The WereCleaner

While the art style of a game can be enough to pique my curiosity, it can help for it to have a premise and gameplay that can really grab my interest enough to play it. The WereCleaner is a game that filled all three for me, which I found for free while looking through my Steam Recommended. This would also not be the first time I had downloaded a game made by student developers, as I found out later that this game had been published through the USC Games program. Upon playing the game, it not only met my expectations for a fun time, I was also surprised by the amount of replay value for such a small game.

Kyle is a janitor at the company Howlin’ Hugs, whose CEO institutes a mandatory week of overtime for all employees, Kyle included, before they can receive a paycheck. There’s only one problem: Kyle is secretly a werewolf.

While there isn’t much to the story, it does factor greatly into the gameplay, including an interesting bit of environmental storytelling in which the employees rebel against the CEO. The core gameplay is simple, in that you must clean up a given number of messes within a time limit using a vacuum that doubles as a power washer. The werewolf aspect gives the game an interesting element of stealth, in that you have to clean up your messes without being caught by anyone. If you do, you are unable to help yourself and end up killing whoever saw you, leaving you with the option to either hide the body, or consume it and then power wash the blood away (this does not count as cleaning a mess). Aiding this, you can use your vacuum to shoot out a trash ball to make an employee throw it away in the nearest receptacle, or knap them from a blind spot to blind them temporarily. There are also a number of collectibles scattered throughout the office, though fortunately you don’t have to complete the level to keep them, and getting through the night without killing anyone boosts your score, providing a good amount of replay value.

 

Kyle must clean messes each night without being spotted, or else he goes feral.

While there were some minor performance issues, which I attribute to playing on a 10+-year-old laptop, one genuine gripe I had with the game was there only being one save slot. Though I probably personally wouldn’t, those who wish to experience the game fresh once again will have to resort to wiping their save and starting anew, losing every in-game achievement in the process.

As stated previously, the game has a nice visual style, committing to a cartoonish aesthetic that doesn’t take away from the gorier elements. The office also has a labyrinthine layout that is still pretty easy to navigate in, affected by gates that close off different areas each night. The game also has a great soundtrack that strikes a nice balance between cozy and horror, along with more universal gibberish audio for dialogue that is no less well-acted to carry the inflection of what is being said.

The WereCleaner is an interesting take on the stealth genre with a unique premise, and is one I would recommend to fans of the genre, especially with it being completely free. With the game having since expanded into story comics on social media and even an official plush toy, it would be interesting to see what the developers can come up with next.