For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out The WereCleaner from developer Charlie Heatherly. I Played this on my iPhone 14 Pro.
The premise of this game, a cleaner who's a werewolf doing the night shift, was all i needed to give this a try. It's very new, this might be the launch week, and it's not a game i had heard about, but the screenshots on it's app store page combined with the little bits of information about the game were enough. i was very curious and just had to play it.
You start The WereCleaner during your day shift so you're human. this acts as the games story introduction but i feel it could've or should've given us the option for a tutorial. it might've been difficult, but i feel it's possible the developer could've used our interactions with Daryl as a way for our character to talk about their job, thus being the tutorial, and Daryl replying with something about keeping his current one. The game does provide text on screen between stages but i worry that this might be easily missed as this isn't something i've seen much in other games. Those text boxes are done up very nice and do provide most of the information needed, with our imagination on how we can use it filling the gaps.
As a Clean 'em up, your goal in The WereCleaner is simple, clean up all messes within the 5 minute window. the problem is that as we're a werewolf, we will kill anyone who spots us in the same location as us. killing them, and then eating them, and then cleaning up that mess uses up time which is were the stealth element of the game comes in. the other characters have a timer above their heads and when it reaches 0 they move. we need to avoid them whilst also making our way across the stage or cleaning. it's a difficult balance that i didn't quite master. i felt like this challenge was well managed at the start, but by the 6th level i was on the difficulty had spiked.
We are given tools to help us clean and the info card before the level also talks about how we can use it against the other people. but it's one thing to read it and another to do it and it's this using the tools that didn't quite work how i expected. one tool is throwing a ball of trash. the other humans will pick it up and put it in the bin, clearing a path for you. but what i didn't anticipate was them putting it in a bin near us. Another item is the Knap, a bag we can use to pick up critters or a bag we can put over the heads of humans. But nearly every time i tried to use it it failed because i would instinctively kill the person i was trying to knap.
Another example where things are a little rough is in the controls. more than once i noticed and commented on how the on screen buttons didn't match what cleaning item i was using. i had heard the game make the noise that i had changed my tool, but on screen the buttons for that tool hadn't changed. so for a while it was a little frustrating not knowing what tool was equipped. by the end of the video i was getting used to it, but it's not ideal.
So whilst The WereCleaner does have some small issues and a few bugs, the core idea and presentation is still really good. so much so that it's already in my Free to Play Mobile Game of the Year List and i'd happily recommend it to anyone looking for something interesting to play. It's a shame there aren't pocketable portables from Sony or Nintendo as this is something i would've enjoyed on those platforms. On phone it does work well, but i can't help but feel that the controls would be better with buttons than touch screen.
Version ? Played. (Maybe it's the launch version)
