Have you ever walked into a disaster zone and had that weird itch to fix everything? That’s the exact feeling that “Cleaning Simulator” taps into, and it wastes no time handing you the mop and a sponge. Developed by Damaged Games and published by RockGame SA, Cleaning Simulator turns grime, clutter, and neglect into a strangely addictive gameplay loop where sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing deliver the visual payoff to scratch that itch.

Cleaning Simulator keeps its narrative relatively light and straightforward, focusing more on task-driven progression than a deep or character-focused storyline. Across its ten short missions, you take on a series of increasingly messy jobs, moving from location to location with only minimal context given for why each space really needs to be cleaned apart from a random text message at the start. The upgrade system also feels unnecessary.

Progression options are present, but none of them meaningfully change how the game plays, and it often feels like you can comfortably complete the experience without investing in upgrades, which are things like a pro mop, pro sponge, or being able to pick up a larger group of rubbish, which again felt pointless.

The controls are deliberately kept simple, with very basic input for moving, aiming, and using your cleaning tools. On paper, this makes sense for a simulator-style title; it’s designed to be easy to pick up and accessible to most players, with a low learning curve. 

Core actions like scrubbing, mopping, and interacting with objects are clearly mapped and easy to understand from the start. However, despite their simplicity, the controls feel super clunky and don’t hold up during extended play.

Tool switch and surface interaction can feel awkward and slightly unresponsive, which really broke the relaxing rhythm the game is trying to create. Instead of feeling smooth and methodical, many actions feel stiff and disconnected. For a game built entirely around repetitive physical actions, tighter, more fluid control would have made a big difference to the overall experience.

Cleaning Simulator leans into a clean, functional visual style with a fairly basic colour palette that makes it easy to notice dirt marks on the floors, walls, and counters. The environments are structured to support gameplay, with cluttered interiors that you need to navigate.

I will admit there is a satisfying visual payoff when the room goes from cluttered and dirty to clean and organised. That being said, the presentation starts to lose its impact the longer you play the title. I was a little disappointed with the lack of visual variety in the mess itself. The dirt textures all looked exactly the same, and the graffiti you found on some walls was the same three textures just copied and pasted over each other.

The windows also use that very generic light-beam effect, so you’re unable to see anything outside, which could have been a cool addition to the game, being able to see outside and not making the spaces feel like some artificial building in the middle of some warehouse on a reality TV show. Another weak point is the scattered artwork; you could tell it was clearly AI-generated, which took away some of the game’s personality and charm.

I would have even been happy seeing a stick figure smashed together on paint just to add that personal touch to the game. The tools used were poorly textured, so if you were using the mop, you would just see lots of pink spots on a blue mop that slowly turned brown, then dunk it, and it would be spotless again.

I would have liked to see a little more effort put into the textures and really polish the game so it could compete with the competition out there.

The audio design in Cleaning Simulator is built around constant, task-based sound effects, with every action producing a clear, immediate response: footsteps tapping across the floors, mops dragging, and sponges scrubbing. The backing soundtrack in the experience is intended to keep you calm, relaxed and working. In practice, the sounds wear thin very quickly. The background music comes across like repetitive elevator music, and after a short time, it became irritating and not relaxing.

I actually ended up turning the music off altogether and put on Spotify. The heavy reliance on repeated cleaning sounds also gets old super fast, especially given this isn’t a high-budget title with huge audio variation; it starts standing out very quickly. I was also a little confused and disappointed by the use of AI voiceovers, which sounded super robotic and unnatural, and it pulled me away from the game rather than pulling me into it. I’ve played my fair share of simulator games, which have worked perfectly fine without voiceovers needed.

Overall, Cleaning Simulator delivers a short, functional, and occasionally satisfying tidy-up experience, but it struggles to maintain its appeal due to repetitive visuals, clunky controls, and unnecessary upgrades. While the core loop of turning mess into order provides a brief sense of reward, the lack of variety and polish makes the experience feel more copy-paste than carefully crafted. It’s not without its moments, but compared to other simulator titles, it feels undeveloped and easy to walk away from once the novelty wears off.

Written by: Hayden Nelson