Purrrifiers: Cleaning Chaos - PC Preview

Purrifiers: Cleaning Chaos by developer Rubens Games and FreeMind S.A. and publisher FreeMind S.A. and PlayWay S.A.—PC(Steam) preview written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

 
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes 

---

Purrrifiers: Cleaning Chaos is a goofy clean-up game that has you battling the forces of dirt, grime, and weird characters asking for some really weird things.

In Purrrifiers you take on the role of what is essentially a combination of professional cleaner and handyman, as you take on the request from the mayor of Purrreopolis to rid the island of dirt and grime. Of course you’re up for it! So grab up to three friends and head off into garbage galore, poop on a stick, and the messiest places you’ve ever seen.

Purrrifiers is a one to four person cleaning sim. I use the term “cleaning sim” fairly lightly here, but the basic premise is that you find a location to enter, and clean it up while helping the people who are there. Sometimes this is as simple as “take out the trash”, other times it could be “defeat the evil ghosts” or even “find embarrassing photos”. There’s a pretty wide swing range on what you’re asked to do.

In a move I wasn’t particularly expecting, Purrrifiers is a sort of 3D open world type scenario. You have an island to explore, and you can visit various locations on the island that you need to walk up to and enter. The island map is pretty big, but you can unlock fast travel buses near important locations once you’ve found them once. Sort of. I’ll get to that a little bit later.

On entering a location you can go find someone to give you your first area quest, which will allow you to start cleaning up whatever building/area you’re in. For example, your first goal could be cleaning up ink stains, and then picking up old flyers. Eventually you’ll get into crazier and more complicated quests like laundering money (literally), or giving a snail energy drinks so it will eat tomatoes. When you get started on your adventure you will be given some tools to help you get started.

Your basic tools of the trade are: four garbage bins all colour coded for types of waste, a vacuum, a scrubbing sponge and spray bottle, a pressure washer, and a tower that refills your pressure washer water. In different areas you can also find tools that are unique uses for that location, like bug spray or a suction gun. The pressure washer is used for stains on the floors, walls, and ceilings, and are usually pretty large blotches. Scrubbing sponge is useful for small stains on countertops, tables, and appliances. The vacuum is used for floor particles, and the garbage bins are used for the different types of trash.

Trash you’ve got divided into: paper, glass, plastic, and general garbage, just like real life, and collecting so many pieces will give you a garbage bag full of the stuff, which you can recycle or turn into items once you get a home base.

Honestly speaking, Purrrifiers very much feels like it was designed for at least two people, as some of the quests are pretty long, cumbersome, and slightly annoying by yourself at the moment, so make sure you’ve got a friend or two to join you. Joining a game is pretty easy, but there are a few…interesting caveats at the moment. First up, world progress saving is a little weird. You will want to save often just in case you encounter a bug, but you shouldn’t rename a save file, or rather save a differently named copy. Why is this you ask? Well currently, manually saving under a different save name loses world quest progression for NPCs but not the player, and it resets your inventory. Avoided by just making a new save without changing the world name, so not a big deal I suppose long term, but be wary of that if you play before that gets resolved. As an interesting note, loading is not synced between players, so one player can load an area and start running around in 10 seconds, meanwhile your buddies might take a minute or two, leading to some awkward moments.

Quests can also be accepted individually but are globally applied, so only the person interacting with the NPC gets the dialogue, which may cause some confusion about some of the quest requirements. On another interesting note, you have a really large inventory that gets filled up fast, but you can send stuff to other player’s backpacks, even if they don’t exist. I pretty much used Player 2’s backpack as used quest item storage when I was playing solo. Not sure if that’s intended, but given the nature of the game in its current state it is rather handy.

Talking a bit about the quests, usually you can’t just enter a place and start tidying up. You need someone to ask you to do it for them. Once you start a quest it will be tracked for you in your journal, or you can check your journal, and then click the specific step to track it for yourself. Each player can track quests independently, meaning one player can track a different quest to another. If both of you are tracking the same quest, a little icon will pop up on the quest tracker that shows who’s tracking it, which is really neat. 

Admittedly some of the quests are a little confusing, but they have been getting patched and cleaned up to make them more understandable, so that’s good to see! I remember the first time I booted it up there were a few starting quests that were a little vague and confusing, but when I started a solo campaign later after a patch there was clarification added. So don’t feel bad if you can’t get something right away while it’s still in Early Access.

A little forewarning on two fronts: there is some camera wobbling and the game is rather processor heavy. The wobbling is mostly a sort of lanky movement animation where you sort of head bob while moving, but there is an option to reduce that, so you may need to check that out first. As for the processor intensive activities? Well, can’t quite help you there. Some areas are fine, some are a little janky due to too much going on, so make sure your computer is up to spec if you want to run this.

The story/quests are full of gags and references, and are a little hit or miss on the humour, so you’ll either find it funny or emotionally painful, so make sure this sort of thing is your cup of tea first.

Right now there are a number of issues with the game that are getting worked through, and there is an in-game way to contact the developers to notify them of issues, so please do so if you happen to play and find something concerning. Draw distance and texture clipping/alignment are a bit of an issue graphic wise, and NPCs will also repeat the same lines over and over again if you’re nearby which can get a little annoying. The game is also a lot of empty space right now without too much in it, so it may behoove you to wait a little while until more content is added and some of the bugs are resolved. Especially that save file thing, that could cause some serious concern if you don’t figure it out. Also, always check your inventory. The amount of times I didn’t know where to find something only to later find I actually had it was ridiculous. Also, potion brewing only takes three items and then gives you the completed bottle, you don’t need to go find a fourth ingredient like I thought I needed to.

Overall, Purrrifiers: Cleaning Chaos is an interesting title with a lot of potential, but it still has some issues to work through first. Thankfully patches and fixes are being implemented, so I’m hoping that by the time a full release comes around we will have a lot more to do and a lot less of an issue doing it. Check it out and maybe put it on your watch list, as it could evolve into something pretty cool!

Score: N/A