Survival Horror Meets Brand Marketing

When I sat down in front of Silent Cleaning, a free-to-play cleaning/survival horror PC game developed and published by Japanese chemical company, Kao Corporation, I wasn’t expecting much. I’m not scared of cleaning, and chemical companies aren’t exactly known for their video game development chops. Regardless, I turned the lights off and loaded it up, ready to scrub my way through the horrors, with no doubt in my mind that I was about to participate in some kind of interactive sales pitch.

What I found, though, in spite of my preconceptions, was actually a pretty decent little game.

One Horrible House

The concept of Silent Cleaning is simple: Players find themselves in a run-down ryokan (a traditional Japanese house), with the goal of cleaning up a variety of messes throughout the property. We’re talking about grimy stove tops, crusty sinks and toilets you wouldn’t send someone into even for a laugh. For some, this alone may constitute survival horror. Perhaps even trigger some less-than-fond memories. But this is only the beginning of the evil that awaits players in Silent Cleaning.

Hinted at in handwritten notes and documents scattered throughout the game, somehow, the dirt and mold in this house has become sentient (classic mold), taking on a bipedal form that wanders the darkened hallways and tatami rooms of this forgotten home. Unable to see, these teal-colored creatures respond primarily to sound, meaning the player must move quietly, while also using kitchen timers and other noisy artifacts to distract them, as they set about restoring the building to its former glory.

Grime-filled Gameplay

No matter which way you spin it, this whole thing is an advertisement to its bones. The cleaning products featured in the game are literally the same Kao-branded ones found on supermarket shelves here in Japan. What sets it apart from your average bit of product placement seen in other games, though, is the fact that some genuine thought has gone into how the products affect the gameplay.

As you progress through the house, a mini map in the bottom right shows how clean each individual room is, eventually turning green when there are no more messes left to exorcise. What players will soon realize, though, is that they’re not equipped to handle all of the stains they encounter. You don’t have the power, young janitor.

To remedy this, as players clean, they will uncover cryptic clues. Sections of code that can be used to unlock cabinets and safes housing instructions or a new cleaning product capable of tackling that mess you came across earlier but didn’t know how to deal with.

Inspired by many of the great survival horror titles that came before it, such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, players can then combine and modify the products they find in order to handle particular situations. Got a stain on the screen door in the hallway? With the Kao strong wet wipes attached to your adjustable Kao Quickle mop, just shorten the handle for use in tight spaces. It’s so easy!

Driving up the tension, some of the cleaning products need to be left to soak before they can be washed away, which in normal day-to-day life, wouldn’t be an issue (in fact, I’d welcome it). But in Silent Cleaning, waiting for your chemicals to do their thing in the toilet while a massive mold monster stomps up and down the hallway outside is probably one of the more unique stresses that humanity has created for themselves. It’s not exactly terrifying, but there’s no denying that it’s clever.

Without giving the whole game away, the knowledge of what product cleans what stains genuinely comes into play in the final act, with a boss fight of sorts during which you don’t have time to think about which spray goes on what surface. It’s not the most frantic survival horror finale out there, but to a degree, you must become one with the chemicals, should you have any hope of escaping.

More Than Just an Ad

I’m normally the first to carry on about how overbearing advertisements can be, but Silent Cleaning gets a pass (aside from the occasional instance of what appears to be AI toilet art on the walls of the house). It’s a curiosity as much as it is a sales pitch, and only those who go looking for it will find it. It doesn’t cost anything to play it, and while it certainly doesn’t break any new ground, some genuine thought and development was put into this hour-or-so long experience. I didn’t encounter a single bug while playing, which hilariously, is more than can be said of most titles hitting the market today, and I can honestly say that I had fun beating the game as well.

Of course, it’s not lost on me that articles like this one are likely the outcome Kao were looking for when making the game. Any advertisement that gets talked about is clearly a good one. But even so, I’d wager that the gap between me writing about it and you going and buying some toilet cleaner remains unchanged. Either way, I think Silent Cleaning shows that sometimes, it’s less about the cleaning chemicals, and more about the stains we meet along the way.

If you want to check the game out, it’s free-to-play on PC via Steam, but only available in Japanese.