Here's a free demo for Cleanfall, the terrifying “alchemy” love child of Spelunky, Noita, and tower defense

In Cleanfall, you essentially play a Roomba trying to reverse the apocalypse that's about to happen. messy. A Roomba with the ability to tunnel through millions of procedurally generated, monster-infested shells to reorganize the Earth’s core and achieve its ultimate goal—a glowing living room. I enjoy the militant reductionism of this character motivation. There are vast subterranean ecosystems to explore, yes, strange plants to harvest, clusters of cranky tentacles to evaluate, avoid, or slaughter. But these are all sordid details to be swept up, bagged, and thrown in the trash.

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“You are a humble little cleaning robot who wants nothing more than a clean and tidy home,” reads its Steam page. “But ever since the planet was brought closer to the sun by a monomaniacal tech enthusiast, dust and death have been swirling on the surface, creating a very messy situation. If your home is ever going to be clean again, you need to fix the world. A clean world means a clean home. So, fix the world. Simple.” I'm pretty sure that's how Genghis Khan started.

Cleanfall takes the form of a 2D platform roguelite with a surprising tower defense element. As the aforementioned cleaning bot, who you can upgrade to a very tired robo-maid, you'll roam every biome in search of resources, items, and hidden friendly—or at least non-hostile—characters. You'll study the habits of organisms resembling spiders, tadpoles, and octopuses, dosed up in Compound V. And you'll build hellishly dangling mazes of “alchemy” turrets ranging from mortars to drone hubs. Judging by the trailer above, the action approaches bullet-hell intensity when there's a whole lot of stale kaiju spermatozoa involved.

I haven't had the chance to play it, but there's a demo on Steam and early user reactions suggest it's worth a try. The full game is due out in 2025. The obvious comparisons I'd throw into this now grossly atrocious title are Spelunky and Terraria, with a dash of Carrion and Noita.

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