Street Cleaning is THE job. At the end of everyday a street cleaner can be proud of what he's achieved. All these doctors, engineers and officers are lowly peasants compared to the noble street cleaners.
Street Cleaning Simulator Review
Street Cleaning Simulator is a broken, unrealistic mess that takes a relatively boring concept and makes it even worse.
The Good
- Nicely detailed sweeper vehicles.
The Bad
- Not a realistic simulation
- AI vehicles do their best to try to destroy you
- Horrendously slow
- No replay value.
UK REVIEW--The prospect of Street Cleaning Simulator may not sound appealing, but there's merit in simulation games. It's not possible to try out every job in the world, and for many of us, these games are the only way we'll get to try our hand at farming, surgery, traffic management, or, in this case, street cleaning. The main problem with this game isn't that it's a simulation in which you vacuum up filth from the side of the road; it's that it's a really, really poor game. From the lack of variety to the laughable physics and bizarre AI behaviour, Street Cleaning Simulator could only be considered a simulator in a world where the rules of gravity don't apply, where people melt through the pavement, and where street cleaners walk with an awkward swagger that would put Saturday Night Fever-era Travolta to shame. In short, it's awful.
Street Cleaning Simulator starts off with the promise of many streets to clean. As the owner of a newly established street cleaning business, it's your job to tidy up the city. It's impossible to tell who cleaned up before you arrived; there's no narrative progression, and one can only assume the filth was just left to accumulate because there aren't any other rival street cleaners in the vicinity. So you've got your office (which is really just an email interface to accept jobs from the mayor, motorway services, and occasionally, mysterious businessmen), and you've got a great big orange street sweeper. This truck forms the crux of the simulation, and the attention to detail is worth noting. Everything can be manipulated, from each individual brush to the interior cab light and the windshield wipers. The truck needs refuelling, refilling with water, and emptying whenever too much litter is collected. A brief tutorial explains most of what you need to know, and at first, it may seem rather complicated. It's fine though, because after a mission or two, you soon realise that almost all you ever need to do is drive somewhere and position the brushes.
There are three different sweepers; your starter truck and two that can be purchased after prescribed points in the campaign. The second sweeper has blue brushes and an undercarriage roller (which is pretty much useless), and the third sweeper increases your speed, fuel, water, and dirt capacity. But it doesn't do so by much, and you still end up crawling around the city at a snail's pace, heading to the next identical mission. On the plus side, they're all as nicely-crafted as the starting vehicle, with all the realistic vehicle parts you'd ever need. It's all well and good having indicators, a horn, and a handbrake, but the fact that you never have to obey traffic laws makes them obsolete. In fact, it's downright impossible to obey the traffic laws. After a mission or two, you inevitably give up on waiting at red lights only to cut through traffic, as well as drive through scenery and pedestrians, to provide the shortest time possible between the mission start and the slow, boring task ahead.
The problem with trying to obey the traffic laws is that the other cars don't. You might be patiently waiting at a red light when out of nowhere a deranged driver in a Vauxhall Corsa crashes into you, after pinging off a few dozen other cars. If you're lucky, this causes your street sweeper to grind to a halt. There's no realistic collision detection here. More often than not, though, you and the other vehicle both go flying into the sky. It's hard to believe that in the field of actual street cleaning, the sweepers can bounce 40 feet into the air before landing on their side, clipping through the road a bit and then righting themselves. Often, while making your way to a filthy road, you can spy two cars in the distance, bouncing up and down on the spot like motorised space hoppers and then sinking into the floor, never to be seen again. Pedestrians are just as incomprehensible. If you drive into them, they disappear. Much like the cars, they also frequently sink into the floor or walk through flat, untextured walls. If this were a survival horror game then it might even be creepy. But it's not. It's a street cleaning simulator.
- Metacritic Score- -No Reviews
Game Emblems
The Good
The Bad
Street Cleaning Simulator
- Publisher(s): Excalibur Publishing Limited
- Genre: Simulation
- Release:





