cleaner we are playing as a character with a personality and a life. His one liners are consistantly fun, almost feeling like an homage to a horror protagonist. School janitor by day, alternative janitor by night, we are trying to earn money to be able to pay for the treatment of our seriously ill daughter. Not only do we need to clean up the horrendous crime scenes but we have to manage our suspicion levels as we decide how much of the crime scene we can get away with quietly taking for ourselves.

I never realised I wanted a gory cozy game but so far, that is exactly what this game feels like for me and I eagerly await the full experience.

Demo Length – 2 hours. Certainly won’t take that long for everyone but I wanted the place to be spotless and kept finding secrets upon secrets rather than the dining chair that I was looking for.

At a glance
+ Level design
+ Satisfaction
+ Felt like a great tutorial
+ Potential for depth to the game beyond only cleaning
+ A charming amount of jank
+ Secrets
+ Humour
+ The character we are playing as has a personality
+/- This is not going to appeal to everyone
– I had a couple of UI/visual bugs, I have reported them to the devs!

More demo impressions here…
More from Steam Next Fest October 2023 here…

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