Emergency Cleanup Co.

PROS: Game does what it says it does. A lot of varied maps. Plenty of gameplay for your money. Watching the robovac work is fun. Never crashed on me. Things that need doing show up on minimap. CONS: Graphics not very convincing. Not very polished generally. Needs work on the function that highlights unfinished work.

I've always wanted to play Powerwash Simulator, but didn't think it was worth the price, especially after being let down so hard by Houseflipper. Well, this is half the price and definitely satisfies the same the niche. I like it and hope it continues to get developed with more missions and skill trees.

/!\ Disclaimer: Emergency Cleanup Co. is in 'Early Access' - as of writing this review - and in active development. If you're into cozy simulation games: this one is the weakest, compared to its strongest rivals like Powerwash Simulator and House Flipper. But don't underestimate this game... Strongest argument for this game: the cleaning mechanics are stable enough and fun. The foundation is clearly here for relaxing podcast listening and gameplay sessions. Some notations, if you're unsure about the quality of this game: [*]The pacing is not there yet: small flaws like the unfocused upgrade system might hinder the motivation to finish this game. [*]Shop and customization aspects could be bigger and better. [*]Some levels could be better with a more varied design, to motivate the player to explore the game more and look out for potential rewards/secrets. Other than that: there's enough of potential and fun gameplay basics here. With more polish, time and care given - Emergency Cleanup Co. can get into the ring against bigger rivals and bring you a lot of sparkling joy.

Normally I LOVE a cleaning game. This one just doesn't feel good to me to play. The upgrades are slow and tedious, the tools you're given feel weak. Everything feels like you're moving in slow motion. No way to find what tiny speck of dirt you're missing with the mop. The game makes me feel antsy and jittery compared to satisfied.

So I am marking this game a not recommend.... for now. Genuinely I think that the game could end up being a very good game if enough time and effort is put into it. Which is why I'm gonna choose to keep it despite not really liking the game right now because I can see it being just as good as some of the best cleaning sims. And honestly if you see the vision? If you wanna support the dev, I'd say pick it up. It's not that expensive, but if you're picking and choosing which games to spend your limited money on? I'd skip for now. If you are wanting to scratch an itch after playing things like Powerwash Sim, House Flipper, etc. You've played those games so many times and want something new? This is not that game yet. Almost every single job I have done is basically the same with the tiniest of differences, mostly just the settings but even the settings are pretty samey. Most places you clean are slightly different with the exact kind of messes, regardless of whatever story is attached to the job. I think the most unique one has been the movie theatre that I cleaned where the trash was at least movie related. Popcorn, popcorn tubs, etc. Then maybe the Christmas one where there was a single santa hat and a few present boxes I had to throw away. But, other than the christmas house, every single house I have cleaned has basically been the same. Pizza, dirty toilet paper rolls (for some reason), bottles, broken bottles, soda cans, soda cups, rusted cans (for some reason, and bags of trash everywhere. There will be mystery fluids slew all over the place. Why do every one of these places look like someone took a ♥♥♥♥ and decided to wipe it on every painting in the house? I just cleaned a bit ago a house where the story was that the husband was trying to assemble a side table and was struggling with it and somehow in the process of trying to assemble this thing he destroyed his house, he wants you to clean the house and get rid of the failed attempt at assembling furniture before his wife gets home. Okay. This sounds funny. Surely I'm going to get into this house and find tails, screws, boxes, instruction manuals, pieces of side table, strew all over the place right? Right? Well I was right on the boxes, there were flattened boxes everywhere. Otherwise it was the same previously mentioned trash... everywhere. Sir? What about assembling a side table led to somewhere around 40,000 pizza boxes being all over your house? Or blue liquid being thrown all over a painting? Honestly ANY of the liquid related messes. What were you doing??? There's a house that just has a bathroom you need to clean. It's just the bathroom. The whole house is perfectly clean. But for some reason.... the bathroom you are cleaning looks like a bathroom out of hoarders. Even the unique jobs like cleaning a kids dads car that he messed up are very samey. I just unlocked the powerwasher and got to powerwash some rugs with it. Something that should have been pretty satisfying, but it just wasn't. The mechanics of the game are pretty solid! You have a steam cleaner that you just point at stains and it magics them away gradually. You have a cordless vacuum that you point at small piles of debris and suck them up. A trash can you can carry around to pick up trash (just hold left click and point at the trash which is a great way of doing it in a way that won't break your players fingers). Then a SECOND trash can that you put in bags of trash in the trashcan. You can also carry this trash can and put it closer to the bags of trash. Honestly on this one I really wish it had something like Crime Scene Cleaner where you can drop trash bags on top of each other to combine them to a certain extent and make a big single bag of trash you can carry. The one mechanic that is TRULY irritating is the damn scrubbie. If there are stains on the walls? Use the steam cleaner. If it's on something like a painting or a tv or something? Scrubbie..... and that thing takes AGES to scrub with. There is other equipment I haven't unlocked yet.... but it's taking ages because of how upgrades work. You also can't just buy upgrades. You earn little stars and money to that are used to upgrade things. This is really frustrating because it feels like it's gating the things you can buy and impacting other parts of the game. Because the stars are ALSO used for your perk upgrades. Frankly I just didn't see the point in getting perks when it takes 20-40 star points to unlock new cleaning equipment. So all this has done is incentivize me to completely ignore that mechanic. I would just rather upgrade my stuff, but the points also make it so I can't unlock things when I want. Got plenty of money to unlock a piece of equipment I want to unlock but because of those stars I can't do it because I don't have enough OF THOSE. If you don't want me to be able to buy a certain thing yet.... just leave it out of the store. Don't gate it in this way where I just end up frustrated because I can see how much money I have and know I should be able to buy the thing. I also wonder how long it will be before I hit more complex jobs because every job I have done has taken 10 minutes or less to do. With a couple jobs taking me less than 5 minutes. Again. I see this game being pretty damn good eventually. It has VERY good bones. But all it is right now is bones. It's a satisfying play as it is... just a very very very boring one because of the lack of variety in tasks and things I'm cleaning. To the point that, while satisfying, all this game really did was make me want to play House Flipper 1 again. I look forward to updates. I look forward to seeing this game improve and grow. I look very forward to changing this review. But as previously stated, I can't really recommend it unless you just want to support the development. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43095726-Just-A-Chick-Reviews/] Check out my Curator Page[/url]

i adore this game. its one of my favorite things i and keep coming back to play it ever since i bought it.

nice & cozy relaxing game. u can finish it less than 10h. but for cozy games it's ok. if u want to collect all the achievements, it'll take more than that.

死体片付けるゲームの後釜になれるかなーってゲーム。 思ったより短いのでコンテンツ追加に期待。１個の掃除が短いのはいいことだけど掃除スキルが上がってくると物足りなくなると思いました。でも片付けるのは楽しいです。

Utterly uninspired and thoroughly disrespectful to the games in the genre that actually put effort in. It's basically what you get if you tell ChatGPT to soullessly merge Powerwash Simulator and House Flipper. Not a single ounce of love went into this game - the animations are bland (or at least, they are in instances when the devs bothered adding any), the controls feel janky and unnatural (did I mention you can't crouch?), and worst of all the assets are AI generated (achievement images, in-game visual AND audio assets, in-game and store text, and seemingly the code itself). You could probably get away with it if it weren't for dead giveaways like "WEAR DUST MASK MUST BE WORN" which isn't even proper English, or the phone numbers that appear in game not even following any logical or realistic format. The same thing happens with the in-game brand "BOLT PAINTS" which is sometimes referred to as such, but 5cm away it's referred to as "BOLT PAINTS INC" on exactly the same type of item. Also, the text on some assets is just upside down even though logically and realistically there's no reason for it to be. The in-game music (which is also AI-generated) constantly peaks and clips too, which gives you a nice jolt to keep you awake from time to time. Some of the maps have kitchen tables with 4 chairs around them, but for some reason the chairs on one side are hardback, and the other side have office chairs. It's just lazy. Also, it's uuuuuuglyyyyyyy. It's 35gb for some unknown reason, which would be fine if the textures actually looked good, but even at 1080p they're noticeably pixelated. Anti-aliasing is a choice between on or off. No option to choose between any types, just on or off - and the on option doesn't actually work properly, because everything shimmers and has grain on it anyway. That's without getting into the weird camera judder that lurches backwards and forwards when you start/stop moving. I don't suffer from motion sickness but somehow this game managed to accomplish that. I guess that's one thing it does to set itself aside from the "competition" (I put competition in quotes, because it'd be disingenuous to imply that this is any competition to anything). Development speed is, for some reason, glacial - I'm not sure why because when you're using AI to do everything, the only real limit is how many prompts you submit. Actually, that's a lie; I know exactly why it's so slow - it's so that they can keep up appearances of being active while milking as many sales as possible. It also managed to lock up my PC while loading the first mission which is fairly impressive. The worst part? Every issue I listed above was glaringly apparent within the 15 minutes I spent with the game. This is nothing more than an insipid imitation of games in the genre that actually put the effort in. Avoid it at all cost - even if this were completely free to play it would still be an insult to the games it shamelessly rips off. EDIT: To respond to the developer response below (which interestingly got deleted last time I posted it in the comments): the game categorically DOES use AI-generated assets. Please don't treat your audience as stupid.

It's a decent game. If you enjoy House Flipper, Powerwash, or even Crime Scene Cleaner you may enjoy this game. It's very bare bones but works well, doesn't crash from what I've seen. The maps could use some work (the houses get repetitive, they're all about the same format from what I've seen). The perk system also needs work, because it'll show that you'll gain X amount of perks from a job, but you only get one. Overall it's a decent game, just needs some tweaks and attention to detail.