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Crime Scene Cleaner - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Aug 25 2024

Crime Scene Cleaner (Video Game)

Crime Scene Cleaner is a 2024 simulation action game developed by President Studio and published by PlayWay.

You play as Mr. Kovalsky, a high school janitor who is struggling to afford money for his daughter's medical bills when she has cancer. Getting tied up with The Mafia, Mr. Kovalsky becomes a valuable member as he works to clean up crime scenes left by big and small criminals, cleaning up blood, taking care of bodies, collecting evidence, and even taking some money for himself, all so he can save his daughter.

Future maps will be added to the game including Community maps, as well as a new chapter in Kovalsky's cleaning career.

Crime Scene Cleaner contains examples of the following tropes:

  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Just put aside the fact that the cops and the news don't seem to find anything unusual about mass disappearances which leave absolutely no evidence behind, nor does law enforcement respond to gunfire until Mr. Kovalsky leaves the crime scenes. Although one civilian does start putting things together.
  • Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: During the cleanup after the big blowout party:
    • Someone with a crossbow got blitzed and decided to play William Tell with a guy, who lost big on the second shot.
    • Another guy decided to be filmed riding a tricycle off a roof that had a sign explicitly saying it shouldn't be walked on. A board snapped and he fell down and broke his crown.
    • A couple of workers building a cabin decided to make a drunk podcast. One gets killed on impact after a woman flies through an open window and hits him (after an exploding bomb killed her), and the other trips and cracks his (helmetless) skull open on a stack of boards.
  • Almighty Janitor: Mr. Kovalsky himself is a high school janitor turned fixer.
  • Ambiguous Ending: To an extent. After Big Jim is arrested, the news says that the police are asking anyone with information about their crimes to step forward. Even though Kovalsky has been cleaning up those crime scenes, he could still be a valuable witness if he comes forward.
  • Animal Motif: Ducks, especially rubber ducks. Kovalsky lampshades how almost every job has at least one or more ducks in it while cleaning a rubber duck-themed art exhibit.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • The game will easily tell you how much blood you need to clean in a given section of a level (and quietly cleans up the last few percent in each section so you aren't hunting for the last pixel's worth), how much evidence you need to gather and can provide skillsets to help make cleaning the crime scene much easier. It will also let you know when specific floors and sections are totally done; if garbage or items fall into a completed section, the objective list immediately updates that section so that you know there's something else to do.
    • The Modern Art museum is one of the largest maps that the player faces, and part of its cleanup requires that you track down dozens of misplaced art pieces that the death game contestants scattered throughout the place. The game's objectives will inform you of any such pieces in a given level section, and the museum's own exhibits have consistent theming to narrow down where they should go (e.g. a bright red chair sitting in the dinosaur-themed Central Exhibit doesn't belong there).
  • Anti-Villain: Mr. Kovalsky is definitely not the most moral man in the world, but is simply trying to afford his daughter's medical bills and has no other options to make enough money to keep her alive.
  • Asshole Victim: The first body you clean up is a guy named Rob, a drug dealer who is revealed to have a hobby of torturing women to death.

    Mr. Kovalsky: It was... not nice meeting you.

  • Bait-and-Switch: One secret area has you come across a big pile of dollar bills that should be worth several thousand easily, but grabbing the stacks only gets you two dollars each... only to conceal a $100 bill that is more valuable than all of them. The results screen reveals that they're actually rubles, something that obviously can't be spent in the United States.
  • Bad Boss: Big Jim in the final mission reveals himself as this, treating his warehouse employees as absolute scum, feeling as though they were ungrateful as they tried rebelling against him for his exploitation of them, and later slaughtering them when they unionized and conspired to kill him.
  • Big Bad: James O'Connor, aka Big Jim, is a crime boss who makes Mr. Kovalsky clean up the crime scenes he and his associates leave behind, and is overall the main villain of the game.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Kovalsky escapes Big Jim's clutches when, after being two steps ahead of everyone else the entire game, the police arrest him on drunk driving which opens a whole new avenue for them to go after him. Elena gets treated and Kovalsky has the house ready for her return from the hospital. But Kovalsky has still covered up dozens of murders, Tyler's efforts to go straight are cut short having been murdered in one of Big Jim's paranoid fits, and though Kovalsky sees the reports of Big Jim's arrest his reaction to it is left ambiguous. There's also no guarantee that Big Jim will go away for life or that any of the other underworld associates aware of Kovalsky won't call on him again.
  • Camping a Crapper: One of the bodies you find in Chapter 4 is in a stall in the men's room.
  • Character Narrator: Mr. Kovalsky, he comments on the plot developments and narrates the cutscenes before the mission.
  • Cleanup Crew: The basis of the game, cleaning up crime scenes of minor and major criminals.
  • Cutting the Electronic Leash: Mr. Kovalsky tosses away the radio Big Jim gave him after the final mission, symbolizing him leaving the life of crime for good.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Mr. Kovalsky usually drops a snarky remark over a situation he has to clean up, in much the same fashion as real-life people in similarly stressful positions do to let off steam.
  • Death Game: Chapter 8 reveals a group of rich people forced civilians to kill each other for fun, which you have to clean up after the night ends.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Tyler, Mr. Kovalsky's friend, is murdered alongside his pregnant fiancée due to Big Jim thinking he was conspiring against him.
  • Dual Wielding: One upgrade lets you use two sponges at once, which Kovalsy uses with his arms crossed like an action hero.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: The final mission ends with Kovalsky cutting ties with Jim after his daughter's health has improved and retiring quietly.
  • The End... Or Is It?: It is not entirely clear if Big Jim is really caught or if someone else got scapegoated in his place, because we never saw their real face and the two pictures we see - one in the last mission and one in the news, don't match...
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Big Jim has a daughter named Amber whom he adores and has Kovalsky clean up a crime scene she accidentally caused.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Big Jim is a paranoid and power-hungry crime boss, but is seemingly disturbed by Rob's "hobbies" and was planning to cut him loose.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Mr. Kovalsky does help clean up crime scenes, but he shows his personal distaste for the brutality of his clients.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Big Jim initially appears as a polite crime lord, yet is truthfully extremely paranoid, entitled, and ruthless.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: As told in chapter 3, a hacker regularly scams clients into selling their houses for cheap by hiding Bluetooth speakers inside them and screwing with the home's smart controls to make the owners think the houses are haunted... but accidentally drives a religious woman battling psychosis into murdering her entire family and then herself, since she thinks her son was possessed by a demon. This was not helped by the hacker keeping this Gaslighting up for months prior to her snapping.
  • Hollywood Hacking: Two flavors of hacking can be done to computers: brute force, where you wait on a timer to unlock the password allowing you to go do more cleaning and come back later, or doing it yourself in a Hacking Minigame which is faster.
  • Improperly Paranoid: Big Jim is slowly revealed to be this, killing anyone he suspects of conspiring against him, including Tyler and his fiancée who just invited some of her friends over for a movie night.
  • Killing in Self-Defense: Kovalsky's first cleanup is when the son of one of his old friends comes to him for help after killing a drug dealer who decided to murder him because of his debts. Kovalsky discovers that the drug dealer was also a serial killer and he has to clean up all the evidence of this, since a police investigation would lead them to Tyler who would lead them to Kovalsky.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Kovalsky can grab cash, jewelry, drugs, and gold statuettes during jobs for extra income, which translates to more skill points.
  • Leave No Witnesses:
    • In "Affair with Death" the client is a mobster whose wife cheated on him. Upon entering the other man's home, he killed the man's wife and teenaged children before torturing the man to death. It's unclear whether it's a case of this or because he wanted to make the man watch them die before him.
    • Chapter 4 has a waitress and an elderly woman killed by Big Jim when both witness the slaughter of a rival gang.
  • Littlest Cancer Patient: Elena, Mr. Kovalsky's daughter. She is suffering from an unnamed disease that hospitalized her. The major costs of her treatment is what pushes Mr. Kovalsky to work as a cleaner for the mafia, since he simply can't afford it on his school janitor salary.
  • Mafia Princess: Amber, Big Jim’s air-headed daughter.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: Kovalsky is a middle-aged man with a slim to normal build who can do things like break boards with one punch and move heavy furniture around effortlessly.
  • Offscreen Karma: Big Jim gets arrested offscreen for drunk driving, as revealed by The Stinger.
  • One-Man Army: Big Jim is implied to have killed everyone at a few crime scenes single-handedly, including multiple well-armed people. Anyone who knows that they've incurred his wrath is accordingly terrified, and this also keeps Mr. Kovalsky obedient since he has no chance of escaping Big Jim's retribution.
  • Papa Wolf:
    • The client for mission three is a man who killed his daughter's scumbag boyfriend. Being a father himself, Kovalsky remarks that he'd have done the same. Slightly deconstructed, however, as the client says he didn't mean for things to go that far and is now worried about the police locking him up, and his daughter killed herself before he murdered the human trafficker trying to sell her and the client wanting to buy her.
    • The mess in the final mission was caused by a man trying to get revenge on Big Jim for killing his daughter (the aforementioned Chapter 4 waitress).
  • The Paranoiac: Big Jim ends up killing Tyler, his pregnant girlfriend, and everybody partying in their apartment because he believes they're conspiring against him. In fact, Tyler is seriously jazzed about being a part of Jim's organization for most of the game and is looking forward to his future as a loyal member before he's killed.
  • Pet the Dog: Mr. Kovalsky can pet his dog Dexter, a German shepherd, before and after missions.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Kovalsky is aware that he's helping evil people get away with monstrous crimes by cleaning up their crime scenes, but his daughter's life hangs in the balance. His own life does as well, considering what some of these people could/would do to him if he crossed them by saying no, but less so.
  • Real After All: Chapter 3 revolves around cleaning up after a hacker creates a false haunting which leads to a mass murder/suicide. However, Kovalsky discovers that the spirit of the victims' beloved cat really is haunting the house.
  • Serial Killer: Rob, the first victim of the game, is revealed to regularly kidnap and tie up women to torture them to death and use their blood for paintings. Not even very good paintings, either.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: You can use a pressure washer to clean blood off faster, but you also break things faster, since you're using highly pressurized water on glass or ceramic items.
  • Tempting Fate: In the final chapter, Big Jim gloats over his power and dismisses Kovalsky as he claims he'll simply lay low and won't be caught. The Stinger promptly reveals the fact he's gotten arrested by the police for drunk driving.
  • The Voice: Big Jim, as well as other mafia associates who call Kovalsky for jobs.
  • Too Dumb to Live: A guy at the party planned to propose to his girlfriend, and to celebrate at the fireside... using a military-grade bomb as a firework. The explosion and flying shrapnel ended up being responsible for most of the deaths.
  • What the Hell Is That Accent?: Big Jim's accent is interesting, to say the least. It sounds like a cross between a New York accent and something vaguely European.