Crime Scene Cleaner

It's less CSI, more BYOB: Bring Your Own Bucket.

Sometimes, you play a game that’s weirdly cathartic in all the wrong (and yet very right) ways. Crime Scene Cleaner is exactly that: gritty, grim, and grounded in a story that’s far more human than you'd expect for a game about cleaning up after criminal activity.

UX (Control Feel & User Experience)

The HUD here is, ironically, the cleanest part of this game, and smartly tucked to the edges of the screen. Your mission goals and progress are kept neatly in the top-left, while your equipped tool and its condition live in the bottom-right. Tools wear down visibly as you scrub through each level, forcing you to clean your gear before it’s usable again. This subtle design choice encourages good pacing and prevents visual clutter, allowing the levels and environments to shine.

Gameplay Progression

In Crime Scene Cleaner, you aren't just a faceless anonymous person, in fact you have quite the backstory. You enter the game as Mr. Kovalsky, a widowed father of a terminally ill child seeking funds for a life-saving treatment that he wouldn't be able to afford in three lifetimes. One day you get a call from the son of an old buddy of yours, which begins your downward spiral into your newfound underground life.

Each completed mission unlocks new tools and skills, letting you carry more supplies, use specialized cleaning agents, or operate with greater speed and precision. The progression is earned, rewarding effort and adding satisfying layers of strategy to each job. You genuinely feel like you’re hustling to survive, and scrubbing your way to something bigger.

Immersion

At first, there’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you find your rhythm, it’s easy to get swept up in the strange tranquility of mopping up blood under the hum of flickering lights (or none at all). The storylines behind each level range from tragic to unsettling, and sometimes cross into deeply emotional territory; murder, suicide, and exploitation all appear at points.

It's rare for a simulator to make you sit with the consequences of a space before you begin to return it to its formal neutral state. That is exactly what Crime Scene Cleaner achieves here. Before you ever fill a bucket or push a mop, you begin standing in the eerie stillness of a scene that tells its own silent story. Blood trails, broken furniture, weapons, evidence - every detail is deliberate. There's a quiet heaviness to each level; you aren't just clearing messes, you're erasing someone's worst moment.

As you dive deeper into the overall story level by level, it gradually shifts from simply cleaning to interpreting your surroundings. The scenes start telling you things - how the event likely unfolded, what kind of person the decedent was, and ultimately where things went awry. Through evidence and clues found at the scenes, you gradually build a full picture of each scenario and how they played out. It's less traditional immersion, and more of an environmental narrative feeling, accomplished subtly enough that nothing ever feels forced.

Every piece of evidence slowly unravels more of the story and what is really at play in this town. You and Mr. Kovalsky begin to piece together these stories, and every trip back home seems to weigh on him that much more. Sure, the bills aren't piling up as much, and his daughter's room has never looked better - but at what price?

Stability & Performance

I’ve logged over 50 hours in Crime Scene Cleaner and had zero crashes or major issues. It’s a seamless experience, though I did notice the game doesn’t love being run alongside animated wallpapers and a dozen Chrome tabs; that one's probably on me though.

Minor bugs show up from time to time, like a body clipping into a wall after being tossed, or debris getting mopped into the stratosphere. But honestly? These moments made me laugh. They add levity to a sometimes heavy atmosphere and never get in the way of core gameplay.

Value for Price

At $19.99 USD / $27.51 CAD / €17.29 (currently 20% off on Steam through August 7th, 2025), the value here is wild. My 50 hours of playtime equate to about $0.39/hour, and that’s before touching the brand-new Nightmare Mode and True Cleaner Mode (added on the recent July 24th, 2025 update). These game modes remix existing maps into twisted or high-difficulty versions that put your skills to the test, effectively tripling the amount of play you get from every level.

Just because you've cleaned a space before, does not mean you'll know what to expect at every difficulty.

Final Verdict

Even after unlocking every tool, completing every mission, and collecting all 68 achievements, Crime Scene Cleaner doesn’t stop giving. You can keep replaying levels across difficulties, improving your times, or just relax while cleaning crime scenes in your own twisted meditative state.

This game isn’t for everyone, but if it is for you? You’re in for a weirdly meaningful time.

Rating: 5/5 Joysticks

Let's be real, none of us knew scrubbing blood off ceilings could be this chill.