Over on Twitter, Bloober Team recently announced that it’s working with indie studio Draw Distance, developer of last year’s murder cleanup stealth game Serial Cleaners. The two Polish studios are working together on a new project codenamed Project M, which had been in pre-production at Bloober Team for over a year, and has now entered the full production phase following Draw Distance having been “chosen as its developer”.

Bloober Team hasn’t provided any details on what the game will turn out to be, roughly when it might launch, or even what platforms it will launch for. The developer has, however, accompanied the announcement with some concept art that seems to suggest it will very much be in Bloober’s wheelhouse and in the horror arena.

Bloober Team is currently working on the Silent Hill 2 remake, which doesn’t yet have a release date but is in the final stages of development, as well as Layers of Fears, which is due out sometime this year.

In December, the developer also announced that it had started development on a new survival horror game that will be published by Private Division, while in November 2021, it announced a collaboration with Rogue Games for a “next-gen” title for PC and consoles.

We're working on a new game! For over a year now, #BlooberTeam has been conducting pre-production works on a title codenamed Project M. Now the game enters the production phase, and @DrawDistanceDev (creators of the Serial Cleaner franchise), has been chosen as its developer! pic.twitter.com/AwPV38QmwG

— Bloober Team (@BlooberTeam) February 13, 2023

As a cleaner for the mob in New York City during the ’90s, your job is to infiltrate crime scenes and remove any incriminating evidence. On top of this, you’ll need to be careful of the police. Throughout the story, you’ll interact with each crew member and learn their backstories, though some may not be completely honest.

With an atmosphere that calls classic films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction to mind, Serial Cleaners also employs an aesthetic reminiscent of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work. For more details on the gameplay, check out our official review here.

According to the Steam description, Serial Cleaners is supposed to be a stealth-action game, and looking at those words and reading the general description, I was prepared for a Deus Ex-styled immersive sim romp through intricate levels. While I was incredibly wrong on that front, I’m also pretty happy that I was wrong. Serial Cleaners offers a surprisingly unique experience that I doubt has really been done before aside from its own predecessor, the confusingly-titled Serial Cleaner.

"Think of characters like the fixer from Pulp Fiction or the cleaning company from John Wick. Serial Cleaners puts you in the shoes of such cleaners and gives you a glimpse at their stories—stories which are seldom explored in games."

While Serial Cleaners is a sequel, it’s worth keeping in mind that it doesn’t really have much to do with its predecessor aside from the general gameplay. All of the characters, stories, and levels are completely divorced from the events of the first game, so you don’t really have to go out of your way to hunt down a copy of Serial Cleaner just to get the whole story.

Serial Cleaners focuses on four cleaners, and largely takes place over the 1990s in America. Each cleaner plays quite differently, since they all have their own area of expertise. Erin Reed, for example, is a hacker. As such, levels where you play as her revolve around using technology to distract and disorient guards as you skulk around in the shadows trying to dispose of evidence and dead bodies. Bob Leaner, on the other hand, can travel around his levels quickly by sliding on blood trails left by dead bodies being dragged around.

While the cleaners’ unique abilities are a far cry from being game changing, they offer just enough uniqueness to really make you consider how best to use these characters to their fullest. The levels aren’t particularly long, so replaying missions doesn’t really take much time, thanks especially to how deterministic just about everything in the core gameplay is.

Speaking of core gameplay, Serial Cleaners may not be a full-fledged immersive sim, but it definitely takes quite a few ideas from the genre. A surprising level of interactivity is available, from blood spills that you can create accidentally or on purpose, to the ability to distract guards by making sounds, turning off lights, or even just leaving a door open. And just about everything you do might end up having some unforeseen consequences.

Those blood spills that Leaner can slide around on? Part of the mission in just about every level is to also clean up those spills without being spotted. This means that you’ll have to use a loud vacuum cleaner that might attract guards thanks to its noise. Want to avoid making more of the spills? Better put those corpses you have to dispose of in body bags so that dragging them around doesn’t cause even more blood to spill out.

"Serial Cleaners may not be a full-fledged immersive sim, but it definitely takes quite a few ideas from the genre. A surprising level of interactivity is available, from blood spills that you can create accidentally or on purpose, to the ability to distract guards by making sounds, turning off lights, or even just leaving a door open. And just about everything you do might end up having some unforeseen consequences."

Despite all of the interactivity, however, Serial Cleaners’ revolves around the stories of its four “protagonists”. The game is strictly divided into levels, with the tutorial involving the four meeting up for a job. After that, we get basically a backstory for all of the characters, each with their own level designed specially to show off their special abilities. Leaner’s level, for example, is just about covered in blood stains, letting him slide all over the place. Reed’s level takes place in a morgue, so there isn’t much to clean up, but the security is tight and the computers are hackable.

Serial Cleaners does an admirable job in tying its gameplay so close to the stories of its characters, and while not all of the writing is of the highest possible caliber, they’re all still quite likable. It’s worth noting that they’re also not the most original characters out there—you’ll notice quite a few archetypes on display if you’re a fan of 90s-era cult classic movies. The developers have been quite open about being inspired by that decade of cinema, so the character archetypes are an intentional part of the game.

Serial Cleaners’ biggest asset is its style. Owing to its 90s-era cinematic inspirations, the art style definitely feels like it’s evoking a very specific time and place in gaming. Its character models have low polygon counts, and textures in the environment are just the right amount of muddy and pixelated to evoke the look of classic PlayStation games. There’s an incredibly specific kind of nostalgia that’s being evoked in Serial Cleaners—one of a grimy city in the 90s filled to the brim with murders and other general crime.

Intentional or not, I do believe that this look manages to add to the game’s overall sense of style. Thankfully, the lo-fi graphics don’t get in the way of gameplay, owing largely to the fact that things that can be interacted with are visible through the Cleaner vision every character has. That’s right, Serial Cleaners has the murder-cleanup version of Detective Vision, which comes in quite handy for things like figuring out where all the evidence is, keeping an eye on guard patrols, and finding smaller things you might want to mess around with, like light switches for example.

"Serial Cleaners’ biggest asset is its style."

The biggest gripes I’ve had with Serial Cleaners largely revolve around actually playing the game. Its control scheme feels quite ill-suited to the traditional PC gaming mouse and keyboard setup. Since it uses an isometric camera angle, moving around with the WASD key cluster feels quite awkward. You don’t ever want to take your hand off the mouse when playing a game on your PC, after all.

Even once you’ve gotten around that, the characters and UI feel quite clunky to control. Having played it largely with a controller since then, I can confidently say that using a controller is the way to play this game. Everything generally feels better when you’re moving around with an analogue stick and don’t have to stretch your fingers all over the keyboard for various shortcuts. And seriously, using a keyboard’s arrow keys to control the camera might just be one of the strangest design decisions I’ve seen from a game in the last decade.

Overall, Serial Cleaners is a pretty good time. It’s not a particularly long game, but it’s definitely one that rewards repeated playthroughs thanks to its surprising level of interactivity. Its story’s also pretty fun, and you will likely end up getting surprisingly attached to the four protagonists by the end of the game. I, however, find myself strangely attracted to the game thanks to its unique use of a setting we’ve taken for granted these days. Couple that with the interesting subject matter, and a great use of aesthetics to evoke a certain style, and Serial Cleaners definitely becomes a game to look out for. We play all sorts of gangsters and hitmen, so why not take a small break from committing murders to maybe look at the difficult job of cleaning up after murders for a change?

This game was reviewed on PC.

505 Games is attached to the project as publisher now, and its newest trailer has shown off more of its stealth action gameplay, stylish visual aesthetic, and its 90s vibe and setting. If you’re someone who enjoys stealth games, you’ll want to keep an eye on this one. Check out the trailer below.

Meanwhile, a release date for Serial Cleaners has also been nailed down (no, it’s not launching in 2021 as initially planned, obviously), and new platforms have been added. The game launches on September 22 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Serial Cleaners puts players in the shoes of 4 “mob cleaners”, tasked with cleaning crime scenes by what seems to be rigging evidence. Each mob cleaner will have some unique abilities, and the story is touted to unfold in a non-linear fashion. The game is set to release later this year for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

The stealth elements look interesting, with visual indicators such as vision cones plastered on the game world itself, hearkening back to Mark of the Ninja and Aragami. Developer Draw Distance has previously worked on a bunch of narrative experiences before all set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe.

"With Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York, there’s a lot of that freedom to choose to act how you want and complete quests when you want. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of clutter that overshadows the few interesting characters and intriguing narrative arcs it presents."

Developer Draw Distance immediately introduces you to the world of New York, where there’s tension between the Camarilla and Anarch groups of vampires. You are immediately transformed into a vampire and forced to join the Camarilla sect of vampires in New York City. Soon after, you’re taken under the wing of Sophie Langley, a higher-up in the sect who, in return for saving you from the Final Death, wants you to create a coterie of other vampires around New York to help her. This motivation is the game’s central drive, and Sophie is your overarching guide for the majority of the story.

You can choose to play as one of three separate people, each of whom joins a different clan of vampires. While the main story stays generally the same, there are differences in how different events can play out based on which person you choose. Each has different abilities that unlock particular dialogue options in certain spots, each of which allows for a different action that gives a leg up in easing tensions and surpassing obstacles. It features a map and quest hub to let you choose how you spend your nights. Each mission takes half of a night, and, aside from some predetermined missions that take place at certain times, you can do quests in almost any order you choose. In doing this, you will likely not be able to finish all of the quests over the course of nearly twenty nights before the game’s conclusion, so you’re encouraged to choose which missions to take on wisely.

You also have to keep your eye on your hunger, which requires you to periodically feed on humans so you are not overtaken by the oft-mentioned Beast that lives within vampires. Before this happens, though, hunger causes you to miss out on the vampire ability dialogue choices. While this is an interesting idea in theory, the opportunities to feed are abundant, including the ones that have little opportunity cost and have low risk of being caught. I found myself rarely ever nervous about where my next meal of blood would come from.

"Each mission takes half of a night, and, aside from some predetermined missions that take place at certain times, you can do quests in almost any order you choose."

As you’re working through the missions, you will find dialogue trees and branching paths that can occur based on your choices. Recruiting characters into your coterie consists of completing quests akin to Mass Effect’s loyalty missions, and you can fail to successfully recruit a character. There are many ways the story can diverge, and there are multiple endings based on your recruitment success and various choices throughout. Unfortunately, in some dialogue trees, there are effectively right or wrong answers, and there are points where these answers are not made clear and their consequences not explained. One scene had me monitoring a chat room to ban, kick, or ignore certain users, and on multiple occasions I was incorrect in my discipline choice based on information that was provided after my choice was made. Other choices were entirely inconsequential altogether, despite their seeming importance. It makes for an oddly unbalanced choice mechanic, where some choices are clear and have distinct outcomes, while others are almost a guessing game as to which choice is correct.

While you get to meet and interact with a lot of different people and vampires, though, it’s very hit or miss as to whether their characters are intriguing or their quests engaging. Many of the characters feel one-dimensional because their motivations are introduced immediately and never evolve. While none of these side characters spend a lot of time with you individually, they cumulatively take a significant chunk of your time. Many of them even seem to speak in the same way, making differentiating characters much more difficult. Some of their quests focus more on explaining the backstory of the world than on advancing any plot points, which is what many of these characters’ purposes seem to be, but this makes for some incredibly verbose and painfully tedious moments.

There are only a handful of characters who make a real impact, and your ability to choose your sequence of quests can hurt the pacing. The characters that have the most depth are the ones who pop up throughout the story and drive you forward, sometimes literally. Sophie and the Sherriff, Qadir, are two notably deep characters that you get to know well and develop relationships with. Some of the companions, like Tamika and Agathon, have depth and complexity as well, as their relationships, both with you and with their close ones, are explored and tested. Unfortunately, these characters only show up a handful of times, and the rest of the story is filled with a lot of the other characters and events that can feel both inconsequential and filler. Luckily, the visuals that accompany each location and character are beautifully detailed to complement the novel’s text, giving you a great look at the dark world and environments you’re experiencing.

"Unfortunately, the most interesting characters only show up a handful of times, and the rest of the story is filled with a lot of the other characters and events that can feel both inconsequential and filler."

It comes together, however, to create a package that feels like it overstays its six-or-so hour welcome and makes a muted impact. While some of the individual characters are interesting to explore, the overarching narrative can get lost in the shuffle of the individual quests you have to complete and the side characters you encounter, especially when what you’re doing feels like an irrelevant aside to your motives that add little to the world or narrative. There’s not much in the way of a central theme that the game is trying to convey that relates it back to the player. There are certainly moments where morality, loyalty, and the afterlife are explored, but it never felt like there was anything profound that brings it all together or any ultimate statement that should be taken away.

There are moments in Coteries of New York where I was surprised, excited, or moved, but it took some filtering through uninteresting characters and uninspired quests. Fans of the Vampire: The Masquerade saga will find this a welcome addition to the world and fans of visual novels will find aspects of this story that are worthwhile, but it’s hard to recommend to anyone outside of these circles. It’s not doing anything groundbreaking in its genre, and there are many other experiences that outdo it without all of the clutter. I like some of what Coteries of New York offers, but I feel like I could’ve spent my undead life in a better way.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Next year we will get the sequel to the cult classic, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The RPG promises to both capture the spirit of the original as well as refine it for a new generation. It suffered a delay from March of 2020 to sometime later in the year that’s not been defined yet. In the meantime, we were supposed to get a bite-sized spin-off in Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York. Unfortunately, it too suffered a delay, though thankfully not by much.

As announced via the game’s official Steam page, the game will be pushed back by just a week. So for the visual novel style game, you won’t have to wait much longer. The delay is only stated for the PC version of the game with no mention of the Switch version, which was already scheduled to come out in 2020.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York will release for PC on December 11th now, with a Switch version coming in Q1 of 2020. As of now there’s no other announced platforms for the game.

It came as a disappointment when earlier in the month it was announced that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 would be delayed from its original March 2020 date. Well, we’ve been waiting a long time anyway, so what’s a few more months. But in the meantime we will be getting a little taste of that world with Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York.

The game is done in the visual novel style and a new gameplay trailer will give you an idea of how the game will play now that we finally got an idea of when it’ll be releasing. The game will have the same choice options from the main title as you must navigate between two warring major vampire factions. It will include quests, unique abilities and NPCs. Check it out below.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York will release for PC on December 4th and Q1 of 2020 for the Nintendo Switch.

Those looking forward to the cult classic sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, suffered a bit of a blow the other day as it was announced the game would be delayed until later in 2020 than expected. It’s a disappointment, but it happens, and hopefully it gets the extra time it needs to get polished up. In the meantime, however, there will be a little taste of the vampire world with Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York.

The game was announced earlier in the year, with not much said about it afterward. Well, now we know it will come at the year’s end for PC, though the Switch version seems to have suffered a small delay and will come to that device at the beginning of 2020. It seems there’s also talks to bring it to the PS4 and Xbox One at some point, but no dates or time frames are given.

We haven’t seen much of the game, though we know it’s a smaller scale narrative adventure game where you must chose a clan against the warring Camarilla and Anarchs. It won’t crossover with Bloodlines 2, but it hopefully it’ll still make for a good appetizer in the meantime. Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York will launch December 4th on PC and Q1 2020 on Switch.

https://twitter.com/DrawDistanceDev/status/1185486281704443905

We’ve heard about Paradox’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Big Bad Wolf’s own Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. However, developer Draw Distance has its own title in the World of Darkness universe to present – Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York. It’s out in Q4 2019 for PC and Nintendo Switch.

Centering on the conflict between the Camarilla and Anarchs, two vampire clans in New York City, Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is a single-player experience. It’s based off of Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition and will allow players to choose their character from a number of different clans. The clans themselves will be revealed later.

However, each character has their own intriguing powers, ethics, and dialogue. You’ll also embark on different character quests to bond with different NPCs and form your own coterie. Multiple endings are promised, and it seems that your choices will have a long-term impact on the game’s narrative. So far it sounds good, but we’ll wait for more gameplay before getting sufficiently hyped.