Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Cleanup Service starts with a wonderfully scruffy idea: cleaning an Addle Hotel sounds routine until mutant rubbish begins roaming the halls. Your goal is direct—move through each hotel area, clean up, and avoid being touched—but that simplicity is exactly what gives the opening its arcade snap. You can understand the job almost at once, then spend the next few minutes realizing that getting around safely is the real work.

Bobban and Otto have a useful set of tools scattered through the levels. Dustbin lids, stun guns, and brooms turn the cleaners from easy targets into characters with ways to manage the rubbish, rather than merely dodge it. That keeps the platform action from feeling like a bare obstacle course: when a useful object is nearby, you have to decide whether reaching it is worth the danger and how it can help clear your route.

The fixed, flip-screen layout makes each area feel like a contained workplace you gradually learn. Since contact with mutant rubbish costs a life, mistakes can sting, particularly when you are still figuring out where dangers sit across a larger section of the hotel. It is an old-school game in the sense that repetition is part of the lesson, so you should come in ready to replay rooms instead of expecting a forgiving run.

Two-player mode is where the premise has its best chance to shine. Cleaning alongside someone else fits the comic setup naturally, and sharing a level with another person creates extra urgency whenever rubbish gets in the way. Solo play is still a clean, focused platform challenge, but a second player makes the hotel feel more lively and gives the eight-level journey more personality.

Graphics

The game uses a side-on, flip-screen view of the Addle Hotel, with Bobban and Otto moving through large sections of the building while mutant rubbish threatens them. The haunted attic provides a clear final destination for the hotel setting, giving the last stop a more playful spooky flavor than an ordinary cleaning shift.

Story

This is a premise-driven story rather than a narrative-heavy adventure. Bobban and Otto have landed the contract to clean the Addle Hotel, and the joke is that their workplace has become hostile enough to turn a cleaning job into an action game.

That light setup works because it never asks you to take the situation too seriously. Wacky cleaners, living rubbish, and a hotel that ends in a haunted attic are enough to frame the action without slowing it down with more plot than the game needs.

Reaching the attic after eight levels gives the run a proper destination, even if the main motivation remains practical: finish the job, survive the mess, and get through the hotel. If you want character drama or a complicated mystery, this will not be the draw. If a silly arcade premise is enough, it does its job.

Overall Experience

Cleanup Service is a compact, mischievous platform game built around a far more memorable task than the usual run-and-jump routine. The first hour’s pull comes from turning housekeeping into hazard management: every stretch of hotel asks you to keep moving, make smart use of the scattered tools, and avoid paying for a careless collision with a life.

Its limitations are also part of the deal. The core loop is deliberately narrow, and the punishment for touching rubbish means frustration can set in if a room repeatedly catches you out. Yet the premise stays charming because the hazards are tied to the job itself; you are cleaning up a ridiculous hotel, not merely collecting objects for their own sake.

Give it a chance if you enjoy Commodore 64 platformers with concise goals, fixed-screen exploration, and a co-op option that can make a simple challenge more entertaining. The haunted-attic finish and eight-level structure give it a satisfying small-scale payoff. It is not an expansive adventure, but it has the kind of oddball theme that makes a short arcade session stick in your memory.

Retro Replay Score

6.8/10