Video Game Mixes Cleaning Movement with Horror Genre to Sell Consumer Products – Core77

Now that video games rival TV shows and movies as entertainment, so too has product placement crept into them. The in-game ads have been suitably gamer-targeted: Monster energy drinks, Subway sandwiches and Cup Noodles have featured in games like “Final Fantasy XV,” “Death Stranding” and “Uncharted 3.”

Now Japanese consumer products company Kao—basically the Procter & Gamble of Japan—has created their own video game, expressly to advertise their cleaning products.

While the concept sounds insane, the execution is both clever and timely. The company has capitalized on both the #CleanTok trend, whereby TikTokkers deep-clean filthy bathrooms and the like, and the current appetite for the horror genre.

In “Silent Cleaning,” you inherit an abandoned old house in the Japanese countryside from a deceased relative. Your mission is to sell it—but first you have to clean the filthy house up, by locating and using Kao’s cleaning products.

The twist is that as you clean the dark, creepy house up, you’re being stalked by a resident monster who responds to the sound of scrubbing. This puts you in an odd bind: “The game constantly tests player’s compulsion to clean by making them have to choose between leaving some cleanser only half-rinsed or dying a horrible death,” writes Japanese news website SoraNews24. “Our writer Saya Togashi tried the game and found that choice more difficult than you might expect, while dying about 50 times in the process.”

Additionally, during the cleaning tasks, you uncover hidden codes. This prompts you to search for more codes beneath the grime; accessing them allows you to solve puzzles.

The game is now up on Steam for free, though it’s Japanese-language only. If Procter & Gamble is smart, they’ll create their own version in English.