Video Game / The WereCleaner

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The WereCleaner is a stealth-comedy game published by USC Games.

You play as Kyle Milton, an office janitor who happens to be a werewolf. When he's suddenly assigned night shifts, Kyle is forced to come to work while in wolf form. In order to make rent, he needs to clean messes, avoid eating his co-workers, and stay under the radar of the office security guard...

The WereCleaner released for free on Windows and iOS platforms on May 7, 2024.

The WereCleaner provides examples of:

• Abusive Workplace: The email mentions mandatory unpaid overtime for the week just to get the paycheck, which also causes a dangerous workplace environment.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Even though Daryl has full intent to kill him after finding out about his lycanthropy, Kyle still is noticeably very shaken when he dies. Post-game comics released by the team show that Kyle still goes to visit Daryl's grave to mourn, leave flowers, and eat a microwave pot pie together in his memory.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: One of the collectables is a string of garlic and a wooden stake, which Kyle notes is around the office because one of the other workers is suspected of being a vampire. Despite being a werewolf, Kyle doesn't believe vampires exist. He does note that said coworker didn't show up in a photo, though.
• Artistic License – Engineering: To take care of the server room on fire, you have to use the Hydro-Blast as a makeshift firehose. Servers are not waterproof. And even if you don't care about salvaging the servers, putting out an electrical fire with water is generally a bad idea.
• Artistic License – Law: Unpaid mandatory night shift overtime on threat of not receiving your standard pay is several kinds of illegal in most Western countries, where the game takes place.^note The devs claim it's in Chicago, and during 2008 at that.  Howlin' Hugs and the CEO would've been sued into the ground if the angry mob hadn't gotten to him first from all sides once word got out. It's highly likely that the company will still be sued into the ground all the same, it's just that the gears of the legal system haven't had time to spin up by the time that the uprising happens.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: The very title. The "were" part of werewolf means "man" as in "man-wolf", hence it would indicate someone that turns into a cleaner rather than a cleaner that turns into a wolf.
• Art-Style Dissonance: A gory Black Comedy where the protagonist is at risk of tearing innocent people around him limb from limb... with Animal Crossing-esque character designs.
• Asshole Victim: Corrupt Corporate Executive Mr. Howl has been killed by the rebelling employees by the start of the final level. Kyle is even given the task of eating his corpse as part of the clean-up.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Kyle's lycanthropy causes him to uncontrollably maul someone to death if they panic near him while he's in his werewolf form. To prevent this, he stays indoors in his apartment at night so he doesn't hurt anyone. Unfortunately, he has to work nightly overtime if he still wants his paycheck which he needs to make rent.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: On the first day, Daryl muses that maybe something exciting will happen this week. He certainly gets what he asked for by going on an obsessive hunt for a werewolf, one that ends in his own death.
• Berserk Button: Kyle is a meek guy, even while in werewolf form, but someone spotting his werewolf form is enough for him to immediately panic and go into fight-or-flight mode. In an enclosed space like an office building, this usually ends up meaning "kill any witnesses", though there is one instance of "get outta there now!" at the end of the game.
• Big Eater: If Kyle mauls someone, he has to eat the body afterwards. You can maul everyone in a level, though you'll be tight on time. Kyle is able to fit ALL the bodies into his stomach without making a dent on his figure, even if some of the mass is lost to the Ludicrous Gibs made in this way. Some of the later levels even have upwards of thirty people in them, not including Daryl and Kyle himself!
• Bittersweet Ending: Daryl accidentally falls to his death trying to kill Kyle when the rope that both use to get out of the building snaps, the latter of whom is clearly still traumatized from it by the time he gets back to his apartment. Add to the fact that the CEO of Howlin' Hugs is dead and the future of the company is in question, not to mention that, as per Word of God, it's down a janitor as well due to Kyle quitting after the events of the game. But on the plus side, at least Kyle still got his paycheck and can make rent! And if you get the golden statue collectible, he's covered for at least the next month, too!
• Black-Hole Belly: The most likely explanation for why Kyle can eat an office building's worth of bodies without being slowed down, as well as why he can eat a body in under a second. Not that he wants to do that, but he needs to do it so as to not leave any evidence of his maulings. The same goes for any other werewolves too, if the were-manual is anything to go by.
• Bottomless Magazines: Daryl's shotgun can fire at least thirty shells in quick succession and without reloading. This wouldn't be too strange if not for the fact that it's a break-action shotgun. The devs claim it's an automatic, and that he modified it to be as much.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mr. Howl, Howlin' Hugs' CEO is a jerk who makes poor decisions and abuses his employees, doing things like enforcing unpaid overtime. The awful working conditions cause a rebellion to form within the office, whose members murder the CEO sometime between Days 6 and 7.
• Determinator: Nothing will stop Kyle from getting his paycheck this week, not even being forced to work nights where he could end up tearing apart his co-workers. Even once Daryl finds out his secret and starts chasing him around the office with a shotgun, Kyle will still clean up the messes his job requires him to.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: Kyle's first night shift includes cleaning up one of these, a horrifically devastated office restroom marked as "Projectile Diarrhea," in stark contrast to the nice clean restroom one space over.
• Disney Villain Death: Head of Security Daryl's ultimate fate, who plummets from the office window to their death.
• Don't Look At Me: Kyle is triggered to either run away from or even kill those who get a good look at the sight of his wolf form. It's not exactly their fault, nor his—Kyle just panics on noticing that they spotted him, and it makes him lose control of himself due to his instincts taking over.
• Eat the Evidence: Once Kyle kills a witness, he'll have to eat the body before cleaning up the remains. Failure to do so means more of a mess when the bodies are found.
• Eat the Rich: Both metaphorical, in that the game's underlying theme is about how mistreatment of workers by corporations has negative knock-on effects for the health of the company and people as a whole and as such should not be encouraged, and literal, in that Kyle has to eat the remains of the CEO after the worker revolt to finish his cleanup job.
• Food Fight: Kyle is required to clean up the remains of one, as part of his janitorial duties.
• Furry Reminder:
  • Overlaps with "Harmful to Pets" Reminder. Kyle thinks he can't eat chocolate even in human form due to being a werewolf because he knows that chocolates and dogs don't mix well, so he avoids it just in case. He disguises this by telling others he simply has a distaste for the stuff, which is why one of his coworkers - who often brings chocolate chip cookies to share at the office - makes sure to always bake one peanut butter cookie for Kyle specifically. You can actually obtain said cookie as a collectible.
  • Kyle also displays some canine behavior in his werewolf form, such as panting, wagging his tail, and whining when he's sad.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Even if Kyle doesn't kill anyone on the first night, Daryl will still find a tuft of fur with what seems to be blood on it; While he does note that it could be jam, the devs intended for it to be blood, with a specific coworker canonically getting mauled by Kyle on night 1 (level 2).
• Gotta Kill Them All: Normally the point of the game is to avoid killing Kyle's coworkers. However, in order to get the "In The Red" achievement, you actually have to go out of your way and kill every NPC in level 6. Given that this level gives you access to all of the company, this effectively means intentionally slaughtering every single one of Kyle's coworkers. That alone is a challenging task and it's impossible to actually clean up the body messes fast enough to beat the game.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Well, one guard is crazy: Daryl. He hasn't done a good job of keeping the office safe, as can be seen with all the problems that would have required him to call for help from emergency services.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: Daryl's shotgun is depicted as a pistol-gripped break-action shotgun with shortened barrels, something that would certainly be considered unlawful to own without a federal tax stamp. Furthermore, said shotgun has no frontal bead sight and it has a werewolf detector atop the breech. No sane person would build such a weapon, let alone use it inside a crowded office building where there is plenty of potential collateral damage waiting to happen. Though as noted under Sanity Slippage, it is implied that Daryl isn't a sane person at the moment... not entirely at least.
  • This is before you get into the Bottomless Magazines point raised above, too. Break-action shotguns only can fit one shell per barrel at a time, and Daryl fires off fifteen shots from both barrels in the ending cutscene. All of this without ejecting a single shot shell.
• Heavy Sleeper: On Thursday, CEO Howl can be found passed out in his office amidst the result of a drunken rampage you have to clean up. Go ahead and hose him down; he won't move an inch, and you'll get an achievement.
• I Did What I Had to Do: When someone else spots Kyle's wolf form, he goes into fight-or-flight mode and, if "fight" ends up being the choice he opts for, mauls them. He then has no choice but to kill any witnesses to the murders and their aftermaths, and erase any evidence of his maulings. It's part of official Werewolf Society Integrated procedure, as stated in the were-manual. This trope is slightly Deconstructed, though, thanks to the No-kills bonus; the game tracks whether or not you've mauled anyone at all, even if Daryl doesn't.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Anyone who realizes that Kyle is a werewolf ends up causing him to kill them thanks to his own panic response defaulting to an instinct of "must not be discovered by ''any'' means" in an enclosed environment like an office building.
• Killer Rabbit: Kyle's werewolf form is absolutely adorable, but you don't want to get too close to him when he's like that.
• Leave No Witnesses: As mentioned above, If your wolf form gets noticed or a co-worker spots a dead body or gory mess that Kyle has left behind, the player is required to kill them and clean both corpses to finish the level. This can indeed chain between maulings.
• Libation for the Dead: A comic released by the devs shows that Kyle visits Daryl's grave, where he sadly leaves a piece of microwave pot pie as an offering to his friend.
• The Little Detecto: The Were-Tracker 200 is a device that allows one to detect and track a werewolf, given one has a sample of their fur. Daryl uses it during his rampage to hunt down Kyle, using the canonically-bloodstained tuft of Kyle's fur he finds between nights 1 and 2.
• Locked Out of the Loop: There is clearly a worker's revolt going on over the course of the week to protest the CEO's bad decisions, with the unpaid overtime being the straw that broke the camel's back. Despite this, there's no indication that Kyle is involved. In fact, the protests only add to Kyle's workload as he has to clean up after everyone.
• Ludicrous Gibs:
  • Eating a co-worker causes their body to be torn into a cartoonish pile of blood and guts, which Kyle must then clean up.
  • Mr. Howl, the CEO, is reduced to an over-the-top spray of blood and guts in both bathrooms by the worker rebellion. You even find half his corpse in one of them, and have to eat his remains to make the mess count as cleaned up.
  • Getting shot by Daryl on Day 7 causes Kyle to explode into giblets.
  • At the end of the game, this happens to Daryl when he falls from the office window. Kyle then cleans up his remains, too.
• Made of Plasticine: Your co-workers seem to come apart really easily, even falling just several floors reduces Daryl to a human puddle who can be washed away with water.
• Morphic Resonance: Kyle's fur in his werewolf form is the same color as his normal human hair.
• Mundane Solution: After failing to capture the "creature" all week with wacky schemes and messes intended to act as bait, Daryl finally does something on night 6 that he could have done from the beginning. Setting up a hidden camera in one of the offices. It captures footage of Kyle cleaning up a mess in his werewolf form, making it easy for Daryl to connect the dots.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer shows Kyle in human form cleaning up the Projectile Diarrhea in the restroom, but in the game itself said mess is a day after the tutorial, thus he's in wolf form when he has to clean it.
• No OSHA Compliance: Howlin' Hugs is not a safe place to work at, even without the werewolf around to maul you to death and the demon(s) on the loose. Just in the one week where Kyle works night shifts there's been a fire in the server room and a fatal forklift crash.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Kyle turns into a werewolf every night. He can control himself mostly normally, but if anyone spots him in his werewolf form, he loses control and either hightails it outta there or mauls them to death. Better hope you're not in an enclosed space with him when this happens.
  • Word of God confirms that werewolves are purely hereditary, and that if a werewolf of this setting goes into orbit they change once per orbital day instead of once per ground-based day.
• Pacifist Run: It is completely possible to finish every level without killing any employee, and the game even rewards you with a cute "No Kill" sticker on the result screen if you manage to remain bloodless. You do have to dispose of Mr. Howl in the final level, but by then he's already dead anyway, and later on Daryl gets himself killed regardless of your performance.
• Sanity Slippage: Security guard Daryl slowly loses it as he becomes more and more determined to catch the dangerous "animal" loose in the office. When he eventually discovers that Kyle is a werewolf, he goes completely berserk and chases him around the office with a shotgun. This ultimately gets him killed. There are signs that he never was that sane to begin with, however. He casually asks Kyle if he's ever seen someone's life get snuffed out and there's a collectable that can be found in his office called "Lethal Pepper Spray"; it even contains nitric acid and mercury, and Kyle uneasily notes that the can is half-empty...
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Daryl never seems to realize that there are dangerous happenings in the company apart from the supposed monster he's trying to find. There are plenty of opportunities for him to stop the worker revolt or at least tamp it down, but nope, he keeps hunting the "monster". One wonders why Daryl isn't targeted by the rebellion. ^note  It could be because he is in his room for most of the time of his shift and perhaps set up the traps and the cameras once they left or before they arrived. Remember, he’s the security guard so he’s the first one in and the last one out.
  • Once Kyle realizes his life may be in danger, he freaks out about how this means he might not be able to make rent.
  "Daryl said he's gonna snuff the life out of the monster. If I don't think a way out of this, Daryl's gonna kill me. AND IF I'M DEAD, THEN HOW AM I GONNA PAY MY RENT?!"
• Stealth-Based Game: A co-worker spotting Kyle's werewolf form will cause him to lose control of his instincts and kill them, which can lead to even worse problems if any witnesses see the murder or the aftermath, although in the end the only real penalty to this is time as killing co-workers creates an additional mess that Kyle now also has to clean up. There's even a bonus for beating a stage without killing anyone.
• String Theory: Daryl uses a classic string chart as part of his investigation to find who or what is behind the "wild animal" loose on the building. We get a good look at this chart during the cutscene in which he puts two and two together and realizes Kyle is a werewolf.
• Summoning Ritual: One of the messes Kyle is required to clean up is the bloodied remains of a satanic ritual, with a pentagram circle on the ground and large, inhuman footprints leading out of said circle.
• Throwing the Distraction: The player can launch paper balls to distract co-workers, who will temporarily leave their position to dispose of them.
• Too Dumb to Live: You'd think the co-workers would start running once they see Kyle in werewolf form, but apparently, they act like deer in the headlights. Additionally, even if one person screams, nobody comes to the aid of the person doing the screaming. Even sillier, if Kyle decides to mash a huge trash bag over a co-worker's head (from behind, of course), said co-worker will drop whatever they're holding and run around blind for about half a minute before eventually pulling the bag off. And for those thirty seconds, none of their non-incapacitated coworkers will help them take it off. Too bad Kyle can't use the trash bag mechanic if he gets spotted, or things would be much easier.
• Villain Has a Point: Daryl is supposed to be the villain of the last day despite having a good point that even on a complete Pacifist Run, Kyle is endangering his coworkers every day by coming in. Of course, he loses his validity pretty quickly when he decides the best punishment for this endangerment is execution by shotgun. He also loses his validity in that Kyle's under threat from a Morton's Fork; it's either unpaid overtime in close proximity to coworkers and risk their spotting him, or miss rent and be evicted (meaning the lives of more people than just the employees are endangered, as Kyle won't have somewhere safe to isolate himself).
• Werewolf Theme Naming: Inverted. The CEO Mr. Howl is not a werewolf, but the average-named Kyle Milton is.
• Werewolves Are Dogs: Not so much in behavior, but definitely in looks. With the lolling tongue, puppydog eyes, and occasional tail wags, you'd be excused for mistaking Kyle's werewolf form for a cuddly dog-man.
  • Not to mention Kyle's potential allergy to chocolate, which makes this overlap with "Harmful to Pets" Reminder, as mentioned above.
• Wonderful Werewolf: Downplayed. Kyle remains (somewhat) in control of himself in werewolf form. He retains his mental faculties, his meek demeanor, and tries his best not to hurt anyone. His instincts get the better of him, though, when spotted in werewolf form. He regains self-control moments after, but by then a great big mess has already been made if he opted for Fight instead of Flight.
• Working-Class Werewolves: Kyle makes minimum wage as a janitor and struggles to make rent. At the end of the game, he gets his weekly paycheck: $119.50.