Serial Cleaner is a 2017 stealth/action game developed by iFun4all and published by Curve Digital.
The game is set in the '70s and follows The Cleaner (real name Bob C. Leaner), a gambling addict in debt who gets money by cleaning up crime scenes after murders. After his debt with the mob starts racking up, he takes a new, mysterious client.
The game is available on Steam
and GOG.
A sequel, titled Serial Cleaners, was released on September 22, 2022. It was developed again by iFun4all (by then rebranded as Draw Distance) and published by 505 Games. Taking place in 1999, it follows the further adventures of Bob, now the head of his own cleanup crew, as they recount their various jobs throughout the last decade. In addition, the original game's 2D perspective is replaced with an isometric 3D one.
Serial Cleaner and Serial Cleaners contain examples of the following tropes:
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Serial Cleaner
- The '70s: The game is set in the decade of the 1970s, focusing on a certain period of time starting in 1972.
- Cleanup Crew: Your job is to clean up crime scenes by disposing of bodies and evidence as well as vacuuming up blood, all the while avoiding the cops.
- Engineered Public Confession: The final confrontation with the Echo Killer involves you baiting him into chasing you in front of live cameras, upon which he'll blurt out various incriminating things.
- Everyone Has Standards: Bob is desperate for money, so he takes the jobs from the mysterious client, but is greatly upset by the state of things, especially the fact he seems to brutally murder young women.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Once you hide in things like bushes or boxes, cops will quickly lose attention, even if they see you doing so.
- Momma's Boy: Bob loves his mom dearly and is very sweet to her whenever they talk. They are shown to have a very close relationship, with him even accompanying her on her bridge game nights.
- Only in It for the Money: Bob is not interested in joining the Mafia or takes pleasure in his work, all he wants is to make enough money to pay his debts and then move on.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Bob does work for the mob and a serial killer in order to clean up after murders. He, however, takes no pleasure from it and is only doing it for the money and to keep himself and his mom safe.
- The Reveal: At one point, listening to the radio, Bob realizes he's been cleaning up the murders of the Echo Killer.
- Serial Killer: The Echo Killer is a serial killer racking up a large body count and that The Cleaner has been cleaning up for.
- Trapped by Gambling Debts: A primary reason for why Bob keeps taking dangerous jobs for criminals is due to various gambling debts.
Serial Cleaners
- The '90s: The game takes place during various periods of the 1990s.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Vip3r is able to unscrew air vents in order to crawl through them. During one of her jobs at a police station, she expresses disbelief that the police keep making such big vents for her to crawl through.
- Ax-Crazy: Psycho is the most mentally disturbed of the protagonists, being a former mob hitman prone to losing control of himself and going on rampages. He recognizes that he's messed up due to a severe chemical imbalance in his brain and tries to rein it in, with varying degrees of success.
- Chainsaw Good: Psycho carries a chainsaw that he uses to eviscerate corpses into bits of limbs as well as to cut down barriers.
- Framing Device: The story takes the form of the characters reminiscing about their careers during New Year's Eve of 1999, with each level being a story they're telling to their coworkers of the worst jobs they've ever been on.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Averted for the sake of difficulty, with only a few concessions for the player's sake. Enemies will react to evidence and bodies being moved when they're not looking, to doors that open or close without one of them doing so, and turning the lights off enough times will cause every guard to go on high alert and rush the nearest light switch. The guards do not remember that they caught the player red-handed multiple times, so long as the player isn't in a restricted area, and they will eventually return to a lower state of alert if they find nothing.
- Justified Criminal: Lati got sucked into the cleaner profession when her spiraling brother-figure commits an impulsive robbery of their local convenience store, only to botch it and kill basically everyone who was there at the time. She's forced to dispose of the evidence on her own to save him and herself, only for Bob to catch her as she's finishing up and offer her a lucrative job... that Lati initially refuses, but is forced into when she can't afford art school or otherwise afford living expenses.
- Leet Lingo: Vip3r mainly talks in 90's Internet chatspeak and slang, which is period appropriate but also bemuses the much older Bob and her coworkers.
- Speed, Smarts and Strength: The three new characters have their own unique mechanics corresponding to this.
- Lati corresponds with Speed in that she's able to climb and slide over obstacles that the others can't. Bob also somewhat fits into this category due to his ability to slide on blood.
- Vip3r corresponds with Smarts due to her ability to hack into local networks with her laptop and interface with nearby machines.
- Psycho corresponds with Strength with his ability to dismember corpses to create gibs to knock cops out with.
- Video Game 3D Leap: While the previous game was 2D, this game is now in a 3D isometric perspective.
- With Cat Like Tread: Serial Cleaners is a stealth game, but Psycho's entire playstyle is based on using a very loud chainsaw to dismember bodies, deliberately luring police to him so he can knock them out with a thrown body part or object while they recoil in fear.
