Serial Cleaner

Lore & Background

Serial Cleaner is a stealth game developed by Draw Distance and published by Curve Digital/Plug In Digital. Players control a cleaner hired to remove evidence at crime scenes in the 1970s. Besides moving corpses, players vacuum up blood. Police are already at the scene, and if they see the cleaner, they chase. The player can hide in various spots on the map, causing the police to lose interest. Being caught forces players to replay the level and randomizes the locations of objects that need to be cleaned.

The game was initially released by Curve Digital for PCs, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on July 14, 2017. The Nintendo Switch version followed on November 30, 2017, and it was released on iOS on June 20, 2019. On February 11, 2025, the game was rereleased for iOS and Android by Plug In Digital.

On Metacritic, Serial Cleaner received positive reviews on the Switch and mixed reviews elsewhere. Rock Paper Shotgun, NintendoLife, and Vice liked the game's concept but found the idea of restarting randomized levels infuriating. Conversely, GamesRadar's reviewer found the scenes where he was caught funny and enjoyed the level design. Push Square wrote, 'Its difficulty and slight release content are offset by a number of options, a great premise, and some uniquely engaging gameplay.' NintendoWorldReport praised the gameplay and retro charm but felt that the Switch controls were sometimes inconsistent.

Reader's Guide

Serial Cleaner is notable as a stealth game that shifts the genre's typical focus from espionage or combat to crime scene cleanup. Its 1970s setting and literal approach to removing evidence—including vacuuming blood—distinguish it from other stealth titles. The game's reception was mixed across platforms, with critics praising its concept and premise but often criticizing the frustration of restarting randomized levels upon being caught. Some reviewers, such as those at GamesRadar, found humor in the failure states, while Push Square highlighted the offset of difficulty by options and engaging gameplay. The game's legacy includes a sequel, Serial Cleaners, and its availability across multiple platforms, including a mobile rerelease in 2025. Its design choices—particularly the randomization of object locations after failure—remain a point of contention among players and critics.

Did You Know?

• Players vacuum up blood as part of removing evidence from crime scenes.
• The game was rereleased for iOS and Android on February 11, 2025.

The Core Stealth Loop

Serial Cleaner places you in the shoes of a hired cleaner working in the 1970s, tasked with scrubbing evidence from active crime scenes. The loop is deceptively simple: police are already on-site, and your job is to move bodies and literally vacuum up blood without being spotted. If an officer's gaze lands on you, a chase begins, and you must dart into one of the hiding spots scattered across the map to let their attention drift away. The tension comes from the fact that every level is a tight, contained space where visibility and timing matter more than open-world freedom. Perhaps the most distinctive design choice is the punishment for failure. Rather than simply respawning at a checkpoint, getting caught sends you back to the start of the level with every piece of evidence—bloodstains, corpses, and other objects—reshuffled to new random positions. This means no two attempts feel identical, turning each retry into a fresh spatial puzzle and ensuring that memorization alone cannot carry you through. The result is a stealth experience that rewards spatial awareness and quick thinking over pure speed.

A Multi-Platform Journey

Draw Distance developed Serial Cleaner and initially brought it to market through Curve Digital, launching on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on July 14, 2017. The Nintendo Switch port arrived just over four months later on November 30, 2017, extending the game's reach into the handheld-and-dockable console space. Mobile players had to wait a bit longer, with an iOS build shipping on June 20, 2019. The title's publishing partnership also evolved over time: in February 2025, Plug In Digital took on the role of publisher for a rerelease that expanded the game's mobile footprint to include Android alongside iOS. This staggered, multi-year rollout across five distinct platforms—spanning desktop, two major console families, a hybrid handheld, and two mobile ecosystems—gave the game a long shelf life and introduced its quirky crime-scene premise to audiences well beyond its initial PC and console audience. The 2025 rerelease, in particular, signaled that the concept still had commercial viability more than seven years after its debut, keeping the title accessible to a new generation of players on the devices they already carry in their pockets.

A Divided Critical Consensus

Serial Cleaner's reception on Metacritic tells a story of a game that found its strongest audience on the Nintendo Switch, where it earned positive reviews, while drawing more mixed scores on other platforms. Several prominent outlets—Rock Paper Shotgun, NintendoLife, and Vice—applauded the core concept of stealthy crime-scene cleanup but consistently flagged the randomized-restart mechanic as a source of genuine frustration, describing the need to relearn a reshuffled layout after every failure as infuriating. GamesRadar offered a more lighthearted take, with its reviewer admitting that the moments of getting caught actually landed as funny and praising the thoughtful level design that made each scene a contained puzzle. Push Square struck a balanced note, acknowledging that the game's difficulty and somewhat limited release content were tempered by a generous set of options, a genuinely great premise, and what they called uniquely engaging gameplay. NintendoWorldReport highlighted the retro charm and tight gameplay loop but raised concerns about inconsistent controls on the Switch. The overall picture is one of a well-liked idea whose execution polarized reviewers on the question of how punishing failure should feel.

Legacy and the Road Ahead

Serial Cleaner carved out a niche in the stealth genre by asking a question no other game had really explored: what if the player's job was not to commit a crime but to erase its traces while the victims still lay on the floor? That premise—hired to vacuum blood and relocate bodies in a 1970s crime scene while police mill about—gave the title a darkly comic identity that set it apart from more serious stealth titles. The game's impact extended beyond its initial launch window. Its 2025 rerelease by Plug In Digital on both iOS and Android demonstrated that the concept still resonated with players more than seven years after the original 2017 debut, suggesting a durable appeal to its quirky, puzzle-like stealth loop. Most notably, the success of the original spawned a follow-up titled Serial Cleaners, confirming that Draw Distance's core idea had enough staying power to warrant a sequel. For fans of the genre, Serial Cleaner stands as a proof-of-concept that the stealth genre can find fresh, even humorous, angles by simply flipping the player's role from perpetrator to cleanup crew.