The WereCleaner review — A bite-sized indie

The WereCleaner is a pocketful of fun that feels akin to a really addicting mobile game— in the best way possible. When I think of video games in the mobile space, I think of my recent venture with Monument Valley, which is a type of game that I’d love to whip out on a short train journey and get my puzzle fix without having to lug around my Nintendo Switch. This and The WereCleaner are low commitment bursts of fun packaged into levels you can complete in mere minutes. And despite not being a deep and meaningful experience that blew my socks off, they were games I just wanted more and more levels of to mess around in.

The story is simple but immediately so charming and funny. You’re Kyle, a janitor that works day shifts at an office building where you clean toilets and vacuum up leftover party decorations. You live in a stinky little apartment, just getting by with the measly pay check you earn. However, with pay day in sight you receive an email stating that all employees must work unpaid overtime night shifts. Why is this a problem? Well, Kyle’s a werewolf and he doesn’t think the office employees will turn a blind eye to that when he’s on shift. Desperate to pay his rent, the player must navigate a populated office as a hairy man-eating beast just trying to do his job.

The gameplay is extremely simple, giving the player a small arsenal of cleaning tools to get the job done. You begin with just a jet wash to blast stains, but then move on to getting a vacuum and trash bags. The mechanics are very much power-wash simulator, which is the perfect low effort gameplay this game needs. The messes you clean up can range from office parties to accidents at the toilet, and even a slightly unhinged underlying cult that has just finished a ritual.

As you navigate the office as a werewolf, your main challenge is to avoid employees  each with  their own movement patterns to keep in mind of. It typically involves them leaving rooms and hanging around computers, with timers above their heads to signify when they are going to move on. Therefore, it keeps the player wary of confining your werewolf janitor to one room when cleaning. To escape them, rooms often have multiple exits that you can weave in and out of, so you never feel impossibly trapped. However, if you do get caught, all hope isn’t lost. You can just maul these innocent people to death, devour their bodies, and clean up the mess afterwards. By all means, the gore is very cartoonish and there’s no active violence for the most part, but the ending's cutscene can be a bit ‘blegh’, so you have been warned.

Despite how fun mauling employees is, it’s not The WereCleaner’s preferred method, as each level you complete is graded by ‘how well you do’. You are ranked out of 5 stars and get a stamp plastered on the level selection if you didn’t kill anyone. This discouraged me from just enjoying my frenzy in killing people, as my completionist brain really wanted every stamp, but I also faced consequences if I indulged too much. Each level must be completed in a certain time, often 5 or 6 minutes at most, and the goal is to make sure every mess is cleaned up. You’re normally given 2-3 messes to clean but for every person you kill, you must eat them, making a big mess of their blood and guts on the office walls and floors. This then counts as a mess for the player to eliminate, and God forbid another employee sees you as you’ll have to do it all again. In later levels, a misstep in being caught by a worker often triggered a bloodbath due to how densely populated some spaces were. This is where players can make each level more challenging, by side-stepping employees and ensuring your wolf-habits are in check.

Other memorable notes in my cleaning adventure were the presentation of The WereCleaner, with chibi models that give the game a very cartoonish and goofy feel to it. It reminds me of party games like Overcooked and Tools Up. The game also has a good sense of humor in your interactions with the security guard you greet every time you enter the building, separated by an intercom so he can’t see your true identity. As the levels go on, the security guard gets progressively more anxious and crazy with his investigation of who the beast is and how to capture it. It allows for tension to build up and culminates in a fun change of pace in the game’s final level.

The game also has a bunch of collectables you can pick up when stalking the offices. You're rewarded with funny descriptions that peep a bit more into Kyle’s life at the office, like one of his co-workers baking him a peanut butter cookie because she notices he doesn’t eat her chocolate cookies. Dogs can’t eat chocolate, duh!