Goblin Cleanup

I spend most of my time running Paradox campaigns and optimizing logistics chains, so a four-player co-op janitor sim about goblin maids is not my usual beat. And yet here I am, unable to stop thinking about the task checklist. Goblin Cleanup hits Early Access with a premise that sounds like a ten-second joke but actually holds up as a repeatable gameplay loop: you play the cleanup crew for a fantasy dungeon, arriving after the heroes have trashed the place and left a catastrophic mess of blood, sprung traps, looted chests, and very much still-alive monsters. The sim-brain part of me clocked the task prioritization angle immediately, and it turns out there is genuine decision-making here, even if the decisions are things like "do I feed the mimic first or reset the spike traps before someone trips one." The toolset is the first thing that earns Goblin Cleanup some goodwill. Your main cleaning instrument is the Slimop, a trident-style tool you charge by stabbing a dispensed slime and then use to scrub blood off floors and ceilings. Dirty slime then gets dumped into a Mimic chest, which will absolutely eat you if you are careless. The Managon, a dragon-in-an-orb, drains or charges magical devices and adds a small puzzle layer to trap restoration. None of these tools are complicated, but together they create a rhythm that rewards coordination. Each room requires you to decide which tasks to tackle in which order, because an untriggered trap in the corner is both a hazard and eventually a task to reset, and a hungry monster that has not been fed is a liability for the entire team. The optional gold-slime challenges layer a time-pressure objective on top of the base cleanup, pushing efficiency without forcing it. Co-op is unambiguously where the game works best. Playing solo is functional and the checklist holds up, but with three other people the dungeon turns into a comedy of compounding errors. One teammate trips a pressure plate, another knocks a chest into a wall, and suddenly there is more to clean than when the heroes left. Character customization, which the team has been actively expanding since launch, helps the four identical goblins feel distinct. The progression system hands out tickets through completed shifts that you spend on cosmetic unlocks, which is light but gives sessions a tangible reward beyond a clean floor. The honest Early Access caveat sits in the technical column. Multiplayer desyncs, items vanishing between rooms, and occasional crashes are documented community complaints, and the content depth at the current stage means repeat runs start to feel familiar after a handful of dungeons. The Dark Tower dungeon available at launch is solid, but the roadmap lists four additional complete dungeons, each with their own level sets, still locked. A Spring 2026 Boss Update was announced to cap off the first dungeon and introduce a new rune system, which is the kind of concrete commitment that makes an Early Access purchase feel less like a gamble. The three-person team from Argentina, working part-time, has been responsive to feedback and has patched meaningful issues since launch. Steam reviews sit at 88 percent positive across well over a thousand reviews, which for an Early Access indie at this stage is a signal worth taking seriously. For strategy and sim players specifically, the appeal is narrower than for the cozy-game crowd. There is no overarching meta-economy, no base-building, no branching upgrade tree. What you get is a tight, recurring task loop dressed in dungeon fantasy humor with genuine co-op chaos potential. If your regular group has burned through PlateUp or Overcooked and wants something with a bit more dungeon grime and cartoonish gore, this is a plausible next session pick. Go in with friends, accept the Early Access rough edges, and the shift goes by faster than expected.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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