Clean Start Game Explores Immigrant Experience Through House-Sorting Sim

The cosy house-sorting sim has become a much-loved staple of the PC indie scene. Titles such as Unpacking, A Little to the Left and Momento charm players with their detailed interiors and quiet narratives of lives lived and shared within the same four walls. For Clean Start, Polish developer Serious Sim has taken a different approach – here you play as domestic cleaner, Lena, an immigrant who has arrived in an unspecified western country with little knowledge of the local language, and a family to support back home.

From here, you’re tasked with cleaning a series of houses and apartments, polishing tables, tidying shelves and scrubbing muddy pawprints from kitchen floors. It seems you’re able to rearrange the rooms, giving them a personal feel, which is after all one of the most pleasing elements of the genre. You can also, we are reassured, pet the dog.

For artist and game director Katarzyna Haptaś the game has personal meaning. “It is largely inspired by the stories my mother told about working abroad as a domestic cleaner,” she says. “But that experience was shared by many members of my family, as well as my friends’ families. Back in the 90s, there was always some kid who had a parent working elsewhere, sending packages home for Christmas. I was blessed to hear stories from my grandmother as well. She went to America with only a few dollars in her purse and no confirmation that anyone would be waiting for her at the airport. All of that at a time when there was no internet or cellphones.”

Haptaś has drawn on her own experiences, too. Working as a cleaner in a local cinema taught her how people interact with cleaning staff. The team researched the experiences of those coming to her home country to seek work. “During the pre-production phase of the prototype, we managed to have an interview with an immigration centre worker in Poland,” she says. “She shared many insights on immigrants working in Poland at the time, mainly from war-torn Ukraine.”

Interestingly, the game uses language as a key part of its challenge. While chatting to Lena, her employers use unfamiliar words that she can learn through interacting with the environment. Owners will also ask you to find specific objects, usually with sentimental value or family stories and dramas attached. “By interacting with certain objects, players can piece together clues about what’s happening in each client’s life,” says Haptaś. “Often, these items help the clients realise something important or uncover a secret that was kept from them. Depending on what the player finds, there are different lines of dialogue commenting on it. Finding the right combination of items will reveal the full story to the player.”

Clean Start isn’t just a cosy house-tidying sim – instead, it is using this genre to explore themes of connection, comfort and closure. Immigration has become such a polarising debate, there is value in such a quiet depiction. “I hope this is a universal human story,” says Haptaś. “I hope that people will see each other as human beings, with all of our shared hopes and fears. Leaving home to work in a foreign country with limited knowledge of the language is never an easy decision. It wasn’t easy in the 90s and it isn’t easy today. Ultimately, I hope that players will leave with a little more compassion and patience for those who are simply doing their best to work and communicate.”