Serial Cleaners is drenched in both style and blood. Players are tasked with cleaning up crime scenes for the mob, encountering a comforting gameplay loop that pushes the envelope just far enough to avoid becoming a mess.
After wrapping up Serial Cleaners I decided to dust off my digital copy of Serial Cleaner, a game I had bought years ago on sale and never played.
“How does the original compare to the sequel?” I wondered. I considered hopping into the first game before playing Serial Cleaners so I could speak on how the two compared and contrasted. But instead, I decided a completely fresh perspective on the series could also be of value.
Immediately the bold colors and the flat perspective shocked me.
Serial Cleaner was not Serial Cleaners. Instead, the sequel is an inspired evolution on its precursor, capitalizing on style, story, and engagement. Both games are undoubtedly quirky but the refinement present in Serial Cleaners proves developer Draw Distance recognized a good idea and how it could step up its game.
My qualms with Serial Cleaners are valid and ones most are going to have with the game. Regardless, there is an impressive gem tucked beneath the bloody smears and vacuum hums.
Stealth games can be a painful affair. Crooked enemy sightlines and wonky sneaking can uproot a carefully crafted mission. And Serial Cleaners has these annoyances because it is a stealth game at its core. Players are tasked by the mob to mop up bodies and evidence at crime scenes. Mob boss went a little too far and killed a bunch of people at a bar? White snow soaked red after a hit went haywire? The four cleaners players take control of are up to the task.
Rather than killing the targets and hiding the bodies, players have to go into wide open spaces and extract the bodies to a car trunk or drop point. Too much blood is probably going to alert investigators so the obvious thing is to suck all the blood pools up… right?
There is a loose logic in Serial Cleaners that asks the player to care a decent amount about what is happening to the characters but not to think about things too hard. There’s no explanation as to why a vacuum cleaner in any decade can suck up blood to the point where a crime lab can’t connect the dots but who cares? If a cop saw a sketchy mustachioed man sniffing around a murder scene they wouldn’t go back to their patrol after a few seconds, they would call in a SWAT team and shut that shit down.
I’ll admit that the police AI in Serial Cleaners is a bit dumb. You can trick them in multiple ways and unless they maintain line of sight during a pursuit, there’s little chance that they can keep up with the four Cleaners. This makes Serial Cleaners quite forgiving, especially because the game generously checkpoints and allows players to save progress mid-mission.
Unlike the first game, Serial Cleaners focuses around four individuals: Bob, Lati, Vip3r, and Psycho (a.k.a. Hal). Each Cleaner has a vacuum to suck up blood and the ability to carry or drag bodies but also a set of unique skills that add some diversity to the levels.
Bob is able to wrap up bodies, enabling him to drag them around without leaving a blood trail–he can also slide on trails of blood, knocking down anyone in his path. Lati is the most agile Cleaner, able to vault over and around objects. Vip3r can hack into computers to disable cameras and trigger sounds to distract guards and is small enough to crawl through vents. Psycho can use a chainsaw to chop up corpses and is able to throw limbs and other objects to temporarily knock out cops.
What I enjoyed about each of the four Cleaners is that levels are tailored to their unique abilities, meaning that players are granted a tweak to the pace to break up the constant dragging of bodies and sucking up blood.
Because that is what players will be doing most of their time in Serial Cleaners. Whether a flashy arcade, a convenience store, a television sitcom studio, or a train station, there’s bodies and evidence to dispose in predetermined locations and blood to get rid of. Infrequently players might have to escort a warm body to a safe spot, or hack into a specific computer, or another small task yet it never completely disrupts the flow.
Over the course of a couple dozen missions, a sense of near tranquility began to wash over me while playing Serial Cleaners. Stressful situations certainly arose where the odds were stacked against the crew, especially in later missions with multiple floors and a higher body count. And despite feeling challenged multiple times, I found an enjoyable rhythm with Serial Cleaners. It was one that enticed me to play another mission, even after feeling like I should take a break.
Much of this can also be credited to the multiple layers of style that Draw Distance implemented with the game. Skipping the 1970s funky brightness, Serial Cleaners is set during the 90s. The story is interestingly framed on the night of December 31, 1999 as the four Cleaners meet up and ring in the new year by recapping key jobs from their last decade of business. And let me say, business has been gory.
Though I may not be able to remember the specifics of why a Cleaner was at a site (the game gives a brief primer before the mission start), the personalities of the Cleaners certainly shown through. Interspersed throughout each chapter, key memories could be played that gave fascinating bits of backstory for each character. Usually there was a lack of corpse cleaning, replacing the gameplay loop for a different kind of introspection.
As these memory segments unfolded, I got echoes of Hotline Miami‘s key stylings, which is an undeniable pleasure for me. Serial Cleaners isn’t the most gorgeous game and can come across a bit janky. Characters don’t move their mouths when speaking during cutscenes. A few times blood wouldn’t be vacuumed up. And once I fell through the map. But it never distracted from the vision.
Not only does Serial Cleaners feel like a seedy ode to 90s culture, Draw Distance frequently injects stylistic personality into the game. When Psycho hacks up a body, cartoon-like chainsaws flash on screen. During one mission as Vip3r, RPG stats for each Cleaner popped up. Words may scratch across the map like in Deathloop, not necessarily taunting the player but the Cleaner themselves. It can act like fourth-wall breaking but it also feels like a window into the mind and soul of the character.
Without these unique touches, Serial Cleaners would be a lot more soulless. The gameplay being attractive, yet simple means that players need a deeper hook to further reel them in. I truly believe that the game’s bizarre aesthetic choices and the narrative framing make for a compelling journey. Players can choose whose missions they play in what order and can make dialog choices. These can create alternate endings to the game, which incentivized me to want to play again.
And me being me, I would be remiss not to mention the exceptional soundtrack. It seamlessly switches and blends genres that capture not only the environments but the Cleaners themselves. Scattered jazz tunes amplified Bob’s age and the work he started decades ago. When Lati and Vip3r do a mission together, the tone shifts from Latin beats to sneaky glitches. It’s a treat.
Serial Cleaners is an enjoyable experiment. Knowledge of the first game is completely unnecessary, except to appreciate developer Draw Distance’s ability to evolve gameplay and storytelling. Smeared against the backdrop of a dark underworld, the 90s aesthetic bolsters the narrative and style. Rather than a stealth game that shoves against the player, Serial Cleaners creates an almost zen-like experience among the chaos.
