Backrooms Cleanup Crew

Power Wash Simulator, but the walls are watching

Backrooms Cleanup Crew tasks you and your crew with scrubbing up after a previous exploration team's disastrous trip into the Backrooms, dodging deadly incursions while trying to leave every surface spotless. It's a genuinely unusual genre combination, and based on the available English-language review sample of 268 reviews — 256 positive, 12 negative, landing at an overall Very Positive rating — it's a combination that's landed remarkably well. One reviewer's description of the premise captures both the absurdity and the appeal directly: "If you take a janitor job, throw it into a blender with an existential nightmare, and hit 'puree,' you will get the flickering fluorescent smoothie, that is this game. Is it weird? Yes! Is it scary? Sometimes! Is it oddly addictive? Oh, definitely!"

Reviewers who came in skeptical of yet another Backrooms-themed release describe being pleasantly surprised by how much genuine craft went into the execution. "I expected the usual from most Backrooms games, they usually aren't the best but are still pretty fun, y'know, poor optimization here, unity store asset there. But that's not what it was. Then I expected oh it's just a Backrooms themed cleaning game nothing too special. I mean the incursions annoyed me at first but then the game introduced sigil power and I realized I could fight back against the traps, which completely flipped my opinion on them," one reviewer writes, describing a game that kept exceeding modest expectations at each stage. A separate reviewer frames the direct genre lineage clearly: "Backrooms + power wash simulator? Count me in! This game is so much fun. Relaxing and challenging at the same time. There are upgrades and cosmetics. Great to play with friends."

Real lore behind the mop

What separates this from a simpler novelty mashup, according to multiple reviewers, is genuine investment in narrative and voice acting to justify the premise rather than leaving it as a pure gimmick. "This one leans more into the power-wash aspect than the Backrooms part, but the Backrooms art style is executed really well. Right now, there are regular updates with fresh new content. With the upgrade system and ratings, you get a good amount of content. There's also some interesting lore, supported by solid writing and voice acting. At this price, I don't see anything lacking," one reviewer writes. A separate, especially thorough reviewer with 18 hours logged reinforces the technical solidity behind that content: "4.5/5 To those who like cleaning simulators, buy this game now! The main concept might seem strange but there is some lore that gives the cleaning jobs purpose. And the cleaning mechanics, though primitive, can offer the wanted experience. There are no bugs, in 18 hours I've never seen a single prop stuck under textures or other bs like that."

The developer's continued investment during Early Access also draws specific, repeated credit. "Kudos to the dev team! This game is a blast to play with friends... I love that they're still putting out new content. The latest updates have been really fun. Keep up the good work," one reviewer writes nearly a year into ownership, while a separate reviewer specifically credits the demo-to-full-game transition for preserving player progress: "GET THIS GAME I played the demo and one level in I instantly wanted the full game. I bought as soon as I finished the demo and the progress carried over!"

A co-op game whose lobbies are quiet

The most substantive complaint in the negative sample concerns a genuine structural problem for a game built specifically around playing with others: finding other players to play with. "Atm it's only a really good playing experience if you have people in your friends list who already have the game. The graphics and story is nice and all, but the multiplayer lobbies are sadly dead. If you are trying to look for players through their Discord it's also dead. So only buy it when it's on sale and when your friends already have it," one reviewer writes. That's a specific, practical warning worth weighing seriously for anyone considering the game specifically as a way to meet new co-op partners rather than play with an existing friend group — the core design clearly rewards group play, but the matchmaking infrastructure to support that for solo buyers currently appears thin.

Escalating trash, but not escalating fun

A second recurring criticism concerns how the core difficulty curve is implemented. "Fun, but gets very boring really fast. Just increasing amount of trash to remove is not really gets fun overtime," one reviewer writes, identifying a specific design choice — scaling difficulty primarily through raw volume of mess rather than new mechanics — as insufficient to sustain long-term engagement on its own. A separate reviewer echoes the same underlying fatigue after finishing the current content: "Kinda wish there was more to this TBH. Yeah, it was fun for the first 2 hours but then there was nothing else to do." A practical complaint about session structure compounds this for anyone playing in shorter bursts: "Maybe I missed it but the game doesn't have a save option so if you start a mission, get half way through but I have to do something irl, you have to start the mission all over" — a real quality-of-life gap for a game whose missions apparently run long enough that interruptions are a realistic concern.

The achievement data offers a useful, corroborating picture of the game's actual scope. Across 48 total achievements, straightforward level-completion goals sit in a comfortable 60-93% range, while the hardest "all gold" perfect-rating challenges across the later levels fall to between 1.5% and 2.4%. That's a wide, well-structured spread that supports the picture emerging from the reviews: a genuinely short core campaign that most buyers can complete, layered with a much harder, much less commonly finished perfectionist challenge for players chasing full completion.

Where this leaves it

Backrooms Cleanup Crew takes a genuinely novel premise — liminal horror crossed with power-washing satisfaction — and backs it with real narrative investment, solid technical execution, and an actively updated Early Access build, earning consistent, specific praise from a review base that expected far less. Its main practical limitations are structural rather than creative: thin public matchmaking that makes solo entry into its co-op-focused design harder than it should be, a difficulty curve that leans on raw trash volume rather than new ideas, and no mid-mission save to accommodate real-world interruptions. Recommended for horror-comedy fans with an existing group of friends willing to embrace the odd premise; less certain as a pickup for solo players hoping to find co-op partners through public matchmaking alone.