In this wonderful game, you'll clean houses... and cafes... just normal buildings (I swear, nothing strange is going on over here!). It is a short but sweet game with no missable achievements. It takes around 3,5h to complete.
Approximate time to 100%: 3,5h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1,5 (You'll have to replay 2/3 of the levels after finishing the game to get 5 stars on every level.)
Is there a good guide available: You don't need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: I preferred to play with a gamepad
I'm a sucker for Unbound Creations' games, and Cleaning Up! is awesome! I love the humor this studio puts in all their games! And cleaning up an environment is so appealing. I can't explain why, because irl I hate cleaning, but in games, you see the results so soon and even get rewarded for cleaning up! It was also so nice to hear Jakub's laugh again as a soundbite and to have an interactive Credits menu.
In Cleaning Up! you clean up parts of houses, cafes, museums, and more like that. You start out with only a broom and a vacuum. After 5 levels, you'll unlock a new item, and that will happen after level 10 and 15 as well. What I really love is that you can upgrade your equipment to make it clean even faster! You earn money from completing levels and can use that to upgrade your equipment or buy cute hats and outfits.
Another awesome thing is that you can interact with some items. For example, in one level you get asked to maybe also water all the plants, and after that you can water the plants in every level to earn some bonus coins.
The only thing I struggled with was that if my mouse got active while playing, my gamepad wouldn't always work in menus. But putting your mouse on a button made it work again. To me, it seemed like minor conflicts when playing on PC with a mouse and a gamepad.
At the beginning, you won't be able to 5 stars the levels, as for that, you need to have all 5 equipment items. But after finishing the game, you can return to earlier levels and finish them with 5 stars. If you want to go for 100%, you kinda already need to do that to have enough money to buy all the upgrades, hats, and outfits. To be clear, the game makes it sound like you need to start New Game+ for this, but that isn't the case. Just go back into your save, and you can now earn 5 stars.
The timer or penalties don't affect your star rating. So you can combine replaying earlier levels with possible missed achievements in specific levels. But I'm sure you'll already have most of them. So just enjoy the game, and maybe peek at the achievements after you finish it for the first time!
I give Cleaning Up! 4.5 out of 5 stars.
4.5