I had the pleasure of playing the demo for Cleaning Up!, which was developed and published by Unbound Creations. I played on a PC with a controller. It’s a simple, fun game!

The Backstory of Cleaning Up!

Cleaning Up! begins with you talking to yourself and trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. You decide you want to be a “cleaning gig worker”. So you find and download an app which will help you find jobs.

I think the app is as much a character in the game as you are! As it’s downloading, it tells you, “Coming soon – a free ad-supported tier”. Not exactly what you want, right? Check out the message the app sent me in the picture below!

This is what the app says when I’m installing it! Ha!

Then the app introduces you to a talking sponge, appropriately called “Spongey”, another character in the game, in my opinion. He gives you hints and instructions on game play, but he’s also got a personality and opinions of his own. He often interjects snarky comments about his “AI Overlords”. Hint – he’s not terribly fond of them!

Here’s Spongey in the tutorial talking about himself!

The Gameplay of Cleaning Up!

Sometimes I want to play a simple, fun game, nothing to memorize – just easy stuff. Cleaning Up! fits that description exactly. You begin the game with a broom and a vacuum. You go to the map screen and choose a job from the app.

This is the map after I completed the demo. There will be lots more spots to clean in the final game, too.

In the first area (the apartment), Spongey gave me a lot of advice. I often need a lot of handholding when I begin a game. This one was so simple and intuitive that I got it right away!

Only one bit was a little confusing to me. In the second area, I was introduced to “gunk”. Spongey told me I needed to brush gunk away with the broom to break it into smaller pieces, which I could vacuum. It took me a minute to realize the action I needed to do was move my character around the gunk while also moving the broom. Once I understood that, I was all set.

This is the coffee house. What a mess when I first started!It’s getting better! The black stuff is the gunk. I must use my brush on that before I can vacuum it.

I vacuumed up the mess on the floor and emptied my vacuum when it was full. New tools and challenges were introduced in later levels of the demo. For example, in the museum room, there are many fragile items which can break, so I had to be careful. My method was to first sweep the mess away from the vases and then vacuum when I was at a safe distance from them. (I broke one anyway!) If you break a piece, you are penalized by losing some of the money you earned. Seems fair. But in the settings, you can also choose to turn off this feature, so you can break anything you want!

The settings page. Note, you can turn off “enable penalties”.

In the last level of the demo, the coffee shop, I had a pressure washer, and my challenge was not to spray the cat! That’s not a hard challenge. I never sprayed him!

The pressure washer is a lot of fun too because it’s not fiddly like some other cleaning games. You don’t have to touch every surface to clean it; in fact, you just shoot the water towards the item, and soon it’s sparkling clean!

Ta Da!! The coffee shop is done.

The Mechanics of Cleaning Up!

The tools are really easy to use. The instructions for them stay on the bottom right corner of the game all the time; however, I cut them off on some of my screenshots to give you a better image of the room décor. I really appreciate having the constant reminder of what button to push!! The tool I selected is also clearly shown in the top left corner all the time. Very nice!

*Cleaning Up! *is simple to play. Use your various tools to clean. If you didn’t turn off “enable penalties”, then you have a more challenging job. But it’s never too hard!! At least not in the demo. As you earn money, you can buy upgrades for your tools. I see there are more tools to discover as I play more of the game.

There is no day/night cycle, no energy levels and no need to sleep. Just uninterrupted gameplay. I like that!

I’ve already upgraded some of my tools and I see there are more to come.

Final Thoughts

I played the demo for Cleaning Up! for about an hour and completed all the areas in the demo. I really enjoyed myself. The soundtrack was peppy and yet low-key at the same time. I cleaned 4 areas – an apartment, a coffee shop, a museum and a castle. The graphics were nice, the areas didn’t look totally realistic, but they had a funky kind of feel to them. I liked the look of the game.

Ha!! The credits page is another level.

For an extra bit of fun, go to the credits after you’ve finished the demo. There’s another whole level there! Thank you, Unbound Creations. If you want even more gameplay, you can replay all the Cleaning Up! demo levels using your upgraded tools. This is a fun, simple game. It’s a real treat, and I look forward to the full release.

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