Serial Cleaners Review: "No skill or foreplanning necessary, just patience"

Serial Cleaners screenshot
(Image: © 505 Games)

12DOVE Verdict

Serial Cleaners' main problem is that it's kind of a wasted opportunity. There's room for a game like this on the market, and it's stylishly presented enough that it could easily garner an audience of obsessive stealth-loving cleaners. It just doesn't achieve the necessary tension to make it a compelling stealth game and its mechanics are too open to abuse to reward careful play and smart decisions. As a result, the potential thrill that it could have been is lost.

Pros

  • +

    Stylish visuals

  • +

    Storyline maintains a degree of curiosity

Cons

  • -

    Stealth mechanics need refining

  • -

    Concept is at odds with its game design

  • -

    Missions don't offer much variety

Why you can trust 12DOVE Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Serial Cleaners has an utterly brilliant concept, doesn't it? Rather than the killer, you're the clean-up crew. You're the ones tasked with making sure a massacre doesn't get clocked and, if it does, that there are no fingers left to point the blame (because they've been dropped in a woodchipper). It's not hard to sell the idea of Serial Cleaners, then, and with cathartic visual ASMR games like Unpacking, PowerWash Simulator, and House Flipper all the rage these days, it seems like something that taps into a seedy underbelly while ticking that impulsive thrill of vacuuming a house should be an easy win.

Serial Cleaners is an isometric stealth game, which is a good pairing considering you'll need such a vantage point to ensure you get around each level effectively. You're introduced early on to the crew: the gritty and experienced leader-like figure; the explosive psychopath; the feisty freerunner; and of course the spunky young hacker. It's New Year's Eve as the world shifts to the 2000s, and this particular clean-up crew are reminiscing about the jobs that made them. It's a curio that's surprisingly effective, and one that doesn't take itself too seriously and makes do with the obvious budgetary limitations.

Serial Cleaners screenshot

The Christmas in New York vibes gives us Max Payne vibes, which is never a bad feeling to start a game with. (Image credit: 505 Games)
FAST FACTS: Serial Cleaners

Serial Cleaners

(Image credit: Draw Distance)

Release date: 22 September 2022
Platform(s): PC
Developer: Draw Distance
Publisher: 505 Games

As you probably gathered, each of the four characters comes with their own particulars when it comes to a job. However, these are just specific skills and whether you're hacking computers to switch off lights, leaping over chain-link fences to evade the cops, or slicing-and-dicing corpses, the purpose is still always the same: get rid of the mess.

Serial Cleaners is a very mechanical game, which is to say that it doesn't try to hide away from its gamified nature of an otherwise fairly gruesome aspect of professional crime. Each level works the same, by and large: go in, clean up a certain amount of blood, remove the bodies, and take the evidence. Once all of that is done, you're free to head to the getaway car and call it a job done. It's refreshing in its uncomplicated approach, and fans of stealth games will likely find some fun here – especially in the later stages where the challenge ramps up.

Crime doesn't pay

Serial Cleaners screenshot

Don't worry about casually vacuuming up blood in direct view of a police officer, they won't really notice. (Image credit: 505 Games)

But much like the character tropes that its storyline is built upon, Serial Cleaners suffers heavily from those now-laughable tropes of the stealth genre – to a pretty startling degree. You'll start by playing on your tippy-toes, edging your way around the pools of blood and crouching around the corners of every room as you plan out your strategy in real-time while trying to evade the cops that patrol unerringly back and forth. Yep, this is the sort of stealth where you'll need to time your route through a space by matching it up with the moment that a guard just happens to be staring at a blank wall.

The fact is, though, that all this precarious play is completely unnecessary. You learn far too quickly that trepidation isn't the name of the game, here. You can jog past any guards barely a metre away without even a twitching of an eardrum. Worse still, interacting with the environment will naturally cause some suspicion among the patrols, but there's no scaling sense of intrigue, no real investigation of any kind, and if you break line of sight for just a second then you're as good as invisible.

Serial Cleaners screenshot

Much like Arkham Asylum, you'll rely quite heavily of Cleaner Vision which only exacerbates the problem of a lack of tension.  (Image credit: 505 Games)

"Break line of sight for just a second then you're as good as invisible."

This is obviously open to abuse, but special mention should go to the vacuum cleaner. It's an all-important tool for the cleaner and an essential part of every mission. But its problem isn't its curious ability to suck-up blood from snow or dirt, we can suspend our belief just enough to accept that this is a video game and so video game rules apply. The issue is that you're able to use this thing not only in the next room, but practically within reaching distance of an officer. So long as you keep any guards outside of the tiny zone of influence while using the vacuum, then you're as good as silent.

And that's really the main problem with Serial Cleaners. It's not about trying to be deft or smart or quick, but instead it's about simply waiting until the patrol routes create a window of opportunity for you to rush in and complete the clean-up work. No skill or foreplanning necessary, just patience. You can be clocked vacuuming or dragging a corpse from just the other side of the room, and no guard will consider it important until they've (very) slowly walked over to check out what's going on. They will go and scrutinise the same door opening and closing ad infinitum, they'll investigate bodies being mysteriously packaged up or vanishing, they'll find it odd that blood simply disappears from the floor, but they'll never start to question that something is up and that maybe, just maybe, they should actually do some work to hunt you down.

Serial Cleaners was reviewed on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

More info

GenreStealth
More
CATEGORIES
Freelance Writer
Read more
Lining up a headshot through a sniper rifle scope in Sniper Elite: Resistance
Sniper Elite: Resistance review: "Balances action and stealth with a level of success that very few games manage"
The Stone of Madness screenshot of Alfredo and Eduardo facing a large moveable crate, with an enemy standing guard outside the room.
Escaping an asylum hidden in an 18th century Spanish monastery is a curious concept for a stealth game, but I couldn't put this one down
Kingdom Come: Deliverance protagonist Henry caught by guards
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 trades Skyrim stealth archers for stinky smelly archers: you can get so filthy that NPCs catch you "broadcasting" body odor, so "wash your hands, kids"
Wilmot Works It Out screenshot showing Wilmot who's a square with a face receiving a delivery of puzzle pieces at the front door
Wilmot Works It Out might be the perfect puzzle game if you hate Jigsaws as much as I do
The two characters in Split Fiction dressed in fantasy gear each with a dragon on their back
Split Fiction review: "Cements Hazelight as the master of co-op games"
Skin Deep
I went from "I hope this is good" to "this might be GOTY" within 5 minutes of picking up the Steam Next Fest demo for this ridiculous stealth game
Latest in Gaming
GDC The Game Developers logo
When is the Game Developers Conference 2025 and why is it so interesting?
Pokemon Legends: Z-A screenshot
Everything announced at Pokemon Presents 2025
Saros screenshot featuring the main character and am imposing monster in the background with a swirling void in its chest and multiple arms with balls of fire
Everything announced at the PlayStation State of Play February 2025
Close up shot of an anime schoolgirl with a superhero mask over her eyes in a screenshot from Mightreya.
My Steam wishlist is bigger than ever thanks to the indie devs flooding social media with 15-second clips explaining their games
FGS Spring 2025
The Future Games Show Spring Showcase is back and will have a new live segment from the GDC event floor
A close-up of the Doom Slayer in the upcoming PC game, Doom: The Dark Ages.
Xbox Developer Direct 2025: date, time, and where to stream the showcase
Latest in Reviews
Lenovo Legion Go S with FlyKnight gameplay on screen featuring player character holding bow and arrow with enemy ant in backdrop.
Lenovo Legion Go S Windows 11 review: “my heart aches for this mixed up handheld”
Talisman 5th Edition game components
Talisman 5th Edition review: "The characterful imperfections of the original game remain clear to see "
WWE 2K25
WWE 2K25 review: "A colossal package even if you never go anywhere near Virtual Currency"
Altered: Trial by Frost booster box and packs on a playmat
Altered: Trial by Frost review - "Satisfying enough to offer highly varied gameplay"
Three SteelSeries QcK Performance mouse pads on a wooden desk
I didn't expect to prefer a coarser mouse pad, but SteelSeries' new QcK Performance range has changed my mind
Boro and Alta sit on a bench together in Wanderstop
Wanderstop review: "Exalting the transformative power of tea"