All things in life can be twisted for dark ends. The same skills a man uses to defend himself can also be used for committing murder, for example. Crime Scene Cleaner is a dark twist on cleanup games like Powerwash Simulator, though it’s generally a well-done take on the genre.

Crime Scene Cleaner begins innocently enough. You are Kovalsky, a high school janitor whose daughter is in the hospital with an unnamed disease implied to be cancer. Unable to pay the medical bills, Kovalsky is desperate. A rather shady friend gives you a job to clean up the aftermath of a bad drug deal. Upon completing the job, Kovalsky finds himself tapped by more criminal elements as a professional disposer of evidence at crime scenes. The money he earns is more than enough to help his daughter, but he’s quickly aware that this deal with the devil could cost him both his life and soul.

The primary gameplay loop follows a series of jobs to clean up various crime scenes. In between these jobs are visits back to Kovalsky’s home, which advance the story. At each of the job sites is where the cleaning mentioned in the title takes place. Each crime scene has bodies to dispose of, trash to clean up, and blood to wipe away. Askew furniture needs to be righted, any items that hint at a crime need to be taken, and any accidental extra trash created by the player must also be disposed of.

To achieve these goals, the player has various skills that they level up with points earned from levels. These skills can do things like make mops and sponges more effective, allow trash bags to collect more trash than normal, or improve the ability to sense garbage needing to be disposed of. Points are earned by completing story objectives to remove all trash/blood/bodies. Points can also be earned by taking certain sellable items during missions.

The player has wide use of several different tools. Mops, sponges, and pressure washers are used for cleaning up blood and dirt. Trash bags are used for, obviously enough, disposing of trash. The player even has the use of devices like UV lights to better detect blood stains.

Graphically, the game goes for a contemporary modern look. It can be rather dark in places, mostly to encourage the player to use the UV light. Various details like bodies, blood, trash, and other details are very distinct. Some assets look rather generic in places, but overall, the important stuff is decent looking.

Sounds and music are rather minimal. Being a cleaning game, the game wants the player to focus on the task at hand. There are some collectible tapes playing various ambient tracks as optional collectibles, though. Kovalsky is the main voiced character, though there are a few other characters he speaks to over the phone. The voice acting is pretty competent if nothing else.

Crime Scene Cleaner supports keyboard and mouse control or any Steam-supported controller. Both are viable, and the game comes with built-in tutorials. PC controls can be remapped, but controllers cannot without using third-party fixes. The controls, by default, are very good either way.

This title runs natively on Microsoft Windows. It will run on Linux via Steam Proton and is rated as Playable on the Steam Deck. This game is not overly demanding, but it’s highly recommended to use a dedicated graphics card, especially on laptops, as integrated chipsets are not supported.

On the topic of the game story and the main character, I must be blunt, they are the worst part of this game. The game's story attempts to show the main character as morally conflicted about working for criminals to pay for his child’s medical treatment, but immediately proceeds to botch any attempt at this coming off as sincere.

Morally, there is some concerning content.

There is no depicted violence, but you will see the aftermath of it. There is a lot of blood and gore. Many bodies display gruesome wounds, are burned, studded with gunshots, and so on. The intended point of the game is to clean all this up, of course.

Language is pretty earthy. There is frequent strong profanity from f*** on down being heard. God’s name is taken in vain as well. There is relatively little sexual content. One female's body is burned to the point it looks more like charcoal than a body. There is one level that does contain evidence that one couple was in an adulterous relationship, but that’s it.

This is set in a pretty realistic setting. One level does feature a satanic pentagram and an apparent demonic ritual. Further examination reveals that an old woman who was afraid of her child being possessed by demons was trying to exorcise the alleged demonic presence. It’s shown that while this may have been arguably true to some extent, it’s also shown that some technology was being used to gaslight said woman into believing the situation was truly supernatural.

Morally, you play as someone who is cleaning up crime scenes for the criminals, so the police find no evidence. The game attempts to make the protagonist seem sympathetic because he has no other choice but to pay his daughter’s medical bills. This is undercut by the sarcastic comments your protagonist makes, making his moral reservations seem insincere. A key game mechanic involves stealing valuable items from the levels to make extra money as well. There are depictions of smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use. The drugs in question are some of the items you can steal for extra money.

Overall, Crime Scene Cleaner is fairly sound in a gameplay and technical sense. Morally, this is a title suitable only for mature audiences. While I personally found the story disappointing and the protagonist grating, I still recommend this game if you enjoy cleaning games.